Evan Shelby

Evan Shelby (1720 – 4 December 1794) was a Welsh-American trapper and militia officer on the frontier of the Southern colonies.

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."

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, which included perhaps the first distillery in the region. He led a militia group to the Kanawha River site of the Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore's War.

Shelby signed the Fincastle Resolutions 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. 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.

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. The Shelby Family Papers are archived in the Library of Congress.

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