WILL A. SHEPARD - newspaper publisher

The paper which has the record of being the oldest newspaper in California is the Placer Herald of Auburn, established in 1852. Its present owner and publisher is Will A. Shepard. Born in Mirabile, Caldwell Co. Mo., October 20, 1867, he came across the plains with his parents to California in a wagon when he was four years old. . . .Landing at Covelo, Mendocino Co., the Shepard family farmed four years and then went to Napa City, Cal. There the son Will attended the public schools till he was fifteen years of age, when he started to learn the printers trade in the Napa Reporter office. In March, 1889, he came to Auburn and went to work for Hon. J. A. Filcher, on the Herald, where he was foreman until 1894. Then he leased the paper and ran it until he was appointed postmaster by President Cleveland, in 1896. In 1900 he bought the Herald, which he has conducted ever since. 

Besides serving as postmaster, Mr. Shepard was coroner and public administrator from 1904 to 1907. Politically a Democrat, he served as chairman of the Democratic County Central Committee ten years, was a member of the State committee for the same period, and attended the National Democratic Convention at Baltimore in 1912, when Woodrow Wilson was nominated for President. He was a private secretary to Congressman John E. Raker in Washington, D. C. for four years. . . .He is serving his fourth term as president of the Society of Placer County Pioneers.