David Isbell was born on April 12, 1839, in Amherst County, Virginia, to Robert Isbell and Angelina Boaz. His father was a merchant and farmer who owned $5,000 of real estate and $8,460 of personal property by 1860. Isbell grew up and attended school in Appomattox County, Virginia, and by 1860, he was working as a mate on a packet boat.

 

He enlisted in the Confederate army on May 10, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Shoemaker’s Company, Virginia Horse Artillery, later that day. He took part in the Seven Days’ Battles, and he was wounded in the thigh on July 1, 1862, in the Battle of Malvern Hill. The wound rendered him “unfit” for “field service,” and Confederate officials detailed him for duty as a messenger in the Medical Purveyor’s Department in Richmond, Virginia, from September 1863 until September 1864. He eventually rejoined his regiment. At the war’s end, he received his parole in Salisbury, North Carolina, on May 24, 1865.

 

Isbell returned to his parents’ household in Stonewall, Virginia, after the war. He married Laura Stratton on November 18, 1875, and they had at least five children: Martha, born around 1877; Harry, born around 1879; Darnell, born around 1883; Isabelle, born around 1886; and Dorothy, born around 1894. They moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, in the late 1800s, and Isbell worked as a streetcar conductor there. The family also operated a boarding house. In June 1900, they had at least ten boarders, and they employed at least one servant. Isbell died of “carcinoma of [the] rectum” in Lynchburg on July 3, 1912.

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