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.