[4] In 1818, the land that would become Shelbyville was ceded to the United States by the Miami tribe in the Treaty of St. Mary's.

This trail became known as Whetzel's Trace and was the first east–west road into the New Purchase of central Indiana.

Whetzel's Trace was cut just 4 miles north of site of Shelbyville and proved important in the settlement of Shelby County.

Nearly 30 of the 83 people killed were never identified and were buried in a mass grave in Shelbyville.

[10] John Hamilton House, Lora B. Pearson School, Porter Pool Bathhouse, Shelbyville Commercial Historic District, Shelby County Courthouse, Shelbyville High School, and West Side Historic District are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Shelbyville is located in Central Indiana and within the Indianapolis metropolitan area.

30.7% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

30.3% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.

Prior to 1870, five years after the American Civil War and midway into the following Reconstruction era for the emancipated Southern slaves, now called freedmen.

In that year, the state of Indiana required communities to provide free public education for all Indiana children, similar to that already available in most Eastern states since the 1840s, but allowed the various towns / counties to choose whether they would be racially integrated as in the North or segregated as beginning to be done in the coming "Jim Crow" era of the subsequent 1880s and after of a series of discrimination laws beginning in the South.

In the Midwest region town of Shelbyville and its schools were for several decades since the beginning of the 20th century were racially integrated at the high school level, but segregated in the lower elementary grades until opened in 1949, five years before the landmark unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court in "Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas" in May 1954 to outlaw legal segregation.