SHELBY, DAVID (1799-1872). David Shelby, early settler, was born in Pennsylvania on April 19, 1799. He moved to Texas in 1822 as one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred settlers. Shelby took part in a colony election in April 1824, took his oath of allegiance to the Mexican Constitution on May 1, and became a first lieutenant in the colonial militia in June. He and his partners, James Frazier and John McCormick, received title to a league of land in the area of present Austin and Fort Bend counties on July 24, 1824. A post office, which became the community of Shelby in Austin County, had been named for David Shelby before March 29, 1845. Shelby died on March 1, 1872. The Texas Centennial Commission erected a marker to his memory on the Shelby farm near Shelby, Texas, in 1936.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924-28). Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). Harold Schoen, comp., Monuments Erected by the State of Texas to Commemorate the Centenary of Texas Independence (Austin: Commission of Control for Texas Centennial Celebrations, 1938).