Thomas Shepard, 1605-1649
Thomas Shepard (November 5, 1605 - August 25, 1649) was an American Puritan minister and a significant figure in early colonial New England.
Shepard was born on November 5, 1605 in Towcester, Northamptonshire as the son of William Shepard. His devout mother died when he was four and he lived a difficult life under his stepmother. His father died when he reached ten, at which point he lived with his grandparents and later an older brother, whom he held in high and grateful regard. A schoolmaster ignited in him a scholarly interest, which ultimately led to entry into Emmanuel College in Cambridge University at the age of 15. He accounts in his autobiography that he lived a dissatisfied and dissolute life, which led him to pray out in a nearby field, at which point he underwent the beginnings of a conversion experience.
In 1627, he became assistant schoolmaster at Earls Colne Grammar School in Earls Colne, Essex. He became a minister whose sermons and Puritan ways drew the ire of church officials, and he was forbidden to preach. Following the death of his eldest son, he left England in 1635 with wife and younger son on a difficult voyage for Massachusetts in colonial America, where he landed on the ship Defence at Boston on October 3, 1635. Once there, he became minister of one of the leading churches in the colonies - the First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also of Harvard University, effectively replacing Thomas Hooker as preacher at Cambridge. From 1637 to 1638, during the Antinomian Controversy, he sat with the other colonial ministers during both the civil and church trials of Anne Hutchinson, and was a very vocal critic of hers during the latter. His wife died shortly after his arrival in New England, as did his second wife and other children, though he framed these experiences into the perspective of his theology.
On August 25, 1649, Shepard died of complications due to tonsillitis in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Family[]
Shepard married first to Margaret Fowteville. She died on February 1, 1636. The two had a son.
Shepard married second to Joanna Hooker in 1638, in the "year after those wars in the country." She died in 1646.
- Samuel Shepard - m. Dorothy Flint
- John Shepard - m. Rebecca Putnam
- John Shepard - infant.
Shepard married third to Margaret Borodale on September 8, 1647.
- Jeremiah Shepard