Tectonic Theater Project
On 6 October 1998 Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die tied to a fence in the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. He died 6 days later. His torture and murder became a watershed historical moment in America that highlighted many of the fault lines in our culture.
A month after the murder the members of Tectonic Theater Project traveled to Laramie and conducted interviews with the people of the town. From these interviews they wrote the play "The Laramie Project". The piece has been seen by more than 30 million people around the country.
Shepherd Hall (Monument Place)
Moses Shepherd died at Shepherd Hall of cholera on April 29, 1832 at the age of 68 during a cholera epidemic plaguing Wheeling after a devastating flood. Lydia Boggs Shepherd, now a wealthy widow, remarried to widower Daniel Cruger (December 22, 1780 – July 12, 1843), one year later on July 16, 1833 in Ohio County, Virginia (now West Virginia). Daniel Cruger, fourteen years her junior, was a United States Congressman from Steuben County, New York, and they had met in Washington, D.C. during her many trips there with her first husband, Moses Shepherd. Lydia Boggs Shepherd Cruger changed the name of the mansion from Shepherd Hall to Stone Mansion during the ten years of her marriage to Daniel Cruger. Daniel Cruger died suddenly of apoplexy on July 12, 1843 at the age of 62 during a bank meeting in Wheeling.