Summary Information
Draper Manuscripts: David Shepherd Papers
1755-1802
- Shepherd, David, 1734-1795
Draper Mss SS
0.8 cubic feet (5 volumes)
Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Papers of David Shepherd (1734-1795), a distinguished militia officer, businessman, sheriff, and legislator from the Wheeling, West Virginia region. Although military correspondence and records constitute the bulk of the collection, some letters and papers concerning Shepherd's business affairs and family are intermingled. Major topics of discussion include Dunmore's expedition, the Revolutionary War, military matters in the Wheeling area, western defense, and Indian troubles; and military plans and events such as the assault on Detroit and St. Clair's expedition.
Descriptions of the volumes are copied from the Guide to the Draper Manuscripts / by Josephine Harper. Out of date and offensive language may be present. This collection is also available as a microfilm publication. Forms part of the Lyman Copeland Draper Manuscripts. The fifty series included in the Draper Manuscripts have been cataloged individually. See the Draper Manuscripts Overview, and the Guide to the Draper Manuscripts / by Josephine Harper (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1983) for further information. There is a restriction on use to this material; see the Administrative/Restriction
Information portion of this finding aid for details.
English
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-draper0ss ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Biography/History
Born and raised in Berkeley County, Virginia, near Shepherdstown, where his father, Thomas Shepherd, had been one of the early settlers in the Shenandoah Valley, David Shepherd moved west about 1774 and purchased land at the fork of Wheeling Creek from Silas Zane. During the Indian unrest of 1774, Shepherd temporarily went to the Youghiogheny Valley, but soon returned to Wheeling, where he made his residence for the rest of his life. As county lieutenant of Ohio County (present West Virginia) militia, he was in command of Fort Henry during the siege of Wheeling in 1777, personally led a regiment during Daniel Brodhead's campaign in 1781, cooperated with the commandants of Fort Pitt and the western armies through provision of troops and supplies throughout the Revolution, and superintended the defense of the Wheeling area not only in the Revolution but also in the Indian warfare of the later 1780s and early 1790s. At times he also served as county sheriff and as a member of the Virginia legislature.
Scope and Content Note
Original papers of Shepherd (1734-1795), a distinguished militia officer in the Wheeling region of western Virginia during the Revolution and early years of American independence. The bulk of the collection consists of military records, including muster rolls, court-martial records, supply lists, payroll, inventories, and correspondence with prominent military and political figures. Also included are business records and correspondence; land grants and leases; and family letters.
Business records consist of correspondence and dealings with David's brother, Abraham Shepherd, and land records. The letters with his brother discuss current war news, family affairs, his purchasing of supplies, and financial problems. Also included in the miscellaneous pages of a notebook are Moses Shepherd's accounts, 1801-1802, for his milling business. Draper secured Shepherd's papers during a visit to Wheeling in the fall of 1845 (3 XX 45). The Society has an unpublished, indexed calendar for this series.
Administrative/Restriction Information
PHOTOCOPY RESTRICTION: Photocopying originals is not permitted; researchers may copy from the microfilm available in the Library.
Contents List
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Draper Mss SS
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Series: 1 SS (Volume 1)Papers, 1755-1785, including correspondence, military records, and land records. The majority pertain to the period 1776-1780. Shepherd's correspondence mainly includes letters which he received. Among them are letters and orders from governors Patrick Henry (1777-1778) and Thomas Jefferson (1779-1780); more than a dozen letters (1779-1780) from Daniel Brodhead on military matters; fifteen letters (1778-1780) from David's brother Abraham Shepherd, discussing current war news, family affairs, his parole from the British, his efforts to purchase salt, lead, powder and other supplies for the Virginia troops, and his financial problems caused by inflated prices and depreciating currency; and one or two letters each from George Rogers Clark, Dudley Digges, Edward Hand, Lachlan McIntosh, George Morgan, and Dorsey Pentecost. Revolutionary military records are of many types: records for food, guns, ammunition, and other provisions for Fort Henry; a few receipts and a copy of a commissary's account book (the original of which Draper placed in 7 ZZ) kept by Shepherd's son-in-law Francis Duke, who was killed in the first siege of Wheeling in 1777; a list of personal property lost by soldiers in the defeat of Captain William Foreman's company of Hampshire County (Virginia) militia (September 27, 1777); records for boats and supplies for Clark's expedition of 1778; contributions for public salt; commissions for militia officers; lists of men drafted for service; lists of men who united in groups of twenty-five to support one soldier in the Continental Army; court-martial records; and a muster roll for the Ninth Virginia regiment. Also found is a memorial (1780) to Congress urging the creation of a new state west of the Alleghenies. Several land certificates and survey notes are dated after 1780.
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Series: 2 SS (Volume 2)Papers, 1777-1790. Aside from court-martial records, 1777-1781, and business accounts, 1779-1781, the papers in this volume fall into the 1781-1790 period and concern either military matters in the Wheeling area or the business affairs of David and Abraham Shepherd. In addition to his brother Abraham, David Shepherd's major correspondents included Virginia governors Patrick Henry (1785-1786), Edmund Randolph (1786-1788), and Beverley Randolph (1787-1789); Daniel Brodhead; George Rogers Clark; and Secretary of War Henry Knox (1790). There are scattered letters from Benjamin Biggs, David Bradford, Samuel Coleman, John Gibson, William McMechen (McMahon), John Rogers, Van Swearingen, Lewis Wetzel, William Wilson, and David Zeigler; and a contemporary copy of a portion of a letter (May 5, 1789) on Indian affairs by George Washington. Brodhead's letters (1781) concern men and supplies for his Coshocton expedition, and Clark's correspondence (1781) discussed his proposed assault on Detroit. In one of his letters (July 25, 1787), Edmund Randolph commented briefly on the constitutional convention in Philadelphia. Letters by Abraham Shepherd in November, 1788, discussed the forthcoming election for the first president of the United States, with Shepherd expressing the fervent hope that Washington would be chosen “as all friends to their country look up to him once more to save our Country from ruin.” (2 SS 123) Knox's letters (1790) concern western defenses and the command of Josiah Harmar. A few other papers pertain to early preparations (1790) for St. Clair's expedition. Two (1781, 1783) of the three letters by Gibson, as well as portions of several business records, are illegible or nearly so. Other materials in this volume include accounts (which illustrate inflated prices and depreciated currency), printed documents on a land contest between the Fairfax estate and the Hite family (to whom the Shepherds were related), mutilated or fragmentary militia muster rolls, lists of scouts and rangers, numerous receipts for military supplies, and other local records.
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Series: 3 SS (Volume 3)Papers, 1791-1794, dealing chiefly with Indian troubles and measures for defense before and after St. Clair's defeat in 1791. David Shepherd's principal correspondents, 1791-1793, were Benjamin Biggs, Richard Butler, Henry Knox (ten letters), James Marshel, Anthony Wayne, and Virginia governors Beverley Randolph and Henry Lee. Two letters in 1791, one written by Henry Bedinger, the other by George Washington concern conflicting land claims at Round Bottom. Among Sheperd's occasional correspondents were his brother Abraham and David Bruce, John Connell,. John Love, William McMechen (McMahon), John Neville, Zachariah Sprigg, Andrew Swearingen, Alexander White, Robert Woods, and Ebenezer Zane. Drafts of ten letters by David Shepherd to Knox, Wayne, and others are interspersed among the incoming correspondence. Although military plans and events constitute the major topics, a few scattered allusions to other matters occur in the 1791 letters: e.g., Alexander White's comments on excise taxes and Abraham Shepherd's remarks on agriculture, weather, and smallpox inoculation. Ohio County military records include a payroll (1791); lists of men serving as spies (1792-1793); rolls, most of which are undated, for companies captained by Edmund Baxter, Lewis Bonnett, Francis McGuire, and William McMechen; receipts, accounts, and certificates for rations, for medical care, and for service as scouts and spies; discharge papers for several militiamen; two undated petitions from county residents, one pertaining to spy service, the other to a ferry across the Ohio River. Closing the volume is a partially illegible, undated plat of lands owned by the Shepherds and others.
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Series: 4 SS (Volume 4)
: A small notebook in which Shepherd entered records for the service of the regiment he commanded as colonel during Brodhead's Coshocton expedition of March-April, 1781. Included are accounts for horses, forage, and rations and pay and muster rolls for the companies captained by William Crawford, Jacob Leffler, Joseph Ogle, and Benjamin Royse. In later years, miscellaneous receipts and business notations were entered on blank pages; the most extensive are Moses Shepherd's accounts, 1801-1802, for his milling business.
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Series: 5 SS (Volume 5)
: A volume composed of three of David Shepherd's small memoranda books, 1777-1790, bound together. The first and third contain an assortment of military entries and private accounts, such as receipts for rations and ammunition, certifications of scouts and spies, muster rolls, a list of men drafted in 1778, lists of subscribers supporting men in service, and lists of military articles belonging to the state of Virginia. Several receipts bear signatures of some of Shepherd's well-known associates, including Samuel Brady, John McCulloch, Jacob Van Buskirk, and Jacob Wetzel. For each of these books Draper made a brief index. The second memoranda book contains only a list of tithables for 1778.
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