Daniel Shepherd was the original settler of the land that would become the city of Bishopsgate.
Overview
| “ | …I came across what must surely be that Mound which occasioned so much superstitious Fear among the Savages…. I felt no Evidence of there being any Malignancy here, and purposed to build here when Necessity demands it…. | ” |
| — Daniel Shepherd's Journal, October 18, 1674 | ||
An English settler, Daniel Shepherd was an unsuperstitious man who, for reasons unknown, left his homeland to found the settlement that would become Bishopsgate. Relations between Shepherd' people and the natives were highly cordial, though Shepherd's journal entries indicate a certain condescension he felt toward them, to the point that he intended to disregard their warnings regarding the Mounds and that which lay beneath them. His plans would never come to pass, however, for he died of fever in early 1675.
He was survived by at least one child, for his granddaughter Elizabeth Shepherd would marry James Teesdale two decades later, and a great-grandson, Elizabeth's nephew Joel Shepherd, would go on to write on the subject of his family's and Bishopsgate's history.
