Isaac Shelby Letters
This is an artificially assembled collection of four accessions containing five Isaac Shelby letters. The earliest is a 1796 letter in which Shelby inquires about military lands for sale in the Barren and Green River areas of southwest Kentucky (1VF67M50). Shelby writes at length to Henry Clay about the siege at Fort Meigs on the Maumee River in Ohio in a letter dated May 16, 1813 (1VF67M213). In two letters of 1813 to his son, Thomas Hart Shelby, Governor Shelby mentions the encounter with the British frigate Shannon and the American frigate Chesapeake, and he notes plans for a rendezvous at Newport, Ky. of volunteers who are to be marshalled to fight in the Canadian campaign at the Battle of the Thames (1VF68M105). Secretary of War William Harris Crawford is the recipient of a Shelby letter of July 2, 1815 dealing with financial receipts for treasury notes deposited in Kentucky by the War Department for public purposes (1VF63M206).