“S” is for Shepard, Charles Upham (1804-1886)

“S” is for Shepard, Charles Upham (1804-1886). Chemist, mineralogist, naturalist. Born in Rhode Island Shepard graduated from Amherst and worked at Yale with famed mineralogist Benjamin Silliman. In 1834 the Medical College of South Carolina in Charleston appointed Shepard professor of chemistry. A highly respected and popular teacher he also arranged mineralogical collections and botanical facilities on campus. With his students Shepard explored South Carolina’s mineral deposits and published his findings. Perhaps his greatest contribution was the investigations in the 1850s of the cast phosphate deposits in the Carolina lowcountry. Shepard left Charleston in 1861 at the onset of the Civil War but returned in 1865 to resume teaching at the Medical College. In 1869 Charles Upham Shepard published On the Development and Extent of the Fertilizer Industry, Charleston Phosphates and Guano as a Fertilizer.