Have I found the right flock of Shephards?

Some of you will know that I have been working on my family history for some time now (over 4 years), and overall I think I am doing a good job, by applying a lot of the historical research techniques I learnt when I was an archaeologist. And, over time, I am adding more facts as more records become available online, or more detail becomes available to existing sources.  However, there are 1,000s of people in my tree now, and I have spent much of my time over the last 3 years just trying to manage and organise the huge amounts of data produced by the various DNA tests I have taken, as well as relatives. There are always areas of my tree that need reviewing and updating, and there are areas which I have never been happy about, or perhaps have lost confidence in. And it just such an area that I have been looking at that has created a bit of a family tree crisis, of sorts, for me. 

Early on, 4 years ago, I thought I did a good job of building the Shepherd/Shephard, etc. branch of my tree. That's my Mum's Mum's family. The only family my Mum really ever knew as a child, the part Mum knows a lot about (other than her grannies Yeo family), and the only branch she is really interested in. And that relates to the names in the Family Bible and Victorian/Edwardian photos we have. And, from Mum, I had heard the family story that our Shephard ancestors were involved in the Battle of Stamford Hill (1643), and I wanted to find out who that may have been.

The problem is with the patriarch(?) of this bit of my tree, and his origins. William Shephard isn't mentioned in the Family Bible, just his kids and grandchildren and the death of his wife. (Except that I now know that that was his 1st wife, and both lists of children have some missing infant deaths. I now suspect there was some falling out over his 2nd marriage within a year of the death of the first).

William, one of my 3rd Great Grandfathers, appears in 3 Censuses, 1841, 1851 and 1861, and his age and birth place is not consistent in them, which is quite common, and I knew he was born sometime in the 1780s or 1790s, and I had ignored the fact that one said he was born in Kilkhampton (Kilk) and another that he was born in Morwenstow, as, after all, our Shaphards were from Stratton! At least as far as Mum was concerned. But then again, looking at the historic facts I had on him, he first appears working as a sawyer in the Devonport shipyards 200 years ago; where he married and his eldest child was baptised. Then other children are baptised in Poughill, Launcells and Stratton, and the censuses have him living in Launcells and Stratton, where he was buried, recorded as 'of Stratton'. And from his 2nd marriage certificate we know that his father was named John, a carpenter, and presumably still alive at the time in 1850. [for those of you not familiar with North Cornwall, all the villages I am talking about neighbour each other].

So my tree beyond William was based upon a baptism in Stratton for a William son of John and Mary of the the exact date hinted by one of the Censuses, and there was a good chain of evidence going back from that for what I assumed was his family.

But there was always some unease I had with what I had 'assumed', and that there may be muddling with the other main branch of Shephards in Stratton, what I call the 'Posh Shephards', the ones with money and/or  were yeoman farmers, and have their tombstones very prominently on view as you walk into Stratton churchyard. So I have been looking at the records again in detail, found additional information, and created a spreadsheet where I could see the information in chronological order, and I could arrange by village and family (as in you can see a series of 'child x of y and z', as well as, perhaps, the marriage of y and z).

It turns out that the baptised William in Stratton has a burial record which shows he is not my William, and that the John I assumed to be his father, also has a burial record, and a will, showing that he was a yeoman. So NOT my family!

So! Because of the work I have done on the spreadsheet, I was able to find an alternative William and John (whose father, John is recorded as a carpenter). And where? KILK! With of connections to Morwenstow (as hinted in the Censuses).

There is a good chain of Shephard evidence in Kilk right back to the 16thC, and, of course, was part of the Grenville estates too, and is close to the site of Sir Bevel's great victory at Stamford Hill.

EXCEPT! That I now realise that if the John Sheppard of Kilk I have now decided was William's dad WAS still alive at the time of his son's 2nd wedding (1850), it would of meant he was 107! And it looks like he may have died in the 1790s, when William was a child.

Normally, when average people aged in their 20s got married in the mid 19thC, it normally states the father's name and profession, but if the father is dead it says 'Deceased'. But both William and his 2nd wife were middle aged, and both widowed. So maybe William just didn't say his father was dead?