John W. Sheppard House
(ca. 1899)
The John W. Sheppard House was the home of one of the nation’s first university-trained professional pharmacists.
601 N Poplar St, Charlotte, NC 28202
Cedarville, New Jersey, native John Ware Sheppard (1869-1955) moved to Charlotte in 1896. As one of the first university-trained professional pharmacists in the United States, he joined with J. P. Woodall (d. 1910) to open the Woodall and Sheppard Drugstore at the corner of Trade and Tryon Streets. The graduate of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy had previously worked with Woodall in Memphis, Tennessee. The two men became friends and decided to go into business for themselves. After touring several Southern towns for potential business opportunities, Sheppard discovered Charlotte. Pleased with the town and the people, he convinced his friend that Charlotte offered an ideal opportunity.
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The Woodall and Sheppard Drugstore opened in 1896 in grand fashion with a reported “record breaking” event that the Charlotte Observer called “one of the most successful affairs of the sort, if not the most notable in the history of the city.” Sheppard later attributed Woodall and Sheppard’s early success to the facts that their drugstore was the first in Charlotte to make and sell ice cream all year long (other drugstores only opened their fountains in the summer) and to offer bicycle delivery to their customers.
Sheppard returned to Cedarville in 1899 to marry his childhood sweetheart, Anna Stanton Mulford (1870-1932). By then, Sheppard was well established in his new hometown. One year earlier, he had purchased the Fourth Ward lot at 601 North Poplar Street for $1,000 and started construction of what became the Sheppard family home. Unlike many Fourth Ward houses, the John W. Sheppard House was an original part of the neighborhood and occupies its original site. At that time, Charlotte was still a walking city. Fourth Ward was a middle-class neighborhood situated close enough to town for its residents to walk to work. Sheppard bicycled to work every day, as did many of his neighbors.
John and Anna Sheppard had three sons and one daughter. Tragically, only their daughter Edith (1902-2002) survived childhood. She graduated from Swarthmore College in 1923 at a time when few women were permitted to leave home to pursue higher education. Edith returned to Charlotte to teach third grade at the Elizabeth School for two years before marrying Thomas Willard Shaw (b. 1896) and moving to New Jersey. The couple returned to Charlotte in 1934, prior to the birth of their third son, to move into the 601 North Poplar house with John Sheppard, who had been widowed in 1932. As the John W. Sheppard House remained in the family until 1961, all three of Thomas and Edith’s sons were raised in the same home where their mother had grown up. The Queen Anne style house has since been used as a private residence and as a bed and breakfast.