APPENDIX
PRESENTATION OF PORTRAIT
CHIEF JUSTICE JAMES EDWARD SHEPHERD
In the matter of the presentation of the portrait of former Chief Jus¬
tice James Edward Shepherd, deceased, by Charles Brantley Aycock.
Former Governor Aycock said:
May it please your Honors: The gracious privilege of presenting to this
Court, to be hung upon its walls, the portrait of Chief Justice James Edward
Shepherd has boon bestowed upon me by the particular kindness of his rela¬
tives. In making the presentation it is in accordance with custom, and
even without precedent entirely fit, that some account should be taken of
the life of the man whose likeness we are to see. Blackstone gives as his
idea! of a citizen one who “lives honestly, hurts nobody, and renders to every
man his due.” Tested by this definition. Chief Justice Shepherd was indeed
an ideal man. He possessed every one of the elements laid down by the great
law' writer to constitute such a character.
Judge Shepherd was born 22 July, 1845, at Mintonville in Nansemond
County, Virginia, near Suffolk, the home of his maternal ancestors, and died
7 February, 1910. His father was Thomas Shepherd, whose grandfather was
a member of the Virginia Convention when the Constitution of the United
States was adopted, and was a prominent man in that State. Judge Shep¬
herd’s mother, Ann Eliza Browne, was descended from Dr. Albridgton Browne,
a retired English Navy surgeon, who settled on the Nottoway River, Virginia.
She died when he was only two years of age, and his father died ten years
later, after which he lived with his older brother, who fell at Sharpsburg,
leading his company. His family being of large means before the war, he
had all the material advantages to make a happy childhood. In 1859 they
moved to Hertford County, N. C., and it was at the Murfreesboro Academy
that he received most of his schooling. When the Civil War came on, and
his brother had joined the army, James E. Shepherd, though only about
fifteen years of age, determined to serve the cause of the South, and attached
himself to the Sixteenth Virginia Regiment which was then stationed at
Norfolk, but being too small to carry a musket, he was made a "marker” for
the regiment, and after some months, on account of his youth, he obtained
hi, discharge to take up the study of telegraphy at Blackwater, Va„ and
having learned this art, he was again assigned to duty in the army as tele¬
graph operator under General Jones, in West Virginia, and afterwards at
the headquarters of Gen. John C. Breckenridge. His services throughout the
war _ were prompt, faithful, and efficient. There he learned, as can he learned
nowhere else, the deep reality of life.
The end of the war found him stationed at Wilson, N. C., where, on ac¬
count of _the loss of his estate through the war and the death of his brother,
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