for a time before asking its rector, Dr. Phineas D. Gurley, to officiate at his wedding and formally joining the church in the spring of 1862. In January 1862 Shepherd married Mary Grice Young, whom he knew from Fourth Presbyterian Church, where her father, William Probey Young, was an elder. Dr. Gurley performed the wedding ceremony at the Young family home on Ninth Street NW.84 Like his father before him, Shepherd gained social standing from his marriage, since the Youngs were well known in the community, and William Young was a decorated veteran of the War of 1812. As noted earlier, the Grice side of the family came from Philadelphia, where they had settled in the eighteenth century and fought in the War of the American Revolution.
Shepherd’s relationship with Dr. Gurley and New York Avenue Presbyterian Church provides possible insights into Shepherd’s religious as well as social views. New York Avenue was an “Old School” congregation, from the 1837 split in the national Presbyterian Church over theological and organizational issues. Both traditions were grounded in the Bible, but the Old School favored a rational doctrinal approach, whereas the “New School” was more open to religious experience expressed in the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening then sweeping the country. The New School was also committed to political reform, especially antislavery, while the Old School held that the church should not involve itself in political questions. Gurley stood squarely in the Old School Presbyterian understanding of Reformed theology.85 A theologian and student of Washington Presbyterianism has observed that slavery was the hidden agenda for the split in the Washington Presbyterian churches, although it was not usually discussed in those terms.86
Abolitionist sentiment was widespread among New School Presbyterians, while Old School Presbyterians ranged from southern defenders of slavery to northerners who deplored slavery but cautioned against the social and political disruption that abolition would bring. Many Old School churchgoers were not proslavery or politically reactionary, although they were in general more socially conservative than New Schoolers. Some Old School Presbyterians were supporters of the American Colonization Society, whose platform was transportation of freed slaves to Liberia and their colonization there. Dr. Gurley was a leading figure in the society and hosted its national meetings in 1861 and 1864. Gurley was also a strong Unionist who was considered a reconciling voice toward the South, paralleling the views of President Lincoln, who attended but was not a member of the church.87
Besides the row over the pastor’s actions at Fourth Presbyterian, Shepherd’s move from a New School to an Old School Presbyterian church may have been motivated by a desire to find a more socially conservative institution. Making the change had required leaving the long-standing church of his father, his own youth, his future wife and in-laws, and his siblings; only his future wife transferred with him. Gurley’s New York Avenue Church not only appealed to Shepherd’s conservative nature; Dr. Gurley also had the kind of active, virile personality to which Shepherd was drawn.
In the midst of the Civil War, young Alexander Shepherd was ready to take his place in the uncertain worlds of Washington business, politics, and society. An ambitious and rising businessman, he had developed a network of friends and associates not only in business, but in a variety of social, civic, and political organizations. His service in the National Rifles and his election to the Common Council demonstrated his commitment to the local and the national government. In spite of a limited education, he had demonstrated an early promise of high achievement, and the roads he had chosen lay open ahead of him.
Notes
1 Will of Thomas L. Shepherd, Charles County, Md., HBBH 313, August Term 1816, pp. 475–78; Estate of Thomas Shepherd, April Term 1817, Mary land Hall of Records, pp. 312–14; Estate of Thomas Shepherd, Accounts and Inventories, Thomas Shepherd, 1817, Charles County (Md.) Court house, pp. 312–14.
2Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill, 1986), p. 77.
3F. Edward Wright, Mary land Militia: War of 1812, 7 vols. (Silver Spring, Md., 1979–86), 5:37.
4Photocopy of typescript and unsigned note to Grant Shepherd (son of Alexander Shepherd), both apparently written by his mother, Mary Grice Shepherd, n.d., courtesy of Shepherd grand daughter Mary Wagner Woods.
5Townley Robey Inventory, Inventories 1844–1846, Townley Robey Will, December Term 1844, Charles County (Md.) Court house.
6National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), Sept. 25, 1837.
7U.S. Census, 1840 Population Schedules, District of Columbia, microfilm roll 11, microcopy T-5, p. 33, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C., Recorder of Deeds, Liber WB, folio no. 88/1841. William Tindall, long-time aide to Alexander Robey Shepherd, wrote that Shepherd’s father manumitted “a number of slaves” before the Civil War for whom he provided “in a large measure, as they resorted to him in every exigency of privation or disaster and were never refused” (William Tindall, “A Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 14 [1911]:50).
8Last Will and Testament, Alexander Shepherd, Office of Register of Wills, 1845, Probate Clerk’s Office, Washington, D.C.
9National Intelligencer, July 15, 1845; for information on Shepherd’s purchase of the farm in Washington County and subsequent residence there, see Robert Isherwood to Alexander Shepherd, Dec. 20, 1842, Washington, D.C. Recorder of Deeds, Liber WB, Folio #99/1843); Robert Tweedy to Alexander Shepherd, Jan. 16, 1844, D.C. Recorder of Deeds, Liber WB, Folio #107/1844.
10 Will of Alexander Shepherd, dated Apr. 28, 1845, D.C. Recorder of Wills, Washington, D.C., Office of the Probate Clerk; the estimated current value of the advance to Alexander is from measuringworth.com, a nonprofit website providing U.S. currency equivalents from 1776 to the present.
11National Intelligencer, June 6, 1845.
12U.S. Census, 1820, District of Columbia, microcopy no. 33, reel 5, Washingtoniana Room, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C.
13Robert Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction: Race and Radicalism (Cambridge, 2011), p. 2.
14Ibid.
15Kenneth Bowling, The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea and Location of the American Capital (Fairfax, Va., 1991), pp. 127–60.
16Harrison, Washington during Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 3; Scott W. Berg, Grand Avenues: The Story of the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D. C. (New York, 2007), pp. 78–80.
17Berg, Grand Avenues, pp. 97–100.
18Bowling, Creation of Washington, D.C., p. 12.
19Tindall, “A Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd, pp. 49–50.
20This information is from a biographical fragment from Mary Grice Shepherd, narrated in Mexico in the 1880s and dictated to Fred Martin, based on information provided by Shepherd. Mrs. Shepherd noted, “In earlier years I had driven past the home which Mr. Shepherd pointed out as his birthplace, a statement his mother confirmed” (copy courtesy of Shepherd grand daughter Mary Wagner Woods). Identifying the location of Shepherd’s birthplace has generated controversy, which is all the more surprising since it was misidentified by no less an authority than Dr. William Tindall, author of A Standard History of the City of Washington (Knoxville, Tenn., 1914) and “A Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” as well as personal secretary to Governor Shepherd and his successors. Tindall named another birth location in southwest Washington, for which there is no land deed showing it was owned by Shepherd’s father. Much later, Tindall identified his source for the incorrect birthplace address as Thomas Shepherd, Alexander Shepherd’s somewhat unreliable younger brother (Evening Star [Washington, D.C.], May 8, 1919).
21Tindall, “Sketch of Alexander Robey Shepherd,” p. 50.
22Ibid.
23Typescript