SPLENDORS FROM OUR PAST: The Shepard Mansion, the Shepard Family, and the Ghost Town of Poley, Alabama

As the 1800s came to a close, the immense forests of the South were giving way to the formation of new towns. While cotton had previously been the South’s cash crop, timber became the cash crop as the Twentieth Century dawned. With the harvesting of that timber, new towns and new money emerged. One of those towns was Poley, Alabama, a sawmill town in Covington County, Alabama. A dynamic businessman, William Thrower Shepard, came to Poley with his family in1908, as a co-owner of the Miller-Brent Lumber Company. He built a beautiful mansion which became a landmark and a social center for the area. Orchestras from Montgomery were brought down from Montgomery in the Miller-Brent private rail car to entertain at the lavish parties and balls thrown by the Shepards. Shepard’s wife, Kate Shepard, became the name most associated with the Shepard Mansion. Beautiful, cultured, educated and intelligent, she became an accomplished poet, lecturer and humanitarian. She authored two books of poetry during her lifetime. She and her three eye-catching daughters were often the subject of the society columns of Montgomery, Alabama newspapers. Two of those daughters married men who later distinguished themselves on the world’s stage. This book takes the reader back to Poley’s heydays and examines the fascinating life of the Shepard family, a family that made its mark and brought splendor to the pine forests of south Alabama. Read more