Wild Oats cartoonist W.H. Shelton

Artist on the Rocks,
W.H. Shelton magazine illustration

William Henry Shelton was born in Allen’s Hill, Ontario County, New York, in 1840. He enlisted in the Union Army in 1860, was captured in Virginia at the Battle of the Wilderness, escaped from a prison camp in Charleston, and fought until the end in 1865. He served as a captain of cavalry. After the war he assisted in the founding of the Art Student’s League. He was a member of the ‘old’ Sketch Club (which developed into the Salmagundi Club) and the Etching Club. Shelton was employed by the comic periodical Wild Oats as cartoonist (and possibly writer) about 1873 and became a prolific contributor. He wrote and illustrated for most of the major magazines of the day; Collier’s, Scribner’s and St. Nicholas. One November 1895 St. Nicholas serial written by Shelton, ‘The Last Three Soldiers,’ told of three Union soldiers “who become veritable castaways in the Confederacy.” After the turn of the century Shelton made a career as a fine artist. He died in 1932.
  

Tom Clinton, 1892.