Elliott Fitch Shepard[nb 1] (July 25, 1833 – March 24, 1893) was an American lawyer, banker, and owner of the Mail and Express newspaper, as well as a founder and president of the New York State Bar Association.

During the American Civil War, Shepard was a Union Army recruiter and subsequently earned the rank of colonel.

When Shepard moved to the Briarcliff Manor hamlet of Scarborough-on-Hudson, he founded the Scarborough Presbyterian Church and built Woodlea; the house and its land are now part of Sleepy Hollow Country Club.

[7] From January 1861 through the outbreak of the American Civil War and until 1862 Shepard served as an aide-de-camp to Union Army General Edwin D. Morgan with the rank of colonel.

[10] In 1862 he visited Jamestown to inspect, equip and provide uniforms for the Chautauqua regiment, his first return since infancy,[1] and was welcomed by a group of prominent citizens.

[7][21] He continued to practice law for the next 25 years;[6] he helped found the New York State Bar Association in 1876, and in 1884 was its fifth president.

[22][23] In 1875 Shepard drafted an amendment establishing an arbitration court for the New York Chamber of Commerce, serving on its five-member executive committee the following year.

[29] In the same year, Shepard became the controlling stockholder of the Fifth Avenue Transportation Company to force it to halt work on Sundays (the Christian Sabbath).

: New York and Alaska taken by himself, his wife and daughter, six other family members, their maid, a chef, butler, porter and conductor.

[37] During the early 1890s Shepard moved to Scarborough-on-Hudson in present-day Briarcliff Manor,[27]: 158  purchasing a Victorian house from J. Butler Wright.

[27]: 169 Shepard established a small chapel on his Briarcliff Manor property, and founded the Scarborough Presbyterian Church in 1892.

[43] Shepard and Margaret had five daughters and one son: Florence (1869–1869), Maria Louise (1870–1948), Edith (1872–1954), Marguerite (1873–1895), Alice (1874–1950) and Elliott Jr. (1877–1927).

[44] Shepard was tall, with a pleasant expression and manner,[11] and The New York Times called him the "perfect type of well-bred clubman".

[27]: 154  An opponent of antisemitism, he attended dinners publicizing the plight of Russian Jews and regularly addressed Jewish religious and social organizations avoided by others.

He rented pews in many New York churches, supported about a dozen missionaries and was described as a generous donor to hospitals and charitable societies.

He furnished Shepard Hall, at Sixth Avenue and 57th Street in New York City, offering it rent-free to the Republican Club.

[49] Shepard himself attended, having spent $25,000 ($847,778 in 2023[18]) on September 7, 1891, in reserving sixteen rooms with board at the Auditorium Hotel for six months during the fair.

The doctors then administered oxygen, which helped temporarily; however, at 4:00 p.m. his pulse became steadily more feeble, he fell unconscious, and died at 4:10 p.m. His cause of death was edema and congestion of the lungs, after the administration of ether, but due to an unknown cause.

[51] Some, including family members,[52] accused them of criminal negligence; that Shepard was fed well before the operation, which could have allowed him to choke on vomit.

The two doctors to perform the operation made a statement on March 28, 1893, that after prior examinations no diseases were found and his heart and lungs seemed healthy.

[5] The first funeral service was a small gathering of pallbearers and close friends of the family at the house; then Shepard's body was moved to their church.

[5] At the funeral, organizations that Shepard was part of sent representatives, including the Union League Club, the Republican County Committee, the Republican Club, the New York State Bar Association, the Presbyterian Union, the Chamber of Commerce,[53] the American Sabbath Union, New York Sabbath Observance Committee, American Bible Society, St. Paul's Institute at Tarsus, the Union League of Brooklyn, the Republican Association of the 21st Assembly District, the Shepard Rifles, the New York Typothetae, the American Bank Note Company, the College of the City of New York, the Mail and Express, and the New-York Press Club.

When the wife of Chicago publisher Horace O'Donoghue read him the news of Shepard's death four days after the event, he picked up a razor and slit his throat.