Isabel Thompson Kelsay was born in Appalachia. In a small local school she fell in love with history and has involved herself in it, in one way or another, ever since. Kelsay holds academic degrees from three universities—Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Columbia. She has taught on the Iroquois at the Seminars in American Culture at Cooperstown, New York, and has contributed to Calendar of North Carolina and Tennessee Papers, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, New York History, and East Tennessee Historical Review.