Ella Sheppard (Moore)

Ella Sheppard was born on February 4, 1851, near the Hermitage; her mother, Sarah, was enslaved in the Donelson household and her father, Simon, bought his own freedom and then bought Ella for $350 when she was a baby. When she was three her mother was sold to a Mississippi plantation, and Ella did not see her again until she was fifteen. Simon bought her a piano and paid for lessons. She entered the Fisk school in 1868. She married minister George Washington Moore in 1882 and died in 1914; some references give 1915.

What the plaque says

Ella Sheppard (Moore) 1851-1914 Ella Sheppard, an original Fisk Jubilee Singer, lecturer and teacher, was born on February 4, 1851. She entered Fisk in 1868, and was selected to join the group of nine singers that set out on October 6, 1871 to raise funds to save the school. She also served as pianist and assistant director for this group which introduced spirituals to the world. After seven years, the Singers had raised $150,000 and brought the cause of Black education to the attention of millions. Her home stood on this site

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 0.2 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 1.1 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 1.2 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 1.4 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Samuel Allen McElwee — steps away
• Fisk Memorial Chapel — steps away
• Fisk University — steps away
• Arna Wendell Bontemps — steps away