Colonel Isaac Shelby (1750-1826) was an exceptional leader of patriot militia who, by the end of his life, became one of the country’s most admired men. Born to fight, he grew up in the wilderness where at an early age, stood second in command to his father’s company against the Shawnee. When war with England came to the southern backcountry, Shelby’s ‘over the mountain men’ answered the call to arms; those settled west of the Appalachians in what was Virginia and North Carolina. As captain in a company of frontier riflemen called ‘yelling boys,’ prequel to the rebel battle cry, he crossed the mountain and joined forces with South Carolina and Georgian militias. For the next several years, over the course of seven major actions and countless skirmishes, he and his men proved a deadly nemesis for the British – both regular troops and Loyalist militia. After the war, he was twice Governor of Kentucky where the warrior showed himself an adept politician and wise statesman. But Shelby would heft his sword one more time. When the War of 1812 erupted along the American wilderness, Shelby, at age 63, was once again called upon to lead men in battle.
Early Life
Evan Shelby (1720 – 1794), Isaac’s father, was born in Tregaron, Wales. Around 1734, young Evan accompanied his parents to American who settled first in Pennsylvania and later in western Maryland near present-day Frederick. At the time the region was along America’s wilderness frontier. Evan became a successful trapper and acquired his own farm, married Letitia Cox (1727-1777), and began raising a family of five sons and three daughters. Isaac was born on December 11, 1750, in Hagerstown, Maryland, third born and second son. During the French and Indian War, Isaac’s father served as a scout, surveyor, and captain of the local Frederick militia. He was present at the fall of fort Duquesne, Sept. 14, 1758. With the advent of Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-1765), Isaac’s fur trade with the Native Americans suffered greatly. In 1770, Evan Shelby sold off his concerns in Maryland and with his wife and children, traveled 350 miles south along the Great Wagon Road to the Holston settlements near present-day Bristol, Tennessee. It was along the border between Virginia and North Carolina, a region claimed by both colonies labeled the ‘Squabble State.’
There, Isaac assisted his father Evan to build a blockhouse, store, and trading post. Over the next three years, Isaac would live alongside his parents, assisting his father in trapping, farming, and herding cattle until the start of the American Revolution. Not until the end of the war, in 1883, would Isaac settle in Kentucky where he would marry and start his own family. In 1773, with the advent of Lord Dunmore’s War (1773-1774) against the Cherokee, Evan Shelby lead the Fincastle Company of local militia and twenty-three-year-old Lt. Isaac Shelby served as his father’s second in command. Isaac took part in the Battle of Point Pleasant, October 10, 1774, which decided the outcome in Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore’s favor. The victorious militia erected Fort Blair on the site of the battle and were stationed there, with Isaac as second in command. However, by July, 1775, the North American colony was in rebellion and Royal Governor Dunmore ordered the fort destroyed, fearing it might be useful to colonial rebels if hostilities broke out into open war.
American Revolution 1775-1779
After Dunmore destroyed the fort and decommissioned his company of militia, Shelby worked with a fraudulent Transylvania land company that purchased much of Kentucky from Native Americans. While improving Kentucky land he had purchased, he fell ill and in July, 1776, returned to his family home in Virginia. After he regained health, the Virginia Committee of Safety commissioned Shelby a captain of militia under Col. William Christian. From August to December of 1776, Col. William Christian led a large group of Virginia and North Carolina Militia on an expedition against the Cherokee on the western side of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
In 1777, Virginia Governor Patrick Henry employed Shelby to secure provisions for the army along the frontier. In 1778 and 1779, Shelby continued this role for the Continental army. In 1779, Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson commissioned Shelby a major in the Washington County militia under Lt. Col. John Sevier and had him escort a team of surveyors to secure the border between Virginia and North Carolina. During this time residents of the Holston Settlements were considered part of Virginia; however, so too claimed by North Carolina. While escorting the surveyors, North Carolina Governor Richard Caswell appointed Shelby magistrate for the newly formed Sullivan County (Oct. 30, 1779) with the rank of colonel of the Sullivan County Regiment. Shelby would lead his regiment into battle the following year that culminated with the Battle of King’s Mountain.
American Revolution 1780 – 1781
Within a year, Shelby would lead his militia in seven major encounters with British regulars and Tory militia. Shelby was surveying lands in Kentucky when he heard of the Southern Continental Army’s capture at Charleston, South Carolina; May 12, 1780. Once Charleston fell, British forces had moved inland and by June of 1780, had set up multiple outposts across South Carolina to the North Carolina border. Shelby rushed back home to discover a request for his militia to join with General Charles McDowell’s force that was defending the border region of North Carolina against British and loyalists’ incursions. Shelby assembled 300 rebel ‘over the mountain men’ militia and joined McDowell, along with South Carolina and Georgia militia under the renowned Colonel Elijah Clarke, at Cherokee Ford, South Carolina. There on July 27, 1780 [one source gives the 30th], the rebel militia surrounded the British outpost Thicketty Fort, also called Fort Anderson, on the Pacolet River, about 20 miles south of the North Carolina border and a dozen miles east of present-day Spartanburg, SC. Though the loyalists defending the fort might have held out, the commander Captain Patrick Moore lost his nerve when Shelby marched his men within musket shot. Seeing the large number of rebel militia, Moore surrendered 94 loyalists without firing a shot.
Shelby remained in the Spartanburg region and continued his relationship with Colonel Elijah Clarke’s Georgians. The two were assigned to shadow Major Patrick Ferguson, British Coordinator of Loyalist Militia, and his army of 1,800 Tories. At what has been called the Second Battle of Cedar Springs or Battle of Wofford’s Iron Works, August 8, 1780, Shelby and Clarke set an ambush at the Iron Works for Major James Dunlop’s dragoons and mounted loyalists. In a fierce hand-to-hand fight in which Clarke received two saber wounds, the rebel militia threw back and pursued the retreating loyalists. When Major Ferguson brought up his main command, Shelby and Clarke organized a hasty retreat.
Ten days after Woffert’s Iron Works, on August 18, 1780, the same day North Carolina General Thomas Sumter suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Fishing Creek, Shelby scored a major victory at the Battle of Musgrove Mill. Shelby and his over the mountain men were once more fighting alongside Colonel Elijah Clarke who led South Carolina and Georgia militia. After a forty-mile ride throughout the night, the rebels set up an ambush at Musgrove Mill, 30 miles south of present-day Spartanburg, SC. Their target was an equal number of loyalist militia in route to join up with Major Patrick Ferguson’s Tory army. However, unknown to the rebels, their enemy’s numbers had nearly tripled the night before with the arrival of British Provincial regulars, equipped and trained like British redcoats, plus additional loyalists. Now facing over a 2-1 disadvantage, it was too late for the rebels to retreat. Behind hastily thrown barricades, Shelby commanded the right and Clarke the left. Once the charging British regulars were within range of rebel rifles, a devastating and accurate fire devastated the troops. With the enemy faltering, an ‘Indian cry,’ rose from the rebel line, after which the British called ‘yelling boys’ (a prequel to the Civil War’s rebel battle cry). Shelby’s and Clarke’s men leapt over the barricade and charged, slaughtering all in their path in a total rout of the enemy.
After Musgrove Mill, Shelby and Clarke were eager to attack Ninety-Six and rode south, but with news of the Camden and the defeat of the Southern Continental Army under General Horatio Gates, the patriots knew that Cornwallis could allow Ferguson’s total command to go after them. Clarke went further south in his first failed attempt to Siege Augusta, the South and North Carolina militias rode north into North Carolina, and Shelby’s Sullivan County ‘over mountain men,’ crossed back into the wilderness. Things might have cooled down some if Ferguson, confident in a seemingly British victory, did not issue a threatening proclamation to Sullivan County militiamen, demanding that “If they did not desist from their opposition to the British arms, he would march over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay their country waste with fire and sword.” For Shelby and his men, they had but one answer for Ferguson, and it would be at the end of their rifles. Shelby and fellow militia leader, Colonel John Sievers, raised over 500 frontiersmen to return to the fight. Riders were immediately sent out to North and South Carolina leaders to join forces with the wilderness fighters and the chase was on to hunt down Ferguson’s force.
The crowning jewel in Colonel Isaac Shelby’s cap was his role in leading a large force of ‘over mountain men’ in the total annihilation of Major Patrick Ferguson’s Tory Army at the Battle of King’s Mountain, October 7, 1780. Ferguson’s Tory militia anchored British Commanding General Lord Charles Cornwallis’ army’s left flank. Without Ferguson’s corps to deal with rebel resistance in the west, Cornwallis could not advance his plans to carry the southern invasion into North Carolina. Ferguson’s Tories were encamped atop King’s Mountain when rebel militia caught up to him. Unhorsed, the mainly frontiersman sporting deadly rifle surrounded the loyalist position. Over the next hour, they gradually advanced up the steep slopes. Shelby’s men were among the first to pour fire into the loyalist’s lines. When the firing stopped, over 150 loyalists lay dead, along with Maj. Ferguson, with nearly 200 wounded. Over 700 were captured and 9 loyalist leaders were hanged. Only 28 patriots were killed with 64 wounded. Cornwallis received the disastrous new while in Charlotte, North Carolina and soon after, called off his invasion and returned to South Carolina.
After King’s Mountain, Shelby and his men briefly joined General Daniel Morgan and the Southern Continental Army. Before General Nathaneal Greene took charge of the army, Shelby returned over the mountain to Sullivan County. Once back home, he and his father were chosen as commissioners to negotiate a peace between settlers and the Chickamauga. This delayed Shelby’s return to the conflict until the fall of 1781 whereas General Greene attached Shelby and his men under General Francis Marion on the Pee Dee River. Shelby’s last action of the war occurred on November 17, 1781 [only one source states this occurred on the 27th] when General Marion ordered Shelby, commanding 200 frontiersmen, and Colonel Hezekiah Maham leading 180 state dragoons, to capture the British outpost at Fair Lawn Plantation. The action was inconsequential as the outpost was considered too strong to take; therefore, a nearby hospital was approached and ordered to surrender resulting in the capture of around 150 invalids and staff. Shortly after the Fair Lawn raid, Isaac Shelby’s military service came to an end.
Afterwards
In December, 1781, he was elected to the House by the North Carolina Assembly. For the next three years until the war’s end, he either served in the North Carolina House or was active in the field surveying. Shelby returned home and in early 1783 and settled at Boonesborough, then Virginia now central Kentucky. He married Susannah Hart (1764-1833) on April 19, 1783 and in early November, moved to land granted for his war services at Nob Lick, Kentucky, about 110 miles southwest of Boonesborough. Susannah and Isaac would have eleven children; she would still be beside Shelby’s bed when he died. As early as 1784, Shelby was working to secure Kentucky’s separation from Virginia. In April, 1792, he was a delegate to the final convention that framed the first Kentucky Constitution. One month later, May 17, 1792, the same day Kentucky became a state, he was sworn in as its first governor. It was a climatic time with Native American raids, one killed Isaac’s younger brother, and the year before, almost the entire Kentucky militia lost their lives at the Northwest Territory Battle of the Wabash, November 4, 1791. The Treaty of Greenville settled Native American conflicts and Shelby left office and the new state government sound; since the constitution did not allow consecutive terms as governor, he was not reelected in 1796.
Shelby retired to his estate in Lincoln County, Traveler’s Rest at age 44. He worked his farm for the next 15 years and settled in as local leading citizen. In 1812, growing tensions with France’s continuing war with England was drawing the United States into the conflict. Kentuckians rightfully feared war would break out across the frontier and they wanted a military man as Governor to deal with any potential crisis. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on England. Shelby was elected for a second term as governor of Kentucky the next month. Shelby chose future president William Henry Harrison as the leader of Kentucky’s militia then pressured President James Madison to appoint Harrison commander of all military forces in the Northwest. In 1813, General Harrison requested additional Kentucky troops and Shelby raised over 3,500 men. At age 63, Shelby personally led them north to do battle. The campaign that culminated in the American victory against the British, Canadian militia, and Native Americans at the Battle of the Thames, October 5, 1813. With the death of Tecumseh, the Native American confederacy fell apart and England lost control of southwestern Ontario. Of Shelby’s presence in battle, Harrison wrote “I am at a loss to how to mention [the service] of Governor Shelby, being convinced that no eulogism of mine can reach his merit.”
Shelby left office in 1816 and spent the final ten years of his life mainly on his farm seeing to his family and affairs. In 1818, he was commissioned along with General Andrew Jackson to negotiate a treaty with the Chickasaw Nation, referred to as the “Jackson Purchase,” whereby the Chickasaws ceded a large portion of their land to the US government in exchange for a set payment. This significantly expanded the territories of Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1820, Shelby had a stroke and suffered paralysis of his right arm and leg. On July 18, 1826, with only his wife Susannah at his bedside, he died of another stroke. He was buried on the family farm Traveler’s Rest. The following year the state erected a monument over his grave. Over the years family members were buried alongside Shelby. In 1952, the cemetery became the Isaac Shelby Cemetery State Historic Site; Stanford, Lincoln County, Kentucky.
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RESOURCES
American Revolution in North Carolina. “Isaac Shelby”
Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse. 1997: John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York, NY.
Draper, Lyman Copeland. King’s Mountain and Its Heroes, History of the Battle of Kings Mountain, October 7, 1780 and the Events that Led to It. 1881: Peter G. Thomson Publisher, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Henderson, Archibald. “Isaac Shelby, Revolutionary War Patriot and Border Hero.” North Carolina Booklet. Vol. XVI, No. 3 (Jan. 1917).
McCrady, Edward. History of South Carolina in the Revolution 1775-1780, Vol. III. 1969: Russell, New York, NY.
Southern, Ed (editor). Voices of the American Revolution in the Carolinas. 2009: John F. Blair Publishing, Durham, NC.