Joseph Orville Shelby, Confederate cavalry commander, was born in Lexington, Kentucky on December 12, 1830. Educated at Transylvania University in Kentucky, he moved to Waverly, Missouri, in 1852, becoming a rope manufacturer and hemp planter and one of the state’s largest slave owners. During the Missouri-Kansas border troubles, he led two armed forays of proslavery activists into Kansas, one of which participated in the Sack of Lawrence.