Representative William Shepard

William Shepard (December 1, 1737 [O.S. November 20, 1737] – November 16, 1817) was a United States Representative from Massachusetts, a long-serving militia and Continental Army officer, and a prominent figure in the political and civic life of his native town of Westfield in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Born in Westfield, he attended the common schools and engaged in agricultural pursuits from an early age, a vocation he would return to throughout his life. As a young man he served for six years in the French and Indian Wars, gaining military experience that would shape his later career during the American Revolution and in the state militia.

By the eve of the American Revolution, Shepard had emerged as a local leader in Westfield. In 1774 he was a member of the town’s committee of correspondence, participating in the network of colonial resistance that coordinated opposition to British policies. In April 1775 he was serving as a lieutenant colonel of Minutemen under Colonel Timothy Danielson, placing him among the first organized provincial forces responding to the outbreak of hostilities. He entered the Continental Army in May 1775 as a lieutenant colonel and, on October 6, 1776, was commissioned colonel of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment. Shepard served throughout the Revolutionary War, including the harsh winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where he commanded the 4th Regiment of Massachusetts Continentals under the overall command of General John Glover. His name is commemorated on stone monuments at Valley Forge alongside those of his comrades. Many letters between Shepard and leading figures of the era—including General George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, General Henry Knox, and other prominent founders—attest to his active role in the military and political affairs of the Revolution.

Following the war, Shepard returned to Westfield, where he combined farming with public service. He was a selectman of Westfield from 1784 to 1787, participating in the administration of local affairs at a time of economic distress for many farmers and veterans. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1785 and 1786, representing his community in the state legislature as tensions mounted over debt, taxation, and economic policy. During these years, many local farmers and former soldiers, burdened by what they regarded as unfairly levied taxes and threatened with debtors’ prison, began to rebel against the state government in Boston.

In this volatile context Shepard, by then a major general in the Massachusetts state militia, played a decisive and controversial role in what became known as Shays’ Rebellion. In 1786 he was called to duty to command the Fourth Division of the Massachusetts militia and was charged with defending the federal arsenal at Springfield. When forces led by Daniel Shays and other insurgent leaders advanced on the Springfield Armory in January 1787, Shepard ordered the defenders to fire cannon loaded with anti-personnel grape shot at “waist height” into the attacking ranks. Two of the insurgents were mortally wounded, and the rebel force was compelled to disperse. Shepard remained in constant communication with Governor James Bowdoin, as well as with Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and General Benjamin Lincoln, who marched from Boston in a blizzard shortly after the Springfield engagement to pursue Shays and his men into the surrounding towns. Although Shepard expressed deep regret at the shedding of blood in his messages to the governor, the action earned him a lasting reputation among some contemporaries as the “murderer of brethren.” Local anger ran so high that neighbors mutilated his horses, gouging out their eyes, an episode that reportedly horrified him.

Shepard’s prominence in state affairs continued in the 1790s. He served as a member of the Governor’s Council of Massachusetts from 1792 to 1796, advising the chief executive on a range of public matters. In 1796 he was appointed to treat with the Penobscot Indians, and in 1797 he was similarly appointed to negotiate with the Six Nations, reflecting the trust placed in him by state authorities in dealing with Native American affairs and frontier concerns. During this period he also sought federal office, running unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts’s 2nd congressional district (then including the Hampshire County seat) in 1792 and 1794.

Shepard was elected as a member of the Federalist Party to the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Congresses, representing Massachusetts’s 2nd congressional district from March 4, 1797, to March 3, 1803. His three terms in the House of Representatives coincided with a formative period in the early republic, encompassing the later years of the administration of John Adams and the beginning of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. As a Federalist representative, he participated in the legislative process during debates over foreign policy, fiscal measures, and the balance of power between the federal government and the states, representing the interests of his Massachusetts constituents in a time of intense partisan division and evolving national institutions.

After leaving Congress in 1803, Shepard retired from national public life and returned to Westfield, where he resumed his agricultural pursuits. Despite his long military service, his role in suppressing Shays’ Rebellion, and his years in state and federal office, he spent his final years in relatively modest circumstances and died in Westfield on November 16, 1817, essentially penniless. He was interred in the Mechanic Street Cemetery in Westfield, where his grave marks the resting place of one of the town’s most prominent Revolutionary-era figures.

Shepard’s memory has been preserved in various ways in his hometown and beyond. A statue of him, sculpted by Augustus Lukeman, stands in Westfield as a public monument to his service. Each year on Patriots’ Day, a ceremony is held in Westfield in which his descendants, along with those of four other founding families of the town, join city and state officials, members of the armed forces, clergy, local schoolchildren, and residents in offering prayers and remembrance of the town’s history and its role in the founding of the nation. He has also been credited in a midwestern newspaper account from about 1928 with a statement reflecting his concern for civic virtue and social stability: “Hang On! If the motherhood of America ever lets go, it will serve us right if America turns to the saloon or its equivalent. But the motherhood of America will not let go.”