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Letters of Isaac Shelby, 1864, Accession #10662-b , Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
This collection was purchased by the Library from Charles Apfelbaum Rare Books & Collections of Valley Stream, New York, on February 10, 1986.
These seventeen letters, 1864, were sent to Captain Isaac Shelby, Jr., chief of commissary stores for the Confederate Department of Western Virginia and Eastern Tennessee. Most of the letters pertain to foraging and routine commissary matters in Virginia during the Civil War including requests for various supplies, and reports on transportation of provisions.
Letters of special interest inlcude: June 19, mentioning General James Longstreet's commissary accounts; September 19, Major James G. Paxton to Shelby complaining about foragers from other districts who are imporoperly foraging in his district (Bedford, Roanoke, and Montgomery counties); October 31, Capt. John M. Orr to Shelby requesting more wagons to transport wheat, before Union forces get it; an December 5, Captain James Wade complaining of a farmer who would not sell his wheat surplus to the government nor accept its price offers for the same. There is also a brief letter from John W. Johnson of Abingdon, Virginia, December 28, mentioning the burning of twenty-three houses in the town during a December 15 raid.