Lydia Boggs Shepherd Cruger lived the last twenty-four years of her life in solitude in the mansion (a few of her slaves remained on the plantation to care for her), occasionally receiving visitors and relatives eager to hear first hand accounts of Wheeling's history. In 1849 when she was 83 years old, she caused a heated controversy when she swore out an affidavit discrediting Betty Zane as the heroine of the gunpowder exploit during the 1782 siege of Fort Henry sixty-seven years after the event in which she was one of the last surviving eyewitnesses. She had resided in Shepherd Hall from the time the mansion was built in 1798 until she died there at the age of 101 on September 29, 1867.