Series: 1 SS (Volume 1)
Scope and Content Note

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.

Series: 2 SS (Volume 2)
Scope and Content Note

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.

Series: 3 SS (Volume 3)
Scope and Content Note

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.

Series: 4 SS (Volume 4)
Scope and Content Note: 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.

Series: 5 SS (Volume 5)
Scope and Content Note: 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.