SOME OF BOONE ELLEDGE'S sons wandered to far-off places, the wander urge of their Boone blood driving them on to
new frontiers. Four of them died in other states. The graves of some of them are in Missouri; others lie in the
Sacramento Valley in California. Little is known of them or their families, or of how they fared in the lands of
their choosing, The news that trickled back in those early days of slow transportation told little of their life
stories.
William Boone Elledge, the eldest son, married Tamar Stewart in Morgan county, Illinois. She was known in the early
settlement, is still remembered by some, as "Aunt Tamy" Elledge. When her father settled in Morgan county,
his nearest neighbor was six miles away, and there was but one house, a one-room log building, in the town of Jacksonville.
William Boone Elledge settled in a log cabin on what is now the Ed Bickerdike place in the Bethel neighborhood,
between Griggsville and Detroit, in the early 1840s. This cabin was on the northwest corner of the forty-acre tract
on which Mr. Bickerdike now lives. Here he and Aunt Tamy lived for some time. William Boone and his brother, Benjamin
F. Elledge, farmed together in the summer of 1842 following Benjamin's marriage in the fall of 1841.
William Boone and Aunt Tamy had two children, Catherine and Uriah Elledge. The family moved from the Bethel neighborhood
to Missouri, settling northeast of Kansas City, where numerous of the Boone descendants had previously settled.
Later the Elledge family crossed the plains to California and settled in the Sacramento Valley, where William Boone
and his son Uriah engaged in the dairy business. There, in the Sacramento Valley, William Boone and his wife are
buried.
Francis Elledge, Boone's son who carried the name of his grandfather Elledge who married Charity Boone, came early
to Pike county from Harrison county, Indiana, locating on the Griggsville prairies as early as 1830, six years
before the arrival of his parents. Here in the new land he worked for pioneer Abel Shelley, who had made his settlement
near present Shelley school house, northeast of Griggsville. Francis, on June 16, 1831, chose the daughter of a
Pike county pioneer for his bride, the records showing his marriage to Sarah Philips, a daughter of the Philips
Ferry family. Francis and his wife lived for a number of years in Pike county, where he followed his vocation of
farming, tilling his soil with teams of oxen and yoked steers. He was still living in Pike county at the time of
his father's death in 1841. Later he moved to the newer Elledge and Boone settlement in Missouri, northeast of
Kansas City, and there he and his wife died and are buried. They had children but of them there is no mention in
the Elledge records available.
James H. Elledge, another of Boone's sons, on Feb. 11, 1847 married Mary Simpson, a daughter of Matthew Simpson
and Susanna Orr, who had settled in Griggsville township in 1837, coming from Ohio. The Rev. Charles Harrington
officiated at the wedding which was a double one, the other couple being the groom's brother, Thomas Patterson
Elledge, and the bride's sister, Margaret Jane Simpson. James H. went to California with the "Forty Niners,"
accompanying his half-brother, Uriah Elledge, and the latter's son, Daniel Boone. Returning from California in
the early 1850s, James and his wife later settled in Missouri, where both of them died and are buried. Among their
children were Thomas Boone, Hampton and Rebecca Elledge, the latter of whom married a man named Berry
Adam Douglas Elledge, another son of Boone, married Rebecca Hodges, in Pike county February 22, 1849. They settled
first northeast of Griggsville, later removed to Missouri and in 1863 crossed the plains to California, settling
at Marysville in the Sacramento Valley. Douglas and his sons broke wild horses in the valley and engaged in staging
along the wild mountain routes, encountering innumerable adventures. Adam Douglas died in the valley in 1894, leaving
his widow and six children, namely, Charles W., Francis Marion, James H., Newton Benjamin, Millard F. and Mrs.
Mary J. Spillers.
Charles W. Elledge, son of Adam Douglas, was long a mountain stage driver in the Sacramento Valley, driving the
stage from Marysville to surrounding mountain towns. During the Modoc War, he drove the stage to Dorris Bridge
(now Alturas). He died near Johnstonville, California, July 18, 1914, aged 62 years, one month and ten days. His
brothers, Francis M., James H. and Newton B., settled in the Honey Lake Valley in California in 1872 or 1873. The
other brother, Millard F., and the sister, Mrs. Spillers, located in Healdsburg, California.
Long before Boone Elledge turned toward the Illinois country, his brother, Jesse Elledge, pioneer Baptist, was
shouting the gospel of repentance and salvation in the Pike county wilderness. In the ancient groves, using some
mighty tree for a temple, and in the cabins of the early settlers he preached the message that had come down to
him from his grandfather, Edward Boone, the singing Baptist of the Carolinas and Kentucky.
Jesse Elledge came to this western country in the heroic days of its first settlement. The pioneering French had
been here before and some of them still lingered in their rude huts along the course of the Illinois river. The
year of the pioneer preacher's coming is uncertain. He was here as early as 1822; he may have come with Alexander
Beall and William Elledge and Thomas Cowhick before 1820. They were all related. There are records that indicate
that Jesse Elledge may have been an old settler in the Sangamo country even in 1822.
Jesse Elledge was a morning star that burst upon the dark night of the valley. At least as early as 1822 he had
raised his voice in the wild land, in praise of the Almighty. It was like "the voice of one crying in the
wilderness." Around was a wild, untamed life. Vicious elements dominated the border. Lawlessness had become
so shocking that men had banded themselves together in a secret organization known as the "Regulators of the
Valley." Life was held lightly. Dark deeds were of common occurrence. In this inhospitable soil, the pioneer
preacher dropped the seeds of his evangelism. They rooted and grew.
In the dim records of the early valley there is reference, scant but convincing, of a thrilling conversion by a
preacher named "Ellige," one that apparently electrified the border, kindling the flames of a religious
fervor that later engulfed the settlements and resulted in many a camp and protracted meeting and the launching
of the church. The record refers to the sudden and inexplicable conversion of one of the border's wildest and most
ruthless characters, a man named "Percivale" or "Percifield."
This conversion possibly was a sequel to the killing of Abraham Williams Keller (known on the border as Abe Williams)
at his cabin in the wild McGee country of Pike county in the year 1822. Williams had brought his family in a rude
cart from Kentucky in the fall of 1820, becoming one of the pioneers in the valley of the Mauvaisterre. He was
an outlaw. He at once became an object of suspicion among the settlers. He grew wealthy while his neighbors became
poorer. Livestock was stolen, driven off, hidden in remote places, the brands altered. Crimes of almost every description
were laid at his door. Drinking, gambling and carousing went on at his place at Camp's Grove in the valley of the
Mauvaisterre. The first whiskey brought into the settlement in any quantity was delivered to his place, two barrels
of it.
Williams' place became a resort for the worst characters in the west. Among his wild companions, accomplices in
his various evil deeds, were two men named Henry and Jerry Percifield. The crime that finally aroused the settlement
to desperate action was the robbing of Dr. Newell's house, a short distance above Philips Ferry, during the doctor's
absence in St. Louis. The "Regulators of the Valley" marched one night across the Illinois bottoms, boated
across the river and advanced eight miles into the McGee Creek wilderness, to the cabin clearing of Williams and
his family. The Regulators were led by a mysterious Kentuckian, a sworn enemy of Williams, who had followed him
from Kentucky to avenge a wrong done his family. The avenging Kentuckian was known in the Illinois country only
as the "Wild Hunter of the Valley."
When Williams appeared at the door of his cabin, gun in hand, the hammer raised, a shot rang out and went echoing
through the valley. The rifle of the avenging hunter had spoken. Williams dropped in front of his cabin door, dying.
His wife, screaming, hysterical, in her night clothing with unbound hair streaming, threw herself upon his body,
charging with hysterical sobs that her husband's evil companions had been his undoing. The Regulators, circling
the corpse of the slain outlaw, finally carried him to the left bank of McGee and there, in the dead of night,
buried him. The grave of Williams on the bank of McGee thereafter became known as "the first grave in the
valley." This was in 1822.
It is possible that the converting of one Percifield by Elledge was an aftermath of the McGee Creek tragedy. The
man converted may have been one of the Percifields mentioned in the tragic story of Williams. At any rate, the
conversion of this man seems to have been as spectacular as St. Paul's. It was the first flicker of a new life
in the wilderness. Out of it grew a religious enthusiasm that swept the valley like a prairie fire. Jesse Elledge
became a tower of strength in the pioneer land.
It is believed that Jesse Elledge and his son-in-law, Jesse Scholl, were both members of the Regulators, which
was a secret organization to maintain law and order before the courts became established. The late Samuel Peak
of Winchester said it became well known in later years that Jesse Scholl, who married Jesse Elledge's daughter,
had belonged to the Regulators and that it was always supposed that Preacher Elledge did also.
As early as the spring of 1825, under a spreading sugar tree on Big Sandy, near the site of present Winchester,
Jesse Elledge launched the first Baptist church in the valley. This is the first authentic record of an Elledge
meeting. Mr. Peak remembered having heard old Jesse Elledge say that he had preached among the Illinois valley
settlements a dozen years before Winchester was laid out.
Two grandsons of the Boones pioneered for the Baptist faith in the valley. One was Jesse Elledge, grandson of Edward
Boone; the other was Lewis Allen, grandson of Jonathan Boone. Edward and Jonathan Boone were brothers of Daniel.
Jesse Elledge was a son of Charity Boone, a daughter of Edward. Lewis Allen was a son of Dinah Boone, a daughter
of Jonathan. Lewis Allen settled with his wife Chloe (probably Chloe Van Bibber, a daughter of Peter Van Bibber)
in what is now Detroit township in 1823, being the first settler in the township. His father was Zachariah Allen,
brother of Thomas Allen who married Charity Boone's daughter, Charity (Sarah) Elledge.
Lewis Allen and Jesse Elledge, whose grandfathers were Boone brothers, were preaching at the same time in the early
days of the valley, one on the Pike county side of the river, the other on the Scott county side. Later, both crusaded
for the Baptist cause on the Pike side of the river. These two Boone grandsons married scores of Pike county couples
in the pioneer period. Lewis Allen preached the first sermon in Newburg township in 1830 in a log school house
near present Bethel church, long since decayed.
Jesse Elledge's father was Francis Elledge, a son of William Elledge and Sarah Kindred. Descendants of Francis
Elledge and his brother Joel came early to this western country, until finally the great valley was peopled with
hundreds bearing the name. Francis Elledge and Charity Boone were married in North Carolina in the country of the
Yadkin in the time of the Revolution. They had eleven children, all of whom became identified with the Illinois
country.
The picture of pioneer Jesse Elledge might well be the picture of his grandfather, Edward Boone. Jesse was described
by his cousin, Boone Scholl, as the image of his grandfather Edward. Like Edward, too, he was a champion of the
Baptist faith. Edward was clerk and deacon of the Baptist church in North Carolina where he lived prior to his
migration to Kentucky with his brother Daniel in 1779. "His (Edward's) voice sometimes filled the wilderness
with some old hymn," wrote Boone Scholl. Scholl said that his grandfather Edward was known in the family as
"Uncle Nedda." He described his grandfather Boone as a "peace man."
The only known picture of Jesse Elledge is a prized possession of his great granddaughter, Mrs. Celia Vail Carey,
widow of the late Dr. George B. Carey of Perry. This old ambrotype shows Jesse Elledge and his bride of 1819, Elizabeth
Philips, daughter of pioneer Nimrod Philips of the early Philips Ferry. They are arrayed in the garb of pioneer
days. Jesse's long bar-tie, apparently fringed at the ends, is an outstanding item of his apparel. It was doubtless
the "last word" in its day.
But it is Jesse Elledge's face that commands attention. There is something indefinable in it, something that the
photographer of long ago, with his ancient art, caught and held. It is probably that "something" which
the old pioneer transmitted to his progeny. Mrs. Carey relates that Jesse Elledge's son, Alfred Andrew Elledge
(her grandfather), had one of "the most saintly faces" she ever beheld. He was long a deacon in the church
at Perry.
Jesse Elledge was the first clerk of the Sandy Creek (now the Winchester) church in what is now Scott county. This
church was the mother of Baptist churches on both sides of the Illinois river. The church was organized at the
house of David Casebier in June, 1825.Elledge meanwhile was preaching the Word, using some spreading tree for a
temple. His was a homely gospel, a simple ritual. He urged the sinner to repent, promising hellfire if he failed
to heed. Those early preachers believed in hellfire, and preached it. It was said of the preachers of the period
that they had "chronic dyspepsia and preached hellfire on account of it." Earnest Elmo Calkins in "They
Broke the Prairie," a story of Galesburg, writes that the outstanding facts in the life of George Washington
Gale, early Presbyterian clergyman there, and kinsman of Pike county's pioneer preacher, William Gale, were "his
piety and his dyspepsia."
Jesse Elledge, shortly after beginning his preaching on the Scott (then Morgan) side of the river carried the gospel
across the river into Pike county. On the Scott county side, in the Sandy Creek log church, he was associated with
Gorham Holmes, who in 1828 was succeeded by Jacob Bower, who came up from Kentucky with his family and a number
of neighbors, all of them Baptists. Bower joined with Elledge in extending the Baptist cause in Pike county.
The early life of Jesse Elledge is shrouded in obscurity. He was born during the Revolution, probably in the period
1778-80. He was a babe in arms when his grandfather, Edward Boone, was killed and scalped by the Shawnees. Neddie
Boone was killed on October 1, 1780, as he sat cracking hickory nuts on a stone in his lap at the foot of a tree
in the wild Kentucky land, in the valley of the Hinkston.
He who was to preach the Word in the Illinois wilderness was but a toddling child when his parents fled from Squire
Boone's Station in Kentucky in 1781, his father, Francis Elledge, being wounded in an Indian ambuscade in course
of that flight. Squire Boone, Edward's brother and an uncle of Jesse Elledge's mother, had previously been wounded
for life at the Station during an attack of the Indians, led by the renegade, Simon Girty. Squire had jumped from
his bed at the alarm of Indian attack and in his night shirt had plunged into the thick of the fight. Girty afterwards
boasted of how he made "Squire Boone's white shirt fly."
Jesse Elledge was twice married. No record can be found of the first marriage, which occurred in Kentucky probably
in 1794. Who his first wife was is unknown. His first child, a daughter, Charity Elledge, named for his mother,
Charity Boone, was born in 1795.
In Clark county, Kentucky, on September 2, 1819, Jesse Elledge was again married, his first wife having died. His
second marriage was to Elizabeth Philips, daughter of Kentucky Nimrod Philips, who three years later, in 1822,
started the famous Philips Ferry across the Illinois river, where now is Valley City. The marriage records of Clark
county, Kentucky, show that Nimrod Philips was bondsman for Jesse Elledge for the issue of his license to marry
Elizabeth.
Shortly after this second marriage, Jesse Elledge and his family, accompanied by Nimrod Philips and the Philips
family, came to this western country, following the trail broken by Alexander Beall and Jesse Elledge's brother,
William, who had married Beall's sister, Tabitha Beall. Jesse Elledge may also have come with this party. Edward
Boone Elledge who had married his first cousin, Malinda Scholl, in Kentucky in 1812, came also, early in 1822,
to this western country. At this time, men and women of the Boone line were fast populating the region that is
now embraced in Scott and Pike counties. In that distant period of settlement the waves of Lake Michigan were still
breaking upon the Pike county shore. To the Pike county side of the river at that time came Dinah Boone, the daughter
of Jonathan (Edward and Daniel's brother), who had married Zachariah (Boone) Allen, their settlement being made
in the vicinity of present Milton. Thomas Allen, brother of Zachariah and husband of Charity Elledge, a daughter
of Charity Boone and a granddaughter of Edward Boone, had settled in what is now Scott county two years earlier,
in 1820. Thither also came the Kentucky Scholls, descendants of the Boones and Morgans, the father of the pioneer
Scholls being an own cousin of Daniel Boone, their mothers, Jane and Sarah Morgan, being sisters. The Scholls and
the Elledges, related on both sides to the Boones, intermarried in both Kentucky and Illinois, cousin frequently
marrying cousin. To this Boone settlement in the great valley came also another line of Elledges, descended from
Francis Elledge's brother, Joel, who intermarried with the descendants of Squire Boone, another brother of Daniel
and Edward, their descendants being still numerous in Pike and Calhoun counties.
Charity Elledge, first child of Pioneer Jesse Elledge, was born in Kentucky, August 8, 1795. On September 1, 1818
(the year that Illinois became a state), she was married in Kentucky to her second cousin, Jesse Bryan Scholl,
a son of Kentucky Peter Scholl, an elder brother of Pike county Abraham, whose colorful story has been related.
Jesse Bryan Scholl's mother was Mary Boone, a younger sister of Charity Boone, they being daughters of Edward (Neddie)
Boone, a brother of Daniel. Which brings us to another branch of the Scholl family, that of Kentucky Peter, seven
of whose sons and daughters had a part in the development of this western region, one of them being the founder
of the present town of Perry.