Meanders through Shephard Family History

  I am jumping forward to today. Recently, we all experienced a pivotal moment in American history - the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We all benefit today from her lifetime of fighting for gender equality. I'd like to take a moment to reflect on how much progress was made in my lifetime. When I was in high school, home economics and typing were required courses for girls - to give us the skills to run a home and make a living as a secretary if we weren't fortunate enough to marry right out of school. Boys were required to take either auto shop or wood shop so they could become good breadwinners for their families. This was the accepted norm and for the most part it worked. On my old manual typewriter, I was able to type 70 words per minute with fewer than 5 errors in a 5-minute time trial. I was at 110 words per minute on the school's IBM Selectric typewriters, which looking back on it, were amazing pieces of modern equipment for my little school to have....

 In 1892, Anna Troemel was turning 4 when she contracted Diphtheria. She died within a week of her birthday. The sad fact is that if she had not gotten the disease for just another 10 months, she might have been able to receive one of the precursor cures that would become available - a serum that killed the bacteria derived from sheep's blood. In just 2 more years, the first vaccination would become available in New York City. However, the vaccine was not widely available until the 1920s and there were many false starts on getting this vaccine available to the public. Diphtheria is highly contagious and is spread not only by droplets but also by coming into contact with surfaces that an infected person has touched. In Anna's time, the death rate was 20% for children under 5 or adults over 40. It is not known how many of the 7 others in the household also became sick, but it appears that only Anna died. Her siblings were all older than she and so were in an age group with only 5...

 In 1929, the Great Depression started. There is dispute as to what triggered the depression, but the stock market was over-leveraged with margin loans. When stock prices began to fall, these loans were called due. However, they could not be repaid even after liquidating other assets. These liquidations caused banks to fail as people pulled their money from institutions amid rapidly falling prices. They wanted to hold their money in hand and not risk their bank failing and losing the money. Of course, this was a self-fulfilling prophecy causing many banks to fail. The Federal Reserve did not attempt to intercede, instead watching as the market "corrected" itself. Because of this inaction, the depression had global effects. Recovery didn't take hold until the mid-1930s with some areas not recovering until the late-1930s. Let's look at changes in the lives of of my grandparents during the Great Depression. Elroy Shephard  Let's visit first, Elroy and Madeline Shepha...

 Julius Peikert and his wife, Emma nee Hauser, immigrated from Loiusenfelde, Prussia (now Brandenburg) to New York in July 1885. They were aged 32 and 27 respectively. Germany was doing better than most of Europe at that time, what drove the immigrations from Germany to the US during that time? In the mid-1800s, many Germans and Irish migrated to the United States. The Irish came because of the potato famine, the Germans came to escape political persecution. The Germans in the middle of the century came with money and so were able to spread out across the US with major centers in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. When emperor Bismarck came to power in Germany, he began consolidating the various states and building alliances with Austria/Hungary and Italy against France. The German empire had great influence over the Nordic countries as well as the Netherlands. This was the Germany that Julius and Emma grew up in. It was becoming a world power and cautiously eyeing Russia's desire to grow...

 From the last post, we found how my great-grandfather's family wound up in Howard, South Dakota where my grandfather was born. But how does the son of a corn farmer in the 1880s meet and fall in love with a young woman who lived about 40 miles away. What chance encounter could they have had? My grandmother's father, James Cox also came to South Dakota as it opened up in the early 1880s, He took up residence in Alexandria, in neighboring Hanson County. I'm sure he knew many of the farmers in the area because his occupation listed on the 1880 census in Illinois was Miller. I'm sure he saw the frontier as a way to start a new life being one of the first millers in a land opening up for farming. In 1900, the Coxes moved to Howard. Elroy and Madeline were married in Howard in 1908. So did they meet earlier? Probably not, they probably met after the move for the first time and had a normal courtship. Though I cannot find a tie through their occupations, it was agriculture th...

 I'm intrigued about what moved my 2nd great-grandfather, Levi M Shephard from his farm in Minnesota to Miner, South Dakota. I have no direct information about the reasons, so this is all speculation based upon what was going on in the US leading up to the move. Levi was born in Buffalo, New York in 1828. He met his wife in or near McHenry, Illinois and married in 1849 so something caused his family to move to Illinois between 1828 and 1849. Perhaps the family was caught up in the depression caused by the Panic of 1837 and departed to farm in Illinois as the industries in Buffalo were likely hit hard during the depression. By 1857, he and his growing family had moved to Fillmore County, Minnesota where he is listed as a farmer in the territorial census of that year. In the 1820s, the US government had signed a treaty with the Dakota Indians and over a course of years took control of most of the land in Minnesota and opened it up for farming and the timber industry. It would seem th...

My meanders begin in Colonial America; Hartford, Connecticut to be exact. Thomas Spencer, my 9th great-grandfather is one of the town's founders. (See foundersofhartford.org ). I have noted the history of the settlement during the lifetime of my ancestor.  Reverend Thomas Hooker was a Puritan and was forced from England by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1633, he sailed from Holland to the colonies to escape further persecution, settling in Cambridge. He formed a church with an assistant, Samuel Stone, who had been born in Hartford, a hamlet north of London. In 1635, he decided that the Boston area was too crowded and left for Connecticut with about 100 people from his congregation and some cattle. They started a settlement to the north of the Dutch outpost, House of Hope, from New Amsterdam. Connecticut derives from the Algonquin word, quinnetukut , which means "long, tidal river". Hartford means "deer crossing", so it is thought that Samuel Stone suggested th...