Rev. Thomas Shephard

Thomas Shepard III (3 July 1658 - 8 June 1685), was born in Charlestown, MA. He graduated from Harvard College in 1676, and was ordained as pastor at the church in Charlestown. Shepard's career was cut short by his early death, which Cotton Mather describes as arising from an indisposition of the bowels.

Notes

• See http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ThomasShepardLibrary for a catalog of his books.
• In his will, Thomas Shepard II left to "my son Thomas my whole library, both printed books & writings, which though the property of my son, shall be also, occasionally, for the use of my wife, & daughters, as they may need, and desire the perusal thereof." His inventory lists "his Library", also valued at £100.
• Thomas Shepard III's unexpectedly early death meant that he died without a will. His widow Mary (née Anderson) later married Rev. Samuel Hayman. Hayman died 1712; his will doesn’t mention a library, and there is no inventory. Mary died 1717; her will also doesn’t mention a library, and there is no inventory. Thomas and Mary had one surviving child, a daughter Anne who married Col. Henry Smith, son of William "Tangier" Smith, St. George's Manor, Setauket, Long Island.
• In his Magnalia Christi Americana (Volume II, p. 124 of the 1820 edition), Cotton Mather writes of Thomas Shepard III: "... his piety was accompanied with proportionable industry, wherein he devoured books even to a degree of learned gluttony; insomuch, that if he might have changed his name, it must have been Bibliander. ... he had hardly left a book of consequence … in his library (shall I now call it, or his laboratory) which he had not so perused as to leave with it an inserted paper, a brief idea of the whole book, with memorandums of more notable passages occurring in it, written in his own diligent and so enriching hand."

Links

• http://www.librarything.com/profile/ThomasShepardLibrary