Memorabilia of Charles N. Shepardson

Charles N. Shepardson was a leader in dairy husbandry, agricultural economics, and banking. He was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System by President Eisenhower in 1955.

Charles Noah Shepardson was born on January 11, 1896, in Littleton, Colorado, to Noah and Mary Margaret Shepardson. He attended Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University), where he was an honor student and a three-time All-Conference football center. He graduated in 1917 and enlisted in the Army, serving overseas during World War I. In 1919, he took a position as animal husbandman for the Wyoming University Extension department. He returned to Colorado A&M as associate professor of animal husbandry from 1920 to 1928. He earned his master's degree from Iowa State College in 1924. Shepardson married Nellie Virginia Trammel on August 19, 1917. Nellie died in 1920, and he married Florence Redifer on July 21, 1923.

In 1928, Shepardson was appointed as professor and head of the dairy husbandry department at Texas A&M College, and in 1944 he was named Dean of Agriculture. He led a dairy development program in Texas at a time when the cotton industry was in economic distress and when there was an interest in dairying as a means of providing a better balanced farm program. His contribution of technical knowledge vital to the improvement of the agricultural program in Texas and neighboring states was recognized by his appointment in 1950 as a director of the Federal Reserve Bank in Houston. In 1955 he was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C., serving from March 17, 1955 until April 30, 1967.

Shepardson was a U.S. delegate to the World's Dairy Congress (1937), director of the American Jersey Cattle Club (1940-1943), president of the Texas Dairy Products Association (1942-1944), chairman of the resident instruction section of the Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities (1947), member of the Inter-American Committee for Dairy Industry (1947), member of the Texas Board of Examiners for Teacher Education (1953-1955), and a long-time member of the American Dairy Science Association. Colorado State University honored Shepardson with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1959, and renamed the agricultural building to the Shepardson Building in 1973. Shepardson's second wife Florence died in 1970, and he married Lillian E. Ferguson on April 17, 1971. Lillian died in 1973. Charles N. Shepardson died on August 25, 1975.