Shelby, John A.

Born: 1831 to 1833 Springfield, Illinois

Flourished: 1831 to 1851 Springfield, Illinois

John A. Shelby, river boat employee, was the son of Mack and Mary (Polly) Shelby, members of Springfield’s free black community. His birth date was recorded variously as February 9, 1831, and February 9, 1833. Shelby was free from birth. In 1840, he was indentured as an apprentice to Virgil Hickox for a term of twelve years “to learn the art and mystery of common domestic labor.” Abraham Lincoln was acquainted with the Shelby family as John Shelby’s mother, Mary, had retained his legal services on at least two occasions, in 1841 and 1858. While a resident of Springfield, John Shelby lived about two or three years with John C. Maxcy and apparently worked in Maxcy’s livery stable, and also lived for a time in the household of Lincoln’s brother-in-law, William S. Wallace. Shelby left Springfield around 1851 and reportedly went to St. Louis where he was hired to work on a Mississippi River boat. Late in 1856, he was imprisoned in New Orleans for not having papers to prove his status as a free man, and Lincoln and other Springfield acquaintances worked to secure his release from jail.

Richard E. Hart, Lincoln’s Springfield: The Early African American Population of Springfield, Illinois (1818-1861) (Springfield: R. E. Hart, 2008), 100, 151-52, 154-55, 216–17; Thomas Moffett to Charles M. Waterman, 20 February 1857, with enclosed affidavits of John C. Maxcy and Jacob C. Planck, 19 February 1857, both attested by William H. Bissell on the same date, Freedom Papers of New Orleans (La.), 1854-1858, Louisiana Division/City Archives, New Orleans Public Library, New Orleans, LA; Shelby v. Shelby, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=140397; Shelby v. Freeman & Freeman, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=140396; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Springfield, Sangamon County, IL, 88; William H. Herndon and Jesse William Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (Chicago: Belford, Clarke, 1889), 2:378-79; Charles M. Segal, “Lincoln, Benjamin Jonas, and the Black Code,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 46 (Autumn, 1953), 277-82; John Carroll Power and S. A. Power, History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois (Springfield, IL: Edwin A. Wilson, 1876), 748-49; Benjamin F. Jonas to Abraham Lincoln.