Biography of  Z.W. Shepherd, M.D., pages 928 / 929.  History of De Kalb 
County, Indiana.  Inter-State Publishing Company, Chicago, 1885.

Z.W. Shepherd, M.D., is a native of Wayne county, Ohio, born May 17, 1838, a 
son of Rev. Robert C. and Catharine (Jewell) Shepherd, his father a native 
of Virginia, born April 28, 1808, and his mother of Pennsylvania, born March 
8, 1813.  Robert C. Shepherd was by trade a shoemaker, and followed that 
vocation for sixty years, and fifty years of this time preached on Sunday.  
He is a self-made and self-educated man, and is well posted on all the 
public affairs of the country.  A strong anti-slavery man, he has helped 
many a poor negro to escape from the land of bondage across the borders of 
the United States to Canada.  His wife died in 1870.  He is still living in 
Ohio.  But three of their seven children are living.  Z.W. Shepherd 
received a fair education in his early life, never attending any 
institution above the common district school.  He also learned the 
shoemaker’s trade, his father thinking every boy should have a trade.  
When seventeen years of age he commenced teaching school and taught four 
years, during which time he learned to read and speak the German language 
fluently, and studied higher mathematics without a teacher.  In the summer 
of 1858 (July 4), when twenty years old, he preached his first sermon in 
the  Disciples church, and since then has preached in different localities, 
a part of the time being engaged as a evangelist.  During his ministerial 
life he studied and became familiar with Greek and Latin, especially New 
Testament Greek.  He commenced reading medicine in 1866 with I.J. Whitfield, 
of Big Rapids, Mich., and in the winter of 1876-’77 graduated from the 
Hahnneman Medical College, of Chicago, Ill. He commenced the practice of 
his profession in 1868 in Michigan, and subsequently went to Scranton, Pa., 
and practiced under the supervision of Dr. A.J. Clark.  In the fall of 1873 
he located in Quincy, Mich., and practiced till the fall of 1876.  In July, 
1877, after his graduation, he located in Waterloo, where he has built up a 
good practice.  Dr. Shepherd was married when twenty-two years of age to 
Mary Ann, daughter of Rev. Stephen H. Heath (a Baptist clergyman) and 
Catherine (Everett) Heath, of Trumbull County, Ohio.  They have four 
children living. One (the youngest) died in 1882.  Mrs. Kate A. Kircher, 
Principle of the musical department of the American Normal college, 
Logansport, Ind.; Mellie M., wife of H. L. Hutson, Deputy Clerk of Steuben 
County, Ind.; Robert P. and William E.  Politically Dr. Shepherd is an 
Independent Republican and Prohibitionist.

Submitted by:
Arlene Goodwin
Auburn, Indiana
Agoodwin@ctlnet.com