John W. Shell was born around 1840 in Ohio to Andrew and Eliza Shell. His father was a farmer who owned $700 of real estate and $210 of personal property by 1860. Shell grew up and attended school in Deerfield, Ohio. The family moved to Viroqua, Wisconsin, in the mid-1850s, and by 1860, Shell was working as a farmer. He enlisted in the Union army on August 10, 1861, and mustered in as a corporal in Company F of the 8^th Wisconsin Infantry later that day. In January 1862, he informed his sister that he and his comrades “long[ed] for dixie land.” The “war must come to a close,” he wrote, and the “wisconsin boys enlisted to fight.” They knew that “some of them may meet with their last fate but let it come I repeat it let it come.” He died in the Second Battle of Corinth on October 3, 1862.

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