I'm Bonnie Nilsen, the web designer/developer who has put together this website about John Shepherd's family. This is the third iteration of the site. I first made one around 1999 and then another in 2011.
The information on these pages is taken from a history of the John Shepherd family published in 1913 in Cleveland, Ohio. The book was given to me by my father, Frank Nilsen, and was passed on to him by his mother Hazel Putt Nilsen.
I remember being around nine or ten years old and looking at the black and white photos of people from a long time ago in the book, and trying to make sense of the fact that I was related to them.
My dad explained it to me: His mother (my grandmother Hazel) was mentioned in the book and then her mother Viola May, (my great grandmother) was in the book and then her father Seymour (my great, great grandfather) was in the book, and he was in the Cavalry at Gettysburg. And they all lived in Indiana or Ohio, not in Brooklyn like we did. So on and on it went through many pages and pictures of people. It was kind of interesting, but I didn’t really get it.
And then somehow it was forty years later and I had just become a grandmother. I flew from Canada to New Jersey to spend a week or two with my parents. And my dad brought that old book out and we looked through it a bit and I thought, I want to put this information out for other people to read. I was teaching myself HTML and web design, and what better place to start than with my own family history.
*****You can access my ongoing genealogical work at WikiTree: Nilsen Family or Ancestry: Nilsen Family