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Waters Upton churchyard MIs: SHEPHERD

In Loving Memory of
JANE,
THE BELOVED WIFE OF HUGH SHEPHERD
OF WATERS UPTON
who died
January [16th.] 1894,
Aged 86 Years.
“HER END WAS PEACE.”
Also of The Above
HUGH SHEPHERD,
Who died June 27th. 1897,
Aged [73] Years.
[Any additional wording illegible]

“Jane, Daughter of William Rider of Broxton, Farmer, and Elizabeth his Wife: Born in Broxton December. 8. 1802.” So reads the entry for Jane’s baptism in the register of Harthill, Cheshire, dated 9 January 1803. Was this Rider family related to the Shropshire Riders? If they were, I have not discovered the connection. Nor have I found Jane on the 1841 census. In 1851 however Jane, an annuitant aged 48, was living with her older siblings William (a farmer) and Sarah (housekeeper to William) at Rider’s Bank in the township of Brindley; all three were single. Jane was still residing at Brindley in January 1857, when she married Hugh Shepherd at nearby Acton.

Hugh Shepherd was younger than Jane by more than 20 years. A son of John Shepherd and Margaret Johnston, he was baptised on 31 July 1823 at New Deer in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. He was then enumerated there in 1841 (with his family) and 1851 (working as a farm servant for his maternal uncle Hugh Johnston, who farmed 100 acres). What brought Hugh to England, and into matrimony with Jane Rider, is not known. Employment was quite possibly a factor with regard to the former. The latter might be explained if the following possibilities can ever be proven: Hugh came to Shropshire to work and became acquainted with the Riders of Wellington, who were related to the Riders of Cheshire, and this led to introductions and eventually a marriage.

Hugh certainly worked in the parish of Wellington in Shropshire after his marriage. The censuses of 1861 and ’71 show him as a farm bailiff (for St John Chiverton Charlton), living with Jane in the Bailiff’s House at Apley Castle. By 1881 Hugh was a farmer on his own account, tending 100 acres at Admaston in the parish of Wrockwardine. Jane was now blind, and her age was recorded as 75. Ten years later she was said to be 80, and she and Hugh – still a farmer – were living at Waters Upton. It was there that she died in 1894, at the age of 91 rather than 86. She left effects valued at £126 10s 6d. If Hugh had not already retired by that time, he did so not long after Jane’s death. His own entry in the National Probate Calendar showed that he was a retired farmer of Cold Hatton when he passed away in 1897.

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