Musings from the Museum #6

We Don’t Always Know the Answers

-Colin E Baslington

As part of my helping at the Society I undertook to act as a Steward showing visitors round the Museum and some years ago a request came from a lady who wished to visit with her son. This was to be a private visit for two of them so I met the lady and her son and started showing them around. The usual questions flowed and it soon became apparent the questions were going in one direction namely, ‘Do you have any information on Baron Shepherd of Spalding? To which I had to answer ‘not that I’m aware’. The visit continued and both seemed quite happy with their visit and thanked me for my assistance.

Being the person at the Society such genealogical questions usually end up with I set about researching Baron Shepherd of Spalding, and yes, there was such a person and still is.

The first Baron, George Robert Shepherd, was born in Spalding in 1881 the son of a local tailor and shop keeper. He moved away as a young man and became interested in politics, and married a lady of similar persuasion. She had many connections and they both finished up in the south of the country with George becoming a senior member of the Labour Party. He was part of the group responsible for setting up the coalition government during WW2 and, it was for his work with this group he received his title.

Since that time I have had the privilege in corresponding with the current title holder, who now lives abroad, and producing a family tree for him.

A year or so ago, the local Civic Society arranged for a Blue Plaque to be  erected on the premises he lived in as a boy and young man with an unveiling of the plaque one Saturday morning.

Should you wish to research your family in Lincolnshire, the Society has a number of research tools e.g. digitised decennial Census returns for the county including name indexes for each census year. These are of high quality and very easy to read.