Moses Shepherd was the son of David Shepherd and Rachel (née Teague) Shepherd. He met Lydia Boggs during the last siege of Fort Henry on the Ohio River, the fort that defended the early settlers of the Wheeling area against Native American attacks, in September 1782. The Shepherd and Boggs families were both taking refuge inside the fort during the siege. Moses Shepherd and Lydia Boggs married about 1783, but they had no children together during the course of their almost fifty years of marriage.