Academics and special guests gathered at the Shepard House on Riverside Drive in Battle Creek to commemorate to unveiling of a Michigan Historical Marker honoring the city’s first schoolteacher on July 11.
The house was built by Warren Shepard who left his hometown of Aurora, N.Y. in the early 1830s and settled in Battle Creek after being asked to serve as an educator in the city’s first school, a one-room schoolhouse. After about a year of teaching, he began a career as a farmer and brick maker, purchasing 120 acres of land near Territorial Road. In 1852, he spent approximately $2,000 to erect a family home on the property, located on what is now Riverside Drive. Shepard lived on and farmed the land alongside his wife Almeda and daughters Emily and Amanda until his death in 1875. Members of the Shepard family occupied the home until the 1920s when it became a rental property before being fully abandoned in 1985.
In 2019, Hans and Alicia Stark purchased the Shepard House from from the Calhoun County Land Bank.
“When this was up for auction at the Land Bank, I think they had four or five other people trying to buy the house on the auction,” Hans Stark said. “However, none of them had a plan to renovate it like I presented. I don’t know what the other bids were, but they awarded me the house. I paid for it. And then I started the renovation.”…