Evan Shelby (c. 1719 or 1720 – 4 December 1794) was a Welsh-American trapper and militia officer in the Washington District Regiment of the North Carolina militia on the frontier of the Southern colonies.
Early life Evan Shelby was born in Tregaron, Cardiganshire, Wales, in 1720 (some sources give 1719). His father was also Evan Shelby; his mother was Catherine Davies Morgan. The family moved to the American colonies in about 1734, settling first in Pennsylvania, but later moving to Maryland. The younger Evan worked on a farm near Frederick, Maryland, named "Mountain of Wales".Paul W. Beasley, "Evan Shelby" in William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (UNC Press 1996).
On the American frontier
Shelby served as a captain, scout, and surveyor in the French and Indian War, and was present at the fall of Fort Duquesne. In the 1770s, he built a fort, store, and trading station near the Virginia/North Carolina border, near present-day Bristol, Tennessee,Kevin T. Barksdale, The Lost State of Franklin: America's First Secession (University Press of Kentucky 2015): 20. which included perhaps the first distillery in the region.Kay Baker Gaston, "Tennessee Distilleries: Their Rise, Fall, and Re-emergence" Border States: Journal of the Kentucky-Tennessee American Studies Association 12(1999). He led a militia group to the Kanawha River site of the Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore's War.Samuel Gordon Heiskell, Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History (Ambrose Printing Company 1918): 230-235.
Military service record: Major in the Virginia Militia, 1775–1776 Colonel in the Washington District Regiment of the North Carolina militia, 1776–1777 Colonel in the Washington County Regiment of the North Carolina militia, 1777–1783
Shelby signed the Fincastle ResolutionsThad Tate, "The Fincastle Resolutions: Southwest Virginia's Commitment" Journal of the Roanoke Valley Historical Society IX (9)(1975). and actively supported the war for American independence, serving on a boycott committee and eventually taking the lead in defending Virginia's western frontier. He rose to the rank of colonel in 1777, in raids against the Chickamauga.Zella Armstrong, The History of Hamilton County and Chattanooga, Tennessee (Overmountain Press 1992): 27-28. In 1787, he became a brigadier general in western North Carolina, and was even elected governor of the State of Franklin, a post which he declined.Dave Foster, Franklin the Stillborn State: And the Sevier-Tipton Political Feud (Overmountain Press 2006): 10-12.
Personal life Shelby married twice; his first wife was Letitia Cox, with whom he was the parent of five sons and three daughters. Their son Isaac Shelby was later the governor of Kentucky. Letitia Cox Shelby died in 1777. There were three more children born into Evan Shelby's second marriage, to Isabella Elliot, in 1787.
Evan Shelby died in 1794, age 74. His current gravesite is in East Hill Cemetery in Bristol, Tennessee.Historic East Hill Cemetery, Walking Tour Guide (pamphlet). The Shelby Family Papers are archived in the Library of Congress.Frank Tusa, Shelby Family Papers: A Finding Aid to the Collection in the Library of Congress (Washington DC 2011).
There is a chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution named for General Shelby, in Owensboro, Kentucky. Another D. A. R. chapter is named for his first wife.Daughters of the American Revolution, Letitia Coxe Shelby Chapter, La Mesa, California.
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