Harriet Sheppard

Henrietta "Harriet" Sheppard, née Campbell (1786–1858) was a Canadian naturalist, ornithologist and botanist.

Early and family life

Harriet Campbell was born in 1786 into a family of United Empire Loyalists to Charlotte (née Saxton) and Archibald Campbell Sr, a merchant in the timber trade. The family migrated to Nova Scotia following the American Revolution, moving to Quebec in 1790 where they prospered and became well known in the city. One brother, John Saxton Campbell became a merchant and seigneur, another brother, Archibald Campbell Jnr, was a successful lawyer. Her sister Louisa Sophia married politician Jonathan Wurtele.

In 1809, Harriet Campbell married William Sheppard, a merchant in the same timber trade as her family. They had seven children, but only Charles Campbell, Charlotte, William and Maxfield lived to adulthood. Charlotte married politician Robert Nugent Watts and had a son William John Watts.

The couple bought a property of 100 acres in Sillery in 1816, naming it “Woodfield”. They installed a library with 3,000 books, as well as a gallery and a natural history museum. They added greenhouses, transformed the gardens and built aviaries which housed an European Linnet and a Serin, alongside birds indigenous to North America, particularly ones with beautiful songs or attractive colourings.

Work in natural history

She was noted for studying and publishing on birds, shells, and plants of the Quebec region. Working with Anne Mary Perceval and Christian Ramsay (Lady Dalhousie) she collected plants of the region. Along with Perceval, Ramsay, and Mary Brenton, she was a contributor to William Jackson Hooker’s Flora boreali-Americana (1829–1840). The three women provided 80% of the information relating to Quebec in the publication.

Her first publication was in 1829, in a paper On recent shells which characterize Quebec and its environs in the proceedings of the Société pour l’encouragement des sciences et d’arts en Canada.

Author abbreviation

The standard author abbreviation Sheppard is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.

References

  1. ↑ "CAMPBELL, JOHN SAXTON". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Retrieved 2026-11-11.
  2. ↑ "CAMPBELL, ARCHIBALD". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Retrieved 2026-11-11.
  3. 1 2 3 "William and Harriet Sheppard". preconfederationornithology.ca. Retrieved 2026-11-11.
  4. ↑ "Robert Nugent Watts - National Assembly of Québec". www.assnat.qc.ca. Archived from the original on 2025-07-03. Retrieved 2026-11-11.
  5. ↑ "SHEPPARD, WILLIAM". Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Retrieved 2026-11-11.
  6. ↑ Creese, Mary R. S.; Creese, Thomas M. (2010). Ladies in the Laboratory III: South African, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Women in Science: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Scarecrow Press. pp. 139–140. ISBN 9780810872899. Retrieved 9 November 2018.
  7. ↑ Huneault, Kristina (2018). I'm Not Myself at All: Women, Art, and Subjectivity in Canada. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. pp. 152–161. ISBN 9780773554030.
  8. ↑ "Botany History | The Canadian Encyclopedia". www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca. Retrieved 9 November 2018.
  9. 1 2 Shteir, Ann; Cayouette, Jacques (2019). "Collecting with "botanical friends": Four Women in Colonial Quebec and Newfoundland". Scientia Canadensis: Canadian Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. 41 (1): 1–30. doi:10.7202/1056314ar. ISSN 0829-2507.
  10. ↑ Hooker, William Jackson; Hooker, William Jackson (1829). Flora boreali-americana, or, the botany of the northern parts of British America : compiled principally from the plants collected by Dr. Richardson & Mr. Drummond on the late northern expeditions, under command of Captain Sir John Franklin, R.N. To which are added (by permission of the Horticultural society of London,) those of Mr. Douglas, from north-west America, and of other naturalists. London, H.G. Bohn.
  11. ↑ Shteir, Ann, ed. (2022-08-09). Flora's Fieldworkers. McGill-Queen's University Press. doi:10.1515/9780228013464. ISBN 978-0-2280-1346-4.
  12. ↑ Glassman, Kimberley (2026). "Gender, Science, and Empire: Harriet Sheppard (1786-1858) and the Natural History of Quebec".
  13. ↑ "Kimberly Glassman: "Harriet Sheppard's (1786–1858) Scientific Writings: Nineteenth-Century Canadian Periodicals in Transatlantic Print Culture" • Issue 18.2 • Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies". ncgsjournal.com. Retrieved 2026-11-11.
  14. ↑ International Plant Names Index. Sheppard.