Isaac Shelby, a soldier, statesman, and surveyor, was Kentucky’s first governor, serving from 1792 to 1796 and again after his re-election in 1812. He came to Kentucky in 1774 to survey the new territory for the Transylvania Company and, in exchange for his work, chose the surrounding land he named Traveller’s Rest. In 1783, he married Suzanna Hart, daughter of Capt. Nathaniel Hart, one of Kentucky’s first settlers and one of the owners of the Transylvania Company, and they began building their home there. Designed by Shelby, Traveller’s Rest was thought to have been one of Kentucky’s first stone houses, with a two-story main wing and single-story wings for the master bedroom and kitchen. The house was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1905 after an attempt to smoke out a wasp’s nest in the attic; although an engineer on a passing train blew his whistle to alert neighbors, too little water and too few people were available to save it. Shelby was prominent in early Kentucky society, taking part in the constitutional conventions that led to statehood, serving as a trustee of Transylvania Seminary, Kentucky’s first college, chairing the board of trustees of Centre College in Danville, and helping found the Kentucky Society for Promoting Useful Arts to support agricultural education and spread innovative farming methods. His military career included service in the Revolutionary War at the Battle of King’s Mountain and in the War of 1812, when he led a regiment to rescue Kentucky troops during the Battle of the Thames near Detroit and won such renown that crowds in Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky gathered to see him on his return. Though he retired from politics in 1816, President Monroe asked him to serve as Secretary of war, which he declined, and in 1817 Andrew Jackson commissioned him to negotiate with the Chickasaw Indians for the purchase of lands west of the Tennessee River. Shelby remained active in political affairs until his death at Traveller’s Rest in 1826 at age 76, and he, Suzanna, several of their children, and close family relatives are buried here.