Evan Shelby

[1] 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,[2] which included perhaps the first distillery in the region.

[3] He led a militia group to the Kanawha River site of the Battle of Point Pleasant during Lord Dunmore's War.

[4] Military service record:[5] Shelby signed the Fincastle Resolutions[6] and actively supported the war for American independence, serving on a boycott committee and eventually taking the lead in defending Virginia's western frontier.

[7] 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.

Handwritten pay roll by Captain Joseph Martin enumerating the soldiers stationed at the frontiers of Washington County, North Carolina , under the command of Colonel Evan Shelby of the Washington District Regiment , 1777. From the Lyman Draper Manuscripts, General Joseph Martin papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin.