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From: Ancestry.com Biographies ...
David Shelby was born about 1732 in Tregaron, Cardiganshire, Wales, and died Jan 1799 in New Madrid, Missouri. There is no baptism record for him in Wales and it is assumed that he may have been baptized after the family arrived in Philadelphia. He married first Elizabeth Balla, the daughter of James Balla. She died between 1778 and 1783 in Pennsylvania. His second wife was Catherine Bell. She died 07 May 1802 in New Madrid, Missouri.
In 1763, Pontiac’s Rebellion brought attacks on the white traders' caravans as they passed through the Ohio country. To stop these outrages, punitive expeditions were ordered against the tribes, one being headed by Col. Henry Bouquet, then commander at Fort Pitt. With Bouquet were two companies of volunteers from Maryland and one of them included David Shelby. This contingent, a large one, was marched toward the Muskingum River in the summer of 1764, the mere presence of which force was sufficient to make the Indians behave. David came home in the fall.
On the return of quieter times David bought from his oldest brother, Evan, Jr., on May 20, 1765, a hundred acres of the latter's immense tract known as "The Resurvey of the Mountain of Wales," that extended easterly from North Mountain toward Conococheague creek. The next year (in November) brother Evan turned over to him a thirty acre parcel, called "Green Spring," located just over the mountain on the provincial line at the entrance to the Little Cove of Pennsylvania. On which of the two holdings David lived is not clear.
By the treaty of Fort Stanwix (at Rome, New York), negotiated by Sir William Johnson, British superintendent of Indian Affairs in the North, in 1768, a wide strip of territory running diagonally across Pennsylvania west from the Allegheny mountains was opened to white settlement. In 1772, David Shelby decided to leave Maryland and moved over to the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, settling near the Monongahela River in what is now Greene County. Here he secured two three hundred acre tracts, called "Validolid" and "Cross Keys," on Dunkard Creek just below the settlement of Taylortown.
In 1789 Colonel George Morgan tried to get from Miro, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, a grant of several million acres of land in New Madrid district of Louisiana across the Mississippi from the western end of Virginia (now Kentucky), on which he hoped to establish an American colony. His scheme fell through; but his advertisements of it started a movement that continued to draw many of his fellow Americans into the area for some time. Several from far off Pennsylvania joined this immigration, including David Shelby, who, in spite of his age and comfortable circumstances, could not resist the call. Selling parts of his large farm to his son, Jonathan and a David Brown in the spring of 1795 and leaving the remainder of it in the hands of his son, James, old David, accompanied by the rest of the family, including his youngest step-son, rode over the Ohio River to start life a new lifer in what was then a foreign country.
The place where they relocated was on the right bank of the Mississippi River about 60 miles below the mouth of the Ohio in what is now New Madrid County in the State of Missouri. The Shelbys were at their destination by the 20th of May and on July 21st David and other immigrants from the United States took the oath of allegiance to the King of Spain.
By Elizabeth Balla, David Shelby had four children: David, Jonathan, James and Elizabeth. By Catherine Bell he had three more children: Rees, Eli and Mary.
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Abt 1732 - Abt 1802 (70 years)