General Evan Shelby ^1,64

  General Notes:

SHELBY, Evan, pioneer, born in Wales in 1720; died at King's Meadows (now Bristol), Tennessee, 4 December, 1794. At the age of fifteen he emigrated with his father's family to North Mountain, near Haterstown, Maryland He received a meager education, but when quite young became noted as a hunter and woodsman. In the old French war he rose from the rank of private to that of captain, in which capacity he served throughout the campaign of General John Forbes. He then engaged in trade with the Indians, and afterward embarked extensively in herding and raising cattle on the Virginia border. He was thus employed when, in 1774, war began with the Shawnees and Delawares. Raising a body of fifty volunteers in the Watauga district, he led them on a march of twenty-five days through a trackless wilderness, and joined the Virginia army on the eve of the battle of Point Pleasant Toward the close of the action, all his ranking officers being either killed or disabled, the command devolved upon him, and he utterly routed the enemy. In 1779 he led a successful expedition against the Chickamauga Indians. He subsequently served with the Virginia army on the seaboard, rising to the rank of colonel, and then to that of general.--His eldest son, Isaac, governor of Kentucky, born in North Mountain, Maryland, 11 December, 1750; died near Stanford, Kentucky, 18 July, 1826, acquired a common English education, and the principles of surveying at Fredericktown, and before he was of age served as deputy sheriff of Frederick county. In 1771 he removed with his father to the present site of Bristol, Tennessee, and followed with him the business of herding cattle till 1774, when, being appointed lieutenant in his father's company, he served in the battle of Point Pleasant, which he was instrumental in winning. He commanded the fort at that place till July, 1775, when his troops were disbanded by Lord Dunmore, lest they should join the patriot army. During the following year he was employed at surveying in Kentucky, but, his health failing, he returned home in July, 1776, just in time to be at the battle of Long Island fiats. At the first furious onset of the savages, the American lines were broken, and then Shelby, present only as a volunteer private, seized the command, reformed the troops, and inflicted upon the Indians a severe defeat, with the loss of only two men badly wounded. This battle, and John Sevier's defence of Watauga, frustrated the rear attack by which the British hoped to envelop and crush the southern colonies. Soon afterward Governor Patrick Henry promoted Shelby to a captaincy, and made him commissary-general of the Virginia forces. When Sevier, in 1779, projected the expedition that captured the British stores at Chickamauga, Shelby equipped and supplied the troops by the pledge of his individual credit. In this year he was commissioned a major by Governor Thomas Jefferson, but, when the state line was run, his residence was found to be in North Carolina. He then resigned his commission, but was at once appointed to the colonelcy of Sullivan county by Governor Caswell. He was in Kentucky, perfecting his title to lands he had selected on his previous visit, when he heard of the fall of Charleston and the desperate situation of affairs in the southern colonies. He at once returned to engage in active service against the enemy, and, crossing the mountains into South Carolina, in July, 1780, he won victories over the British at Thicketty Fort, Cedar Springs, and Musgrove's Mill. But, as the disastrous defeat at Camden occurred just before the last engagement, he was obliged to retreat across the Alleghanies. There he soon concerted with John Sevier the remarkable expedition which resulted in the battle of King's Mountain, and turned the tide of the Revolution. For this important service he and Sevier received the thanks of the North Carolina legislature, and the vote of a sword and a pair of pistols. Having been elected to the general assembly, Shelby soon afterward left the army to take his seat, but, before he left, suggested to General Horatio Gates the expedition which, carried out by Morgan under General Greene, resulted in the victory at Cowpens. Being soon afterward recalled to South Carolina by General Greene, he marched over the mountains with Colonel Sevier and 500 men, and did important; service against the British in the vicinity of Charleston. In the winter of 1782-'3 he was appointed a commissioner to survey the lands along the Cumberland that were allotted by North Carolina to her soldiers, and this done, he repaired to Boonesborough, Kentucky, where he settled as a planter. He was a delegate to all the early conventions that were held for obtaining the separation of Kentucky from Virginia, and succeeded, in connection with Thomas Marshall and George Muter, in thwarting the treasonable scheme of General James Wilkinson and his associates to force Kentucky out of the Union and into an alliance with Spain. When, in 1792, Kentucky was admitted as a state, Shelby was almost unanimously elected its first governor. During nearly the whole of his administration the western country was in a state of constant irritation, in consequence of the occlusion of the Mississippi by Spain; but, by his firm and sagacious policy, this discontent was kept from breaking out into actual hostilities. Finally, by the treaty of 20 October, 1795, the Spaniards conceded the navigation of that river; and Shelby's term of office expiring soon afterward, he refused to be again a candidate, and returned to the cultivation of the farm which he had reluctantly left at what he deemed the call of his country. He subsequently refused all office except that of presidential elector, to which he was chosen six times successively under Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe; but, on the eve of the second war with Great Britain, his state again peremptorily demanded his services. Our first western army had been captured, Michigan was in the hands of the enemy, and the whole frontier was threatened by a strong coalition of savages, armed by Great Britain. Instinctively the people turned to Shelby, and he consented to serve as governor "if there should be a war with England." Organizing a body of 4,000 volunteers, he had them mounted on his own responsibility, and at the age of sixty-three led them in person to the re-enforcement of General William Henry Harrison, whom he joined just in time to enable that general to profit by the victory of Perry on Lake Erie. For his services in this campaign Shelby received a gold medal and the thanks of congress and of the Kentucky legislature. In March, 1817, he was tendered the post of secretary of war by President Monroe; but he declined, and never again held any office except that of commissioner for the purchase from the Chickasaws of their remaining lands in Tennessee and Kentucky.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Arrival: Maryland, 1739. ⁶⁴

• Alt. Birth: Tregaron, Cardiganshire, Wales, 1719. ¹

• Alt. Death: Sapling grove, Tennessee, USA, 4 Dec 1794. ¹

Evan married Letitia Liddy Cox, daughter of David Cox and Hannah S. Davis. (Letitia Liddy Cox was born in 1723 in Maryland, USA and died in 1777 in Charlottesville, Albemarle, Virginia, USA.)