CHARLES UPHAM SHEPARD. 



1804-1886. 



CHARLES UPHAM SHEPARD was born at Little Compton, a 

 town in the southeastern corner of Rhode Island, June 29, 

 1804. His father was the Rev. Mase Shepard, the pastor for 

 thirty-four years of the Congregational Church of that place. 

 His mother, Deborah Haskins, came from a highly intelligent 

 Boston family, from which sprang Ralph Waldo Emerson and 

 other well-known men. It was in the little country home 

 that the love of the beautiful, which so marked the later char- 

 acter of the son, was developed. Of his father he has written : 

 " His manners were attractive and his entire address dignified. 

 In particular, his sense of the proprieties of clerical deport- 

 ment and appearance was extremely nice. It comprehended all 

 the appointments about his home. My father greatly enjoyed 

 social intercourse, and in turn made himself very agreeable to 

 others. There was an unfailing cheerfulness in his conversa- 

 tion, attended by a remarkable abstention from every approach 

 even to undue criticism or detraction. This praiseworthy trait 

 was equally shared by my mother." Thus were implanted in 

 the boy those traits which endeared him to all and made him 

 not only an agreeable associate, but an example to others. 



He was fitted for college in the Providence Grammar 

 School and entered Brown University in 1820, but left the 

 following year to join the sophomore class of the new college 

 which opened then at Amherst, Mass. He was graduated in 

 due course in the class of 1824. In a graphic sketch of Am- 

 herst College as it was during his student days, contributed to 

 Prof. Tyler's History, Prof. Shepard has said : 



" I remember that I was the youngest of my class. Most 

 of my fellows were mature youths who did not appear to me 

 youths at all seniors in character and manlike in purpose, 

 with an air which seemed to tell of years of yearning for the 



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