Early Life
Isaac Shelby was born in the Province of Maryland on December 11, 1750, near Hagerstown in Frederick (now Washington) County. He was the third child and second son of Evan and Letitia (Cox) Shelby, who immigrated from Tregaron, Wales, in 1735. Though the family had historically been loyal to the Church of England, they became Presbyterians after coming to British America; this was the denomination Isaac Shelby embraced during his life.
Shelby was educated at the local schools in his native colony. He worked on his father's plantation, and occasionally found work as a surveyor. At age eighteen, he was appointed deputy sheriff of Frederick County. Shelby's father lost a great deal of money when Pontiac's Rebellion disrupted his lucrative fur trade business, and two years later, the business' records were destroyed in a house fire. Consequently in December 1770, the family moved to the area near Bristol, Tennessee, where they built a fort and a trading post. Here, Shelby and his father worked for three years herding cattle.
During Lord Dunmore's War, a border conflict between colonists and American Indians, Shelby was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Virginia militia by Colonel William Preston. As second-in-command of his father's Fincastle County company, he participated in the decisive Battle of Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774. The younger Shelby earned commendation for his skill and gallantry in this battle. The victorious militiamen erected Fort Blair on the site of the battle. They remained stationed there, with Shelby as second-in-command, until July 1775 when Lord Dunmore ordered the fort destroyed, fearing it might become useful to colonial rebels in the growing American Revolution.
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