Elliott Shepard
Born: July 25, 1833
Died: March 24, 1893
Married: Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt (1845-1924)
Children: 5 daughters, 1 son
Colonel Elliott Fitch Shepard (variously spelled Eliot or Elliot; the spelling used here was taken from his obituary in the New York Times) was a colonel in the Union army in the Civil War, and son-in-law of [H. Vanderbilt]. He was at various times a lawyer, and editor of The Mail and Express. When the First Presbyterian Church of Saranac Lake was being built, Shepard assumed the $900 church debt, paid for a manse, built a stable — later remodeled for the congregation's use and named Gurley Hall, after Reverend Alvin B. Gurley — and donated the church bell.
Shepard Avenue is named for him. "When a man curing here named Shepard built a home for the minister out of appreciation and respect, they named a street 'Shepard' for him." 1 One speculation is that the "manse" and the "home for the minister" that the quotations above refer to was the house at 24 Front Street, labeled on a circa 1911 or later map as "Parsonage." Until more recent years, the Presbyterians provided the house at 41 Church Street, now in use as offices for a real estate company, as a parsonage. Both the Episcopal and Methodist churches had early houses for their ministers, both of which are still in use for that purpose.
"Streetscapes," a column in the New York Times on October 26, 2014, discusses the Mail & Express Building, Shepard's skyscraper in Manhattan, designed by the firm of Carrere & Hastings. Shepard was such an avid Presbyterian that he bought control of the Fifth Avenue stage line to stop it from running on Sunday and violating the Sabbath.
See Wikipedia, [Fitch Shepard]
- Footnotes
1. "Smoke gets in your eyes," Adirondack Daily Enterprise, March 26, 1971, reprinted November 27, 2004.