The following obit contributed by Find A Grave member Suzy & Rob. Copied from the March 21, 1917 edition of The Christian Observer.
"While sitting peacefully before his hearth at his home near Lampasas, Texas, with his wife and unmarried daughter, Mr. J.M. (Mack) Shelby was stricken with apoplexy January 5, 1917, and, after suffering painfully, but patiently, departed this life on February 26, 1917. John McKnitt, the fourth child of James Madison and Amanda Henderson Shelby, was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, April 4, 1849. While he was quite young his parents moved to Alabama. In his early manhood he united with the Bethesda Presbyterian Church in Perry County, Alabama. He came to Texas with his parents in 1869, settling near Tyler, Texas. He was married December 30, 1875 to Miss Josie Jackson at Overton, Texas. To this union nine children were born, of whom three survive him. He moved to Henderson County, a pioneer section in 1880, being amongst it's earliest settlers. In 1888, he and his wife both had an attack of typhoid fever, from which his wife died just as he himself was recovering. On July 30, 1889, he was married to Miss Sarah Lou Bristow, who, with two of the eight children born of this union now survives him. In 1891, seeking his health, he turned his face westward and settled in Wilbarger County, Texas, again becoming a pioneer. Here by his bravery, energy, tenacity, economy and resourcefulness, he passed successfully through crop failure and financial panics, when hundreds of others packed their all in a two horse wagon and returned East. He was the first man to plant cotton in that section of the state west of Pease River, a section in which a single county produced 30,000 bales of cotton in 1915, and he was the leader in that territory in stock raising and diversified farming. In 1910 he moved to Austin, Texas, for sake of better educational facilities and seeking to retire somewhot from active life. But city life and inactivity chafed him and, again threatened with loss of health, he sought the freedom of the open country and ranch life. In 1912 he moved to his ranch in Burnet County, nine miles southwest of Lampasas, Texas ornamented it with a beautiful country home, stocked it with good blooded hourses, cows, hogs and Sheep, clutifated it with the latest implements and machinery, and highly improved it in other ways, the while becoming happy and strong again, a benediction to his home and a "father to his community."