General Evan Shelby, Jr., fought as a Major in the regiment of his brother, Colonel Isaac Shelby, at the Battle of King's Mountain, and received De Peyster's sword on his surrender. He served as a volunteer at the battle of the Cow Pens, and in 1781 under his brother in South Carolina. He settled on Red River where Clarksville is now located, and on January 18, 1793, he was killed by the Indians while in a boat on the river. Phelan records that Evan Shelby, Jr., was made Brigadier General of the North Carolina Militia, and the problem of settling the trouble incident to the rise of the State of Franklin was devolved upon him as a representative of North Carolina. He entered upon negotiations with Governor John Sevier, and on March 20, 1787, he and the Governor agreed upon articles of compromise which in effect recognized both the State of Franklin and the State of North Carolina, in the territory west of the mountains. Captain Moses Shelby served as Captain in Colonel Isaac Shelby's regiment at King's Mountain, and was twice wounded in that battle, and he served at the siege of Savannah, Ga., in 1779, and at the battle of the Cow Pens, and at the capture of Augusta in 1781. He settled in Missouri where he died on September 17, 1828, at the age of seventy-two. James Shelby was a captain in the command of General George Rogers Clarke, and was killed by the Indians. General Evan Shelby Sr.'s wife, Mrs. Letitia Shelby, died seventeen years before her husband, and there is no positive information whether General Shelby married again, but the tradition is that he did, after his children were all grown, and moved away to various States. It is rare in American history to find a man giving not only his own services, but those of four sons to the military service of his country, but that is what General Shelby did. At the Battle of King's Mountain there were seven Seviers engaged on the side of the mountain men. This, the record of the Seviers, is probably unparalleled in the history of the country. THE FRIENDSHIP OF THE SEVIERS AND SHELBYS. One of the things in our early history that we love to linger over is the long, unbroken friendship between the Sevier and Shelby families. Those early days constitute the heroic era in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina, and the task before the leaders called forth marvelous courage, patience, pa triotism and devotion-every great and lofty quality human nature can exhibit under circumstances of danger, terror, blood and slaughter. Twin jewels in Tennessee's history are the two families named, and never, in all the records of men, have any families shown more resplendently every quality that both exalts and adorns human nature. While General Evan Shelby, Sr., was twenty-five years older than John Sevier, they were personal friends in Virginia, before either of them moved to Tennessee, and both were Captains in 'the Virginia line. It was upon Shelby's invitation that Sevier came to King's Meadows at Bristol, Shelby's home, and this visit led to Sevier's becoming a citizen of Tennessee. In 1772, General Shelby, Isaac Shelby and John Sevier went on horseback to the Watauga, to the home of James Robertson, which was the first time either of the three had met Robertson, and they were entertained at his home. At this time General Shelby was past fifty years of age, Isaac was twenty-one and John Sevier twenty-six. When Samuel Phillips bore Major Patrick Ferguson's warlike message to Isaac Shelby, it was John Sevier that Shelby rode forty or fifty miles to see and consult and to devise ways and means to destroy Ferguson's forces. When the time came to fight the Battle of King's Mountain, and money had to be supplied to equip the expedition of the mountain men, it was John Sevier and Isaac Shelby who jointly made themselves responsible to John Adair, Entry-taker of Sullivan County, North Carolina, for $12,735, which Adair had in his possession, and which belonged to North Carolina, and which he loaned to Shelby and Sevier for the purpose of equipping the expedition. When Evan Shelby, Jr., had been appointed Brigadier-General of the North Carolina militia, and there had been put in his hands the delicate negotiations of making peace between North Carolina and the young State of Franklin, of which John Sevier was Governor, he and the Governor met at the house of Samuel Smith on March 20, 1787, and, old and faithful friends that they were, it did not take them long to agree upon a compromise that brought peace to the disturbed border. A critical search of the lives of the Seviers and the Shelbys in every available source of information fails to discover the slightest trace of antagonism, jealousy, or rivalry, or, anything but loyal friendship through years of warfare and danger that were capable of testing the iron in the make-up of the best men; and hence it is that in the Pantheon of Tennessee's good and great and strong, in the Hall of our Immortals, where we transmit their memory to the posterity of all coming years, we can, in the swelling pride of a great Commonwealth, proclaim to the world our exultation in the records which the Seviers and Shelbys gave to the history of the world in what was then the outpost of civilization in the valley of East Tennessee. CHAPTER 22. King's Mountain and Its Battle-Ferguson's Threat to the Mountain Men-Assembly at Sycamore Shoals Col. Benjamin Cleveland-The Return Home-Storm Years After-Bitterness Between Whigs and Tories. It was a significant inscription on the monument erected by the three Chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution at Sycamore Shoals, commemorating the assembling of the mountain men there to cross the Unakas to fight Ferguson. It must have been a very animated and interesting scene on that September 25th, 1780. It is impossible to tell just how many persons were there. It would be very entertaining to know all that was done by the assembled soldiers and citizens. It must go without saying that the dress of both the women and the men was a pioneer dress of make and fabric. There must have been shoeing of horses, and final consultations between friends and families, and numbers of women and children and horses and dogs, and great bustle and animation over the departure. The Watauga River which this assemblage was to render historical in the annals of Tennessee flowed by. Roane Mountain was in the distance; and stretching away is the beautiful Watauga Valley. The fort is there, and John Sevier on a fine horse, such as he always rode, and "Bonnie Kate," and the Reverend Samuel Doak, in his white stockings, and, let us hope, minus that intolerable skullcap with which his appearance has been disfigured in the picture that has come down to us. Nowhere on earth is a September morning more divinely perfect than at Sycamore Shoals, in Carter County, Tennessee, and nowhere has nature more lavishly poured out her beauties. Isaac Shelby has done his part, and has brought two hundred and forty men, John Sevier has brought two hundred and forty men, and Colonel Campbell has brought two hundred men, and before the grand start was made for the mountains, the glad spectacle was observed of Arthur Campbell coming with two hundred more from Washington County, Virginia. There were |