[10] As a result of the grant, Shelbyville, rather than the nearby Squire Boone's Station, became the home of Shelby County.

The Science Hill Female Academy was established in 1825 on Washington Street; it functioned as a college preparatory school for young women throughout the South prior to closing in 1939 at the end of the Great Depression.

The Louisville and Shelbyville Turnpike was completed in the 1830s, following a ridgeline path between the two sites dating back to the Native Americans.

[10] In response to the slaughter of 35 Union cowboys by Confederate guerrillas in Shelby County and to William Clarke Quantrill's entrance into Kentucky, Gen. John Palmer placed 30 members of the Shelby County Home Guard and its captain Edwin Terrell on the federal payroll on April 1, 1865.

The men roamed Shelby and its surrounding counties, persecuting Confederate guerrillas and Southern sympathizers.

The Shelbyville trustees aimed to encourage them to stay close to the city, though, paying their hotel bills when they were in town.

On May 10, Terrell and his men found Quantrill's raiders at a barn outside Wakefield in Spencer Co. and fatally shot their leader.

The city came out to cheer the men upon their return and the trustees continued paying their room and board for another month after the U.S. Army paid off and disbanded the troupe on May 26.

Terrell and his lieutenant Harry Thompson had murdered and robbed an Illinois stock merchant named William R. Johnson.

Terrell was transferred to Taylorsville to be tried for a separate shooting, but broke jail with two companions on May 26 and returned to Shelbyville to go drinking in its saloons.

The town marshal George Caplinger organized a posse and took Terrell by surprise outside the Armstrong Hotel, shooting him in the spine, killing his relative John R. Baker, and fatally wounding bystander Merrett Redding.

Taken to Louisville, Terrell avoided trial owing to the gravity of his wound and returned home to Harrisonville in October.

On the 23rd of that month, Harry Thompson broke jail as well and, according to local lore, fled to Texas and lived out his days as the successful farmer "Henry T. Grazian".

[10] The agricultural community – principally producing corn, hemp, tobacco, wheat, pork, and beef[14] – experienced a boom after the war.

[1] The city holds an annual Shelbyville Horse Show, which is visited by many famous people including William Shatner.