Prized Old Photos

All family historians love photographs. They want to see what the world actually looked like centuries ago. They are curious about old houses, cars and implements used by people in their jobs. But they especially prize pictures of people to whom they are related and, in particular, descended from.

In my family, some people took lots of photos, others not so much. My father always had a camera and was very active when movie cameras for private use came out. I wrote about his photographic activities in a about Classic Family Photos a while back.

The 8 mm movie camera was introduced by Kodak in 1932. I have movies taken by my family – now digitized and on DVDs – from as far back as 1941, just after my oldest sister was born. Of course he also took hundreds of still photos of family activities as well, using a variety of cameras through the years.  I still have all of them, now displayed in glass-front cabinets including one of the original box cameras by Kodak, probably purchased by the family around 1912. They were first manufactured in 1908. I still have the negatives of those old pictures, most of which my father developed.

In my collection are many photos taken in the 1800s – individuals, couples at the time of their wedding and whole family groups. Professional portraits were one of the few ways people could have their pictures taken then, mostly in studios.

 

Mary Crispin (Carpenter) Shepheard, 1830-1890 (photo taken about 1870)

The oldest photograph I have of a direct-line ancestor is of a second great-grandmother, Mary Crispin (Carpenter) Shepheard, taken about 1875 by John Hawke, photographer, in Plymouth, Devon. It is one of a wonderful set of old photos brought to Canada by my great-grandfather when he emigrated in 1913. He even wrote “My Mother” on the back of it. I know it is his handwriting from his initials on the photo and on other documents he wrote and signed. He also had one of his late wife, Mary Elizabeth (Pearson) Shepheard, as a young girl, taken at Bullock Brothers studio in Royal Leamington, Warwickshire, in 1882.

 

Mary Elizabeth (Pearson) Shepheard, 1866-1891 (photo taken about 1882)

On this side of the ocean, I have a not-so-great-quality copy of a possible wedding photo of great-grandparents, taken by Flaten photographers in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1884 and a copy of a family group photo of a second great-grandmother and all of her adult children, including my great-grandfather, taken at Manhattan, Kansas (photographer unknown) in 1886. This is the image that forms the backdrop to my blog. From other cousins I have obtained copies of photos of people that go back to about 1850.

 

Possible 1884 wedding photo of Isaac newton Thompson and Margaret Mary Anderson

These and others are very special memorabilia, probably among the most important pieces of my family history. They are even more valued when they have names or notes written on them by the people to whom they belonged. I keep them all now well-protected in albums that I hope my descendants will treasure as well.

 

Family of Hannah Tunstall (Mayfield) Miller-Watson and her children (photo taken about 1886 in Manhattan, Kansas, United States)

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

Another Man With the Name Shepheard

I am often asked whether I am related to the man who owned and operated the Shepheard Hotel in Cairo, Egypt. The answer is, as far as I can determine and from records as far back as I can go, “No!” But it has been interesting to learn about the man. Maybe somewhere back in the Middle Ages we might find a connection.

In the meantime, I am happy to collect references and information about all the famous, and possibly infamous people with the same last name. As I am embarking – slowly – on a one-name study of  Shepheard, I am curious to find out about all the people with whom I share that surname.

Of course I have known about the Shepheard Hotel for many years and often wondered whether our family had any connection to it. Our name is not a usual spelling so you never know where or when you might find a connection. I finally obtained a book written by Michael Bird, a great-grandson of Samuel Shepheard. It is simply titled, Samuel Shepheard of Cairo and was published by Michael Joseph Ltd., of London, in 1957. The author uses original documents from the Shepheard Hotels as well as a great deal of family correspondence saved by Samuel’s descendants and other relatives. He wrote to his family in England often and we are lucky to have the letters preserved so that people like Michael Bird could reconstruct his story.

One can search the Internet, of course, and find all manner of articles and pictures about Samuel and the hotels. I say hotels because there was more than one building with that name. The latest one was built in 1957 replacing one that burned down in the anti-British riots of 1952.

Samuel Shepheard was born at Little Preston manor in Preston Capes Parish, Northamptonshire, on 21 January 1816. His parents were Richard Shepheard (1785-1820) and Jane Berwick (1788-1817). His mother died the following year from consumption; his father’s death came not long afterward, in 1820, also from the same disease. With the loss of both parents, Samuel’s care was taken over by his father’s oldest sister, Esther Stanley and her husband, Joseph, who lived in Leamington. Joseph was the landlord of the Crown Inn which undoubtedly is where Samuel learned the victualling and catering businesses.

A brother, Richard Shepheard went to live with a great-uncle, Benjamin Shepheard, apprenticing as a butcher but spending most of his life as a farmer in Hunningham, Warwickshire. Michael Bird indicated there was also a sister however nothing is known about her.

Samuel’s education was limited. He laboured at farming and apprenticed for a while as a pastry chef, under three different masters before leaving that behind. From country life, Samuel eventually found himself at sea, quite possibly as a cook to start with. His marine career did not last long either. In 1842 he found himself in Cairo, Egypt, having just been put ashore for having taken part in insubordinate activities against the captain. The date was 30 January 1842, Samuel had just past his 26^th birthday and he had one shilling in his pocket.

Samuel’s first job was in a Greek café. So began his sojourn in a foreign land as well as in the hospitality business. He made many new friends and cultivated new business associates in Cairo, including a man named Hill, a manager at the British Hotel, with whom he eventually worked. It was not long before circumstances and opportunity allowed Samuel to become part owner of the hotel. By 1845 he was the sole proprietor.

Samuel Shepheard owned and operated the Shepheard Hotel for the next 16 years. The hotel was moved to a new location at Ezbekier Square in 1848 and renamed the Shepheard Hotel. Over the next decade it was renovated, refurbished and expanded. He sold the establishment in 1861 and retired to Warwickshire, England. The history of the hotel itself can be found in many sources and I won’t dwell on it here.

 

1848 British Hotel renamed as Shepheard Hotel

1850 newly opened Shepheard Hotel at Exbekier Square

Samuel met his wife, Mary Rangecroft when she and her family were travelling through Cairo on their way to India. They married in 1844 in Alexandria, Egypt. Mary divided her time between Egypt and England over the years. They had eight children, six of whom were born in Egypt. Sadly four died in infancy or as toddlers in Cairo. One died in Warwickshire at the age of 10 years. Only one, Jane Mary, eventually married (to Arthur Bird) and had children. Two daughters, Sarah and Mable lived together in Devon as spinsters until the 1930s.

Samuel Shepheard spent only 19 years in Egypt but in that time he built an impressive reputation as an hotelier and acquired a substantial fortune. His name continues to live on one of the world’s premier hotels. He was a notable character, strong of will and of exceptional ability in dealing with others.

 

2014 Shepheard Hotel today

Edwin de Leon, the American consul in Cairo during period Samuel live there, wrote of the man, “Shepheard himself, who founded and gave his name to this hotel in the early days of Waghorn [influential in the development of Egypt business and infrastructure] and Mehemet Ali [ruler of Egypt], was a character and an original. He was a short, sturdy, strongly-built John Bull of the old type, both in looks and manner, independent and brusque to the very verge of rudeness and often beyond, no respecter of position or of person, yet full of geniality and generous impulses, concealing a heart of gold under a round husk.”

Samuel died at his home at Eathorpe Hall, Parish of Wappenbury, Warwickshire, on 12 June 1866, at the age of 50. He is buried in the parish church cemetery. Samuel left an estate valued in 1868 at £8,000.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

Why would we care about 4th cousins? Or even more distant relatives?

I read a lot about people, especially with their DNA tests, finding cousins that rank 4^th or greater. That’s a long ways apart – somehow sharing at least 3^rd great-grandparents or further back.

I know genealogists like to study families in the past. And most of us really got involved because we wanted to know more about our direct ancestors. Finding their siblings was interesting, and sometimes helped with discovering more information about those in our direct lines. But chasing children of children of children of those siblings of our ancestors seems a bit too much for me.

Now I have to plead guilty for having a lot of people in my database, even quite a large number that are not connected by blood to either my wife or me. They are generally the families of people who married into ours, through nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws, etc. I mean, it’s interesting and all that, but they really don’t have anything do to with how I got here. Or how my wife got here (which means how my children or grandchildren got here).

It is bragging rights people are looking for – to see how many notable people – famous or royalty – we can add to our tree that fascinates people. You read many reports of someone being related to a President, a move star or royalty through some very distant cousin. Or just to see how many names we can assemble that have some distant, if not inconsequential connections.

Ancestors of my grandchildren who come from lines totally different than my own are important, only because they are blood relatives of my grandchildren. Someday perhaps these grandchildren, or their children – if my data survives that long – might be as interested in their pedigree as I have been, so I collect information about and for them.

But even those who are distantly related by blood – the 4^th cousins and more, really don’t have a lot to do with me.

On 23andme, where both my wife and I had out autosomal DNA tested, I have been given the names (well, at least the notification of files) of:

·         one 1^st cousin

·         two 1^st to 2^nd cousins

·         five 2^nd cousins

·         four 2^nd to 3^rd cousins

·         14 3^rd to 4^th cousins

·         45 3^rd to 5^th cousins and

·         819 people more distant.

I don’t even know what that really means. By the time you get way out there, you are sharing 0.5% of your DNA or much less and not the same 0.5% among all of them. For me, those very distant cousins are people could have been born in the 1970s or much later and aren’t part of my family history.

Many of the 2^nd and 3^rd cousins on the 23andme list are people I can relate to – figuratively as well as literally. We happen to all be interested in family history which is why we got tested. Some I found through the DNA testing, so that made it worth doing the tests. I have corresponded with a few of them and we found out which grandparents we shared. It was kind of interesting how we traced back our common ancestors and each of us learned a bit about the family from the others’ work. Many others who apparently share 1% to 3% of their DNA don’t have names attached to the profiles shown and have not responded to any messages sent to them. Some people whose profile shows they share some minute quantities of DNA have asked to share information but we have not been able to see any connection at all between us and wonder really, how far back do we have to go to find a common ancestor, if there is one to be found, or whether it would even be important.

There are a few people on 23andme who are very proud of how many people they share some amount of DNA with. I wonder if they are the same kinds of people who love to just add names to their family trees without any idea of whether or how they are, indeed, related. One person who was tested has 47,000 people in her tree. She surely can’t possibly know much about most of them. Interestingly, even with that many names, she only had 39 confirmed matches.

On Genea-Musings the other day, Randy Seaver posted about doing Descendancy (Is that even a word?) research on each of his 3^rd great-grandparents, so he might be able to match up common ancestors with anyone who shows up as a 4^th cousin or less. Man, does that sound like a lot of work! It’s tough enough to try to get your 1^st cousins to tell you about their families. And finding people living today is, in many respects, more difficult than finding those who lived over a century ago.

If you have to do that kind of analyses to trace your history I have to ask what have you really achieved? You probably already know who many of your 3^rd great-grandparents are or you wouldn’t be able to do the Descendancy research. Randy admitted he had the names of his 32 3^rd great-grandparents. From a strictly academic view it sounds interesting but will it really add anything to the historical knowledge of Randy’s ancestral families. I will be watching with interest for his posts down the road to see what all he learned.

I persuaded a first cousin to have his Y-DNA tested as he is the only man I know who could link back genetically to our 2^nd great-grandfather who emigrated from Germany in the early 1800s. This grandfather is on my maternal side so my Y-DNA test won’t work. Autosomal DNA would be useless for the task. My cousin descends through all males. We have no other avenues right now to be able to trace that line as the man had a very common name, probably came over with a large group of other Germans and died quite young. He does not appear on many records; there are no documents that list any of his family members; and we also already know all of his descendants for a few generations. So far we have not had any matches that make sense which tells us that not enough people directly related to the man have been tested. We don’t really care how many cousins there are. We just want to learn about our German roots so if anyone out there is related to a sibling of our zweiten Urgroßvater or to his parents, then we might find out something important about where they originated.

To get back to my point, what is the fascination for knowing you have thousands of cousins out there, of 4^th rank or greater? (I cannot even get my head around what a 9^th cousin is!) Maybe for some people, finding some 1^st, 2^nd or 3^rd cousins helped them trace back some of their ancestors. That’s a good reason for DNA testing. But for 4^th or greater levels, you would have to track an awful lot of lines backward to find that one common ancestor. I doubt many of us have time for that.

I am more interested in my family’s history, not on how many relatives might be living today that share a grandparent that lived 200 or more years ago. I am willing to contact cousins that might be able to help but beyond the 3^rd level I suspect I am chasing shadows.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is the Editor of Relatively Speaking, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Genealogical Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.