My grandfather John Ernest Llewellyn Poulson was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in one of a collection of small towns along the River Aire. There was some light industry (potteries, glass works), coal mining, lots of small farms, breweries, and mariners or watermen moving goods along the Aire & Calder canals, eventually through Goole, out to the Humber and the North Sea. Pretty much all those ways of earning a living were represented in his parents’ families. His Dad, The Wastrel, was born in Knottingley and his Mum, Mary Ann Shepherd, in Ferrybridge. Several generations of large Shepherd families in Ferrybridge, Knottingley, Castleford and Brotherton meant that your publican, inn keeper, blacksmith, horse dealer, grocer, confectioner, waterman, school board member, etc. had a good chance of being a relative.
The bow-tie chart will serve as a reminder of where the Shepherds fit, but the sheer spread of the family is hard to grasp. Starting with the Samuel Shepherd born in Brotherton in 1803, who had 8 children, those 8 provided 45 grandchildren. The oldest of Samuel’s kids (also a Samuel) provided 9 of those grandchildren who in turn contributed 45 great-grandchildren. John Henry Shepherd (my 2nd great grandfather), provided 8 grandchildren, but (slacker!) only managed to add 16 great grandchildren!
Gamps left Yorkshire behind
My grandfather left Yorkshire behind after his family disintegrated (he and one sister went to live in Portsmouth with their paternal Aunt Mary). The few ties that survived were with his five sisters and his grandfather (the Wastrel’s father, Edwin Llewellyn Poulson), but I want to put together as much as I can of the Shepherd family’s story – there are some very interesting characters and lots of roots, even though so much of Gamps’ early life is a mystery – my father said he never talked about it.
Grandaddy x 5
Samuel Shepherd (1724-1789) was a carpenter’s son from Sowerby Bridge, Yorkshire who had moved to South Kirkby by the time he married Susanna Thorp (1733 -1820 ) a laborer’s daughter from Brotherton. I don’t know what led to the couple settling in Brotherton, but all their children were born there, including my 4th great grandfather William Shepherd (1771-1839). William’s son Samuel became a coal merchant, farmer and ship owner, moving to Ferrybridge shortly after marriage (Ann was from nearby Ledsham) where they worked on taking over the town.
Samuel & Ann – 3rd great grandparents
I tip my hat to Ann Austerberry, Samuel’s wife, who delivered eight children between 1829 and 1854 (age 20 to 48!) – six boys and two girls. Her oldest child had a son almost the same age as her youngest, Arthur. In the 1871 census she had two agricultural laborers on the farm – her 17 year old son and a 16 year old grandson (Ambrose). Ambrose Shepherd (the 1829 Samuel’s oldest son) was not content to hang around on the farm or in Ferrybridge – but more on his adventures below.
2nd great grandparents/aunts/uncles
Running down the occupations of the 1803 Samuel’s sons, Samuel was first a waterman and then innkeeper of the George & Dragon Inn in Castleford. George was a blacksmith and then publican at the Carlton Hotel, Castleford. John Henry was a laborer, horse dealer, publican/inn keeper/licensed victualler at the Greyhound, Red Lion Inn, and Golden Lion (not all at once). One census he was a farmer. We won’t count the few months he was a Leeds Police Constable in 1865 – he had just turned 21 and perhaps wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He resigned, so I have to assume he realized this line of work wasn’t for him.
Charles was a grocer on High Street and later Pontefract Road, Ferrybridge. He died very young (43) and his widow Caroline took over with help from her two sons, George William and Charles. I didn’t initially search for more information on Charles’ death (so many died young at that time), but later found this newspaper account of a horrible work accident. Charles’ son George William ended up running the shop when Caroline retired (his brother Charles became a horse dealer and cigar merchant) but George William’s children didn’t carry on the business.
William Frederick was a cartman (the 19th century equivalent of a truck driver), making his home and starting his own carting business in Newcastle-on-Tyne. He contributed 9 great grandchildren. Then there was the youngest, Arthur, whose life included a short stint as a police constable, but also various brushes with the other side of the legal system.
I have less information about the two daughters, but the oldest, Mary Ann, married a glass bottle manufacturer and moved to Newcastle-on-Tyne (7 great grandchildren). Her son George Warren provided an out-of-town address for her niece when Emily married The Wastrel (my great grandfather). Samuel & Ann’s younger daughter, Emma, died at age 23.
Everyone wants a drink
One occupation stands out for its frequency – inn keeper, licensed victualler, or publican, with many of the Shepherds trying it at various times. The hazards of running a pub or tavern included having to turn away customers who were too drunk – who didn’t always go quietly – or having your customers steal from you as in the 1870 story about a stolen coat. Four months with hard labor seems like a pretty stiff sentence (although not atypical from other stories around this time). Two years later, there’s a story about another common occurrence – drunk customer will not leave. Samuel at least didn’t get assaulted in the process of tossing out Mr. Clarkson (contrast with the story below about Louisa Shepherd being assaulted by Arthur Shepherd).
Funnily enough, it was a woman marrying into the Shepherd family who really knew her way around a pub. John Henry Shepherd’s wife Ann died in January1889; by June he was married again to a widow, Susannah. The two of them ran the Red Lion Inn in Ferrybridge while his oldest unmarried daughter took care of the younger children and a couple of boarders back at his house. At first I thought uncharitably he’d married rather quickly, but in sorting out Susannah’s history, she seemed tailor made for the job of innkeeper’s wife. She had grown up in an inn, run by her father, Phineas Musgrave: The Valiant Soldier in Beverly, Yorkshire. She was a barmaid there in her teens, then married a publican and moved to Hull where they ran the Tiger Inn and Eagle Hotel. They took over The Valiant Soldier and Cattle Market Inn when her father retired in 1883, but her husband died in 1886. She briefly operated the inns herself, transferring them three years later when she married John Henry and moved to Ferrybridge.
Tales of 2nd great granduncle Arthur
Samuel & Ann’s youngest, Arthur Shepherd, did a short stint helping his parents on the farm, got married to a young woman from a town 10 miles away, and three months later was sworn as a police constable with the West Riding Constabulary (December 1879). He was assigned to Churwell, on the outskirts of Leeds. Fortunately (or unfortunately – it must have been extremely scary) there is a newspaper account of one of Arthur’s arrests after being on the force for about 18 months. He had advanced from grade 3 to 1 quickly and the case described in this newspaper article resulted in an award of “The Class of Merit”. A drunk man returned home and started yelling at and assaulting his wife. Her son went for the police and PC Shepherd arrived and seemed to calm the man down. When PC Shepherd left, he waited outside the door, going back in when the assault continued. He fought with the drunk man for 10 minutes and in the process was stabbed. Arthur was appointed acting sergeant the following August, but then in November 1883 was “Dismissed”. No specifics in the records, but for other officers, records included “Resigned” or “Resigned” (compulsorily, in consequence of his previous character found to have been unsatisfactory), or “Dismissed” – found to have been dismissed Salford Police. I have to assume there was some bad behavior on Arthur’s part, as opposed to illness or injury.
Barely 8 months after leaving the police force, ex-constable Shepherd is a no-show at a court hearing where he was charged with assaulting another police officer. He was fined £2 7s 6d (about £300 in 2021 terms). He had been a butcher prior to joining the police, and apparently returned to that work, in Castleford. He testified in a case about a horse thief in June 1885 and the newspaper article described him as a butcher. In Augst he was convicted of assault – of his nephew’s wife, Louisa – and faces a fine or two weeks in jail. Ambrose & Louisa Shepherd were operating an inn on Wheldon Road, Castleford. Not sure why that didn’t merit a newspaper story, but I’d guess Arthur was drunk and told to leave – clearly things were not going well for Arthur.
By the 1891 census Arthur was a “general dealer” – in what, who knows? In May 1894 there’s a newspaper report about Arthur helping the police catch a horse thief – he was by then a horse and cattle dealer and had been offered a horse for such a low price he suspected it was stolen and contacted the police. The end of May brings one more report of such a bizarre case of animal cruelty I can only imagine Arthur was drunk or had some sort of mental health crisis – he bit off a cat’s tail! No idea if he paid the fine or did a month in jail. Arthur became a cattle dealer (1901 census) and a horse dealer with his son Harold (1911 census) with some connections to his older brother John Henry – he testifies to hearing a verbal contract in a horse sale John Henry made in 1908 and was described as his brother’s agent. After John Henry died in 1919, Arthur was the last surviving child of Samuel & Ann’s original brood.
Ambrose wanted to be a gentleman
One of the interesting characters from Samuel & Ann’s collection of grandchildren was Ambrose Shepherd. He caught my attention when I saw his 1911 census form – unlike earlier censuses, in 1911 we see the form as the person being tallied filled it out. And we see notes or corrections made by someone else, presumably the census worker who collected it. At age 56, Ambrose had listed his occupation as gentleman and Louisa’s as lady. The correction, in red pen, said “Turf Commn agent”. This might not seem significant to anyone not aware of just how class conscious England was then (still is, but it’s less so). When you look at parish registers at the time, a man’s occupation is filled out in the column headed “Quality, Trade, or Profession”. Doing work was so lower class! In the column for Ambrose’s baptism, his father’s trade was “waterman”. If I look in Westminster baptisms at the same time, I can see “Honorable” or “Esquire” or “Marquis of Carmarthen” or “gentleman” mixed in with wheelwright, servant, groom, plumber, etc.. My take on Ambrose’s ambition was that he would work as hard as he could so he could appear not to have to work at all. Nonsensical as I think the class system is/was, I have to admire what Ambrose was able to accomplish.
Love, baby, marriage…
Ambrose started out (after working on his grandparents’ farm in his mid-teens) as a waterman – probably operating a passenger ferry – in Stockton-on-Tees. I don’t know when he moved from Ferrybridge, but it was no later than June 1873 (he turned 18 that February). He met a servant, Louisa Barr, perhaps as a passenger on his ferry? One thing led to another and she had their first child in March 1874. Mary Elizabeth Shepherd Barr was baptized April 5th 1874 in Thornaby (on the Yorkshire side of the Tees, opposite Stockton) by the same vicar who on May 25th married Ambrose & Louisa! Hasty marriages were very common at the time (or at least in my family tree they were), but I can’t explain the wait in Ambrose & Louisa’s situation. Louisa’s brother and sister (Brian and Sarah Barr) were the witnesses – no indication anyone from Ambrose’s family was there. I don’t understand this 19th century game of names – Mary Elizabeth used her mother’s surname (all the other children used Shepherd) and when she married 20 years later, Ambrose was there as a witness, but she left the space for her father’s name blank. If there was doubt about him being her father, why would she have used the Shepherd middle name?
Innkeepers
But back to Ambrose and Louisa. They returned to Castleford by 1876 (where their next child, Ada, was born) and became inn keepers at the Bath Inn. One of Ambrose’s sisters (Emma) married an innkeeper, and they operated The Guinea Vaults in nearby Wakefield. In 1881, another sister (Ada) was working there as a barmaid and one of Louisa’s sisters (Sarah) as a servant. Working in a pub is apparently a good way to meet people because in June 1881 Sarah was married and in March 1882 so does Ada. Ambrose and Ada sign the register at Sarah’s wedding, so I assume the families were close. And it didn’t take long for Sarah’s new husband to switch from being a coal loader to running a pub in Castleford.
Louisa’s family had suffered a triple tragedy in 1866 (Louisa was 11) when her father and two sisters died in a cholera outbreak. It appears older brother Brian acted as a father figure for a while, but his life became complicated after he was dismissed from the Leeds police force. One of Louisa’s sisters appeared to have invented a new identity for herself, and it may be that 5 years in the North Yorkshire asylum explains this. She married a piano tuner and listed her deceased father’s occupation as “Music Professor” – Mark Barr was a laborer. Brian and his wife Lydia are the two witnesses, so I don’t think this is the wrong person. I can imagine that for Louisa, making a new life with Ambrose held a strong appeal.
Supplementing his income
Ambrose was innkeeper at the Garden House Inn and had started branching out in 1894 when he organized a pigeon sweep. He went on to organize rabbit coursing and other events – basically anything people could bet on. I had to do a bit of reading to understand exactly what these events were, and was taken aback when I realized that it wasn’t pigeon and rabbit races. Think clay pigeon shooting with live pigeons and dog racing where the rabbit isn’t mechanical but live – all now banned, I hope. A few years earlier, in 1891, he entered a horse – which I assume he owned – in a race in Doncaster. It came in third. There were many more newspaper stats pages about race results with a variety of different horses.
I needed to understand what a turf commission agent was or did. At a time when interest in racing (horses & dogs) and betting was very high, and off-track betting was illegal, enterprising people stepped in to “help” their customers and created a way of making a living. In addition to a great interest in racing and betting, this “job” was helped by well-intentioned but misguided gambling legislation. An 1845 Gaming Act made wagers unenforceable in court (which then led to people trying to avoid paying up). A lovely court case from 1885 – not about Ambrose -made it clear that while a wager couldn’t be enforced, if a client hires an agent to do something, then the agent-client agreement is enforceable. A turf commission agent tried to avoid paying his client the winnings the agent had collected at the track. The court said a race track wager could have gone unpaid, but as the agent did get the cash, he had to hand it over. I suspect there were many shady dealings in this line of work. A 1853 Betting Act made using any property for betting or gaming illegal and at least once Ambrose fell foul of that law. So you could do the work but not an a house or place of business! Ambrose had to sue several times to collect what he was owed – once from a magistrate who didn’t pay up (the judge ruled in Ambrose’s favor) and another time from a fellow agent who had fallen on hard times but was 3 years late in paying Ambrose. They worked out a settlement.
Retired, but not really
Ambrose & Louisa moved to Blackpool and he “retired” as a publican but being a turf commission agent became something like a full time occupation (judging by all the newspaper ads for his services). He also invested money in buying property back in Castleford. Ambrose wanted to be part of Blackpool “society” and it appears he was able to accomplish that too. There were several articles in a local newspaper that gave a clue to his new identity as an important man. One was about a charity ball in 1907 – it’s full of suffocating detail about the women’s dresses, but Mrs. Ambrose Bar as well as their two daughters, then 18 and 19 are covered. In 1908, “The Shepherd-Parkinson Wedding” gets a long article. Ambrose’s son Samuel was marrying the daughter of a former Mayor of Blackpool. “Both these young folks are very well known and have a wide circle of friends…” In 1912, there was another write-up for Ambrose’s youngest daughter’s wedding.
Losses
The family was relatively untouched by World War I losses, I think just an accident of people’s ages. Ambrose & Louisa’s oldest daughter died in 1918 and his uncle John Henry Shepherd in 1919. The 20s were a tough decade for Ambrose. Louisa died in 1928 and Ambrose’s only son, Sam, lost his wife in 1929. In addition to the above, his grandson, oldest daughter Mary Elizabeth Shepherd’s oldest son, was electrocuted in a work accident (working for his brother Fred) in 1924.
Ambrose’s sister Ada suffered through two heart-rending deaths of children. Her oldest son George was killed, age 16, in a mine accident in 1899 when stone fell on the cart he was driving. That day, her mother had also died, so both were buried two days later on June 24, 1899 in Castleford.
A 1928 work accident (with the “whizzer”) killed Samuel Shepherd Hodgson, her second son. Her third son, Frank Herbert, took his older brother’s place, both at the chemical works and as sub-postmaster in Castleford. Ada died in 1929, so didn’t live to see a massive explosion on July 4th 1930, which killed 13 people, including Frank, and destroyed hundreds of homes in Castleford. You can read details here, & here, and the inquest conclusion – that it was an accident, not negligence. Uncle Ambrose was among many who contributed to a fund to aid those who lost homes and everything they owned.
Ambrose’s only son, Sam, died two years before his father, but Sam’s two sons, a doctor and a solicitor were well provided for. Sam left them £52,732 in 1941 which is about £2.73 million in 2021 terms. Uncle William Frederick (the cartman in Newcastle) died in 1928, and the remaining uncle, Arthur, probably wasn’t welcome (after assaulting Louisa?) but he died in 1930, the last of 1803 Samuel’s children.
Ambrose died in 1943, age 88. Other than stories about races or property disputes (he and a neighbor were in court over some breakwaters Ambrose had erected on riverfront land to prevent erosion) there’s nothing to suggest how he spent his final years. His youngest grandchild turned 21 in 1939 and those who had families all had smaller ones, so there wasn’t a brood of great grandchildren to spoil. He had a couple of grandchildren named after him – Ambrose Shepherd Burrows, Ambrose Shepherd Widdop, Ambrose Haslam and Ambrose Frederick Shepherd. Ambrose had come a very long way from where his waterman & publican father started in Castleford. His will left just over £102,000 – over £4.78 million in 2021 terms. You have to hope it all made him a happy man.