Asher Shelton and Mary Green

 Asher Shelton was born near present-day Stuart, Virginia on the eve of the Revolutionary War. He died 80 years later with the Civil War looming.

What’s Happening?

What’s going on as Asher and Mary began their adult life around 1800?

• John Adams. the second President, had just passed the anti-immigrant Alien and Sedition Acts.
• We are approaching “Your Obedient Servant”.
• The Second Great Awakening swept across the American frontier.
• Napoleon menaced Europe, and Joseph Greenock joined the British Army to oppose him.

Muddy River

Asher was the oldest of Jeremiah and Mary Asher Shelton’s children. He was born in 1772, near what is now Stuart, Virginia in Patrick County, but neither of them existed at that point. When Asher was about 25, he and the rest of his large family moved to Logan County, Kentucky. There’s a story that his father led a wagon train, and that must be true because there were 15 people in the family, so they were a train all by themselves. But other Sheltons, cousins and more distant relatives, also appeared in Kentucky around this time, so they might have tagged along on the trip.

The Sheltons settled around an area where Sandy Creek joins the Muddy River, in what is now Butler County. Sandy Creek drains into the Muddy River, which flows to the Green River, which empties into the Mighty Ohio. The Ohio flows past Paducah and joins the Mississippi river at Cairo, the southernmost point in Illinois.

Muddy River Indeed

Soon after arriving in Kentucky, Asher married Mary Green in May 1798. He was 26 and she had probably just turned 16. Apparently the Shelton and the Green families were close; Asher's brother Joshua married Sarah Green the next year, and Jeremiah Jr married Sally Green a few years after that.

Asher received two grants of land shortly after his marriage, one for 162 acres near Rock House Fork in 1798, and the other for 172 near Sand Lick Fork in 1799, both in Logan County. But Asher does not appear independently in the Kentucky tax roll in 1800, and the Kentucky data in the Census of 1800 was lost. So we’re not sure what Asher and Mary were up to in those years, except that they had four children by 1802, so they weren’t exactly idle.

Asher and his brothers Joshua and Jesse were founding members of the Sandy Creek Baptist Church in 1805, according to surviving church records. By that time Asher was already an ordained minister in the Baptist Church, and he was selected as a delegate to the Baptist Church Convention in 1805. For more, see A Brief History of Sandy Creek Baptist Church: For One Hundred Years, from June 15, 1805 to June 15, 1905. It sounds like a no-nonsense establishment:

During the pastorate of Bro. Talbot there were received into the fellowship of Sandy Creek Baptist church, by baptism, letter and statement, one hundred and fourteen members; dismissed by letter, thirty-one, and expelled, twenty-eight. The following received brethren were licensed to preach: Asher Shelton, Joseph Taylor, Jno. P. Taylor, Jno. Inglebright, E. C. McCoy, and Jack (a black man). Ordained-Jno. P. Taylor and Wm. Childress.

In 1807 Asher left that church to join another, but apparently on good terms because he returned in 1812 to participate in ordaining John P. Taylor. I suppose he wasn't one of the 28 expelled.

Around 1813, Asher and Mary moved their family some 50 miles southwest, near Allegre. In 1813 this was Christian County, but in 1820 it would split into Todd County. Their land was near the Pond River, where it is joined by the Shelton Branch, which of course is named for the family.

It seems that most of Jeremiah’s children moved away from the Sandy Creek area around 1815. In the 1810 Census they had all lived nearby, and by 1820 only Abednigo and Abraham were still there.

The Children

• Asher Shelton Junior (1799-?)
• John Bunyan Shelton (1800-1860)  married Naomi Dunlap. He was a wagon maker.
• Jeremiah Shelton (1801-?)
• Magdaline Shelton (1802-?) married John C. Hearn in 1819. He must have died some time before the 1840 Census.
• Nancy Shelton (1802-1891) married William B Murphy
• Crispin R Shelton (1807-1887) married Polly B Dodd. His father officiated.
• Elizabeth Sarah Shelton (1808-?) married William Hearn (1808-1868). These two are my ancestors.
• Ralph N. Shelton (1809-?). He was living with his parents in 1850.
• Jesse Shelton (1811-1875) never married, and lived his whole life with his parents. A minister like his father, and a carpenter.
• Mary Shelton (1813-?)
• Sarah Ann Shelton (1816-1899) was the second wife of her much-older third cousin Abraham Montegue Shelton. Abe was the son of Wyatt and Mary Montegue Shelton.
• Ariel V. Shelton (1819-1895) married Mary Ann Brown. Wagon maker.

The Marrying Kind

In September 1810 Asher received a license to perform marriages, and for the next few decades he officiated weddings in all the neighboring counties. For example, in 1816 he officiated the wedding of my fourth-great-grandparents Jacob Simons and Jane Harrison in Christian County. The happy couple’s future son William would go on to marry Asher’s future granddaughter Cinthelia. They were my 3rd great-grandparents, so more on them later.

The record from that particular wedding is a typed copy, not the original, but in many other cases the original entries still exist. For example, here’s the wedding record for Asher’s son John Bunyan and Naoma Dunlap in 1825, from the Todd County records:

Asher officiated their wedding and the next one in the book, too. The form of the “return” column varies depending on the officiant; each one seemed to have his own style. So I think what we’re seeing there on the right is Asher’s own hand from 200 years ago.

If you are under 18 and want to get married, you need parental permission. That’s true now and it was also the case 200 years ago. Therefore when Asher’s 17-year-old daughter Magdelene wanted to marry 19-year-old John C. Hearn she needed her father’s consent, and he gave it in a memorable form:

Sir -

My daughter Magdelene, I learn

Has made a contract with John C. Hearne

To dwell together during life;

And thus to live as man and wife.

These my consent shall certify,

For thee to issue license by

That so we may, without a flaw

Act in compliance with the Law.

Thine with Respect,

Asher Shelton

February 8th, 1819

Church Building

When Asher arrived in Todd County in 1813 he became a member of the Mount Carmel Baptist Church. After twenty years in that church, a now 62-year-old Asher and two of his sons-in-law left to form their own congregation, which would eventually become known as the New Liberty Church. The sons-in-law were the brothers William Hearn, husband of Asher’s daughter Elizabeth, and John C. Hearn, husband of Magdelene. Asher was of course the minister, and he brought his son Jesse into the ministry as well.

After Asher’s death in 1852 his churched merged with another, organized for pro-Union, anti-slavery purposes. Jesse continued as minister for a few years and then moved on.

Asher’s End

Asher Shelton died in 1852 at 80 years of age. Curiously, he died without a will, so Ariel Shelton was appointed the estate’s administrator, and William Hearn was the surety. Asher is buried in the Allegre area, near the Shelton Branch that was named after him. In 1994 it was reported that his gravestone, reading “Elder Asher Shelton” was the only marker still visible in what once might have been his church’s graveyard.

After Asher's death the widow Mary Green Shelton and their son Jesse moved in with her daughter Sarah and son-in-law Abraham Montegue Shelton. Abraham would go on to buy much of Asher Shelton’s estate when it came up for sale. Mary died some time after 1864.

Previously: Jeremiah Shelton and Mary Asher

Next: Elizabeth Sarah Shelton and William Hearn