ABRAHAM SCHOLL'S SISTER, Rachel Scholl Denton (born in March, 1773), replying to questions of Lyman C. Draper,
collector of the noted Draper Manuscripts, in 1844, when she was 71, related many things pertinent to events heretofore
mentioned, her relation being of such importance as to merit a full exposition here. Of the coming of the Scholl
family from Virginia to Kentucky (she was then six years old) she says:
"Late in 79 (1779) William Scholl and family went from Shenandoah county, Va., and reached Boonesboro on
Christmas day and there ate their last bread until raised in 80. Went that spring to Louisville, then called Clarksville
(George Rogers Clark had founded a fort there in 1778), to buy seed corn. That same day (25th of December, 79)
Scholl's and Boone's family passed over Kentucky river about four miles. Boone killed a young buffalo cow and camped.
They cooked their fine beef. Next morning there was snow on the ground; after a little erected half-fitted camps,
made of boards and forked sticks. In March the snow went off (from December 25, 79 to March it never melted off)
and then they erected cabins and stockades with port holes but never was attacked; horses stolen occasionally.
Soon after Boone and kinsman Scholl took up camp they were joined by three or four other families Edward and
Samuel Boone and Wm. Hays among them."
Note: This is an important contribution to the history of the famous station on Boone's Creek where lived the ancestors
of the Pike county Scholls and Elledges on land preempted by Daniel Boone's son Israel who was killed at the Blue
Licks. According to this account, Daniel Boone and William Scholl (Abraham Scholl's father) together founded Boone's
Station in the midst of the bitterest winter of the 18th century, that of 1779-80, on the spot where they halted
and camped to cook the young buffalo cow killed by Boone, on Christmas day, 1779. Daniel Boone and William Scholl,
according to a statement by Rachel Denton's son, D. B. Denton, in a letter now among the Draper Manuscripts at
Madison, Wisconsin, were first cousins, which statement verifies the recollection of the late Hannah Dalby of Griggsville
that Abraham Scholl's grandfather and Daniel Boone's father married sisters, Jane and Sarah Morgan. This apparently
is the solution of the long undetermined relationship between the Boones and Scholls prior to the intermarriages
of the two families.
Continuing her enthralling narrative, Mrs. Denton says: "That cold winter we lived on buffalo, bear, deer
and turkies. All were very lean and poor from the severe winter and the sleet-covered condition of the cane, but
such as it was Boone and his friends furnished a good supply.
"Boone had a considerable supply of corn but had divided even to his last pone with the newcomers."
Of the bloody year of 1782 and of the battles of Bryan's Station and the Blue Licks, Mrs. Denton says:
"An express (a fleet runner as before recounted) came from Bryan's Station. Capt. Wm. Hays (Boone's son-in-law)
went with some 20 men, possibly Boone went but think not, and attempted to dash into the besieged fort; but the
Indians secreted in the corn, pumpkins and wild weeds, fired upon the party mortally wounding Charles Hunter;
and Capt. Hays was shot through the neck and Samuel Stinson had his thigh broke all of Boone's Station Hunter
died next morning when within a few hundred yards of Boone's Station.
"Blue Lick Defeat Five of the Boone's Station men were killed and one, John Morgan, taken prisoner and was
returned. Israel Boone (Daniel's son) was killed and Squire Boone, son of Samuel, had his thigh broken and his
neighbor, Samuel Brannon, gave up his horse to Boone to escape and was himself killed before he reached the Licking.
But Boone reached the Station with his shattered limb dangling in the cane and grape vines and sometimes thrown
upon his horse's rump. Long after he recovered.
"Boone's Station settled on Israel Boone's preemption. In spring of 80 (following the hard winter) Boone
had the whole station engaged in sugar making. The poor miserable buffalo would come to drink the sugar water and
could hardly drive them off, they were so poor.
"In the spring of a year children would gather up rotted nettles, make warp of it and fill it with wool or
more commonly buffalo hair.
"When Boone's brother Edward (ancestor of the Pike county Elledges) was killed, Boone (Daniel) escaped by
killing the Indian dog and reached home (1780) in the night with heart-rending intelligence. Edward Boone left
a widow and five children (one of whom, Mary, married Abraham Scholl's brother, Peter, and another of whom, Charity,
married Francis Elledge and settled across the Illinois river in Scott county where both she and her husband are
buried)."
"The year (1780)." continued Mrs. Denton. "Was a fine fruit year, succeeding the cold winter; spring
came out fine plenty of pawpaws, grapes, wild plums, nuts in abundance good corn and pumpkins.
"Elizabeth Hays (daughter of Wm. Hays and granddaughter of Col. Daniel Boone)," she relates, "was
the first white child born at Boonesboro and in Kentucky and married Isaac Van Bibber (relative of Peter Van Bibber,
who lived in an early day with the Lewis (Boone) Allens in Detroit township, being probably the father of Boone
Allen's wife, Chloe) and moved to Missouri; the next was Lydia Nelson, daughter of Edward Nelson."
Note: Enoch Morgan Boone, who married Eliza Goldman, sister of Abraham Goldman (early Pike county settler), in
Shelby county, Kentucky, February 8, 1797, was claimed by his parents, Squire and Jane Van Cleve Boone, to have
been the first white male child born in Boonesborough. He was born October 16, 1777 at Fort Boonesborough, Ky.,
"in a canebrake," according to Collins' History of Kentucky, Page 600.
Relating the origin of the name of Nolin Creek, background of many a Boone adventure, Mrs. Denton says:
"The bark of the lin tree was much used as a poultice for wounds; and no lin being found on that stream when
some was needed, hence the name. A party on No Lin going to or from meeting in 85 was fired on by Indians and
Betsy Van Cleve's horse shot from under her. She, a young woman, taken; a party of whites pursued, discovering
which, the prisoner tomahawked."
Note: Betsy Van Cleve was a daughter of Ralph Van Cleve, who was a brother of Jane (Van Cleve) Boone, wife of Daniel
Boone's brother Squire and a cousin of Enoch Morgan Boone who married Eliza Goldman; and ancestress of Moses Samuels
who married Malinda Scholl Jackson at New Canton, in Pike county, Illinois, April 22, 1852. Betsy was captured,
tomahawked and scalped when returning from church near Squire Boone's old station, on Sunday, May 23, 1790, when
about one and a half miles from meeting and in sight of a settlement. The Indians were hidden behind logs. She
was still alive when found by another party returning from church but died soon after.
Concluding, Mrs. Denton says: "Fall of 84 Boone and his sons-in-law Wm. Hays and Joseph Scholl went and settled
on Marble Creek, north of Kentucky River, about five miles from Boone's Station, and other families also Scattered
and settled out. There they was not interrupted and soon moved to Bourbon (near Limestone, now Maysville, Ky.)"
Rachel Scholl, from whom the foregoing is quoted, married David Denton, one of the earliest comers to Kentucky,
and they settled at Merry Oaks in Barren county, where they died. Among the Draper Manuscripts are letters from
Rachel's son, D. B. Denton, written after his mother's death and dated at Merry Oaks, Ky., in 1852 and 1853.
And now we find Abraham Scholl after a 46 years' sojourn in Kentucky, at the age of 61 setting out on a long journey,
over dangerous trails, to pioneer a new land in the far country of the Illinois. In a great Kentucky or Tennessee
wagon, with his large family and his household goods and $1,000 in gold, and a number of pack-horses, he sets out
for Ford's Ferry on the Ohio, the chief point of egress from Kentucky into Illinois.
Judge Henderson, writing of the Sangamon country in 1874, thus described one of these old-fashioned wagons in which
the pioneers came out of Kentucky into Illinois in the early 1820s, his description being that of the wagon which
John and James Scott and their comrades brought through in 1819-20, this being the group with which Scholl first
intended to come. Says Judge Henderson:
"Those of today (1874) have but a faint idea of the curious and awkward appearance of those old-fashioned
wagons, resembling a flatboat on wheels, covered over with white sheeting, front and rear bows set at an angle
of 45 degrees to correspond with the ends of the body, and then the enormous quantities of freight that could be
stowed away in the hold would astonish even a modern omnibus driver. Women, children, beds, baskets, tubs, old-
fashioned chairs, including all the household furniture usually used by our log-cabin ancestors; a chicken coop
with two or three hens and a jolly rooster for a start' tied on behind, while under the wagon trotted a full-blooded
long-eared hound, fastened by a short rope to the hind axle; one man in the saddle on the near horse, driving;
others on horseback slowly plodding in the rear of the wagon, while the younger men walked ahead with rifles on
shoulders at half mast,' on lookout for squirrels, turkey, deer or Injins.'"
Over the "Ford Road," crossing the Ohio river to Cave-in-Rock, early rendezvous of the outlaw gangs,
came Abraham Scholl out of Kentucky into Illinois in 1825. With him came his wife, Tabitha Noe, 38, whom he had
married in 1803 when she was 16; also their children, twelve in number, and his eldest son, Morgan Scholl, by his
first wife, Nellie Humble. With the Scholls came William Howerton Wilson, who later in Pike county married on of
the Scholl girls, Matilda. In the party also was Abraham's son-in-law, Marshall Key, kinsman of Francis Scott Key,
who married Scholl's daughter Sarah (Sally) in Kentucky in 1820; and their baby daughter, Amanda Key. The Scholls,
according to the positive statements of numerous descendants, were accompanied also by two of Tabitha Noe's freed
slaves, a statement which, as we shall see later, is challenged by one Scholl descendant, now dead.
Treacherous indeed were the trails of those days, infested by outlaws more savage and inhuman than the Indians
themselves. Those were the days of the notorious land pirates and the equally villainous river pirates, who lurked
in almost impenetrable fastnesses along the banks of the Ohio and waylaid the flatboats carrying settlers into
the west. Dark indeed are the annals of those pioneer roads and many the victims that occupy nameless graves along
their routes.
At Cave-in-Rock on the Ohio river, in Hardin county, Illinois, both the land and river pirates of the day had their
rendezvous. Cave-in-Rock was a deep cavern in the yellow bluff overlooking the Ohio. Here was the most dangerous
section of the river, over which swept the tide of western emigration; here, too, those who traveled horseback,
mule pack and by wagon along the trace, ferried the river. At this point shoals abounded; sand bars lay just below
the ripple of the surface; islands chipped the channel. Landsmen, most of the travelers were, who took the river
route. "As they came poling down, their jerry-built barges swinging awkwardly in the changing currents,"
they lay wide open to the ruthless attacks of the border gangs. Here a whole hierarchy of piracy had arisen to
prey on these early comers.
The first of these ruthless pirates was a man named Wilson. At the head of the maze of snags and rifles known as
the Hurricane Bars, he had taken his stand at this cave in the Ohio river bluff, a cave like many others in those
limestone regions, with deep chambers and hidden recesses and strange rock formations. He posted a sign on the
river bank: "Wilson's Liquor Vault & House for Entertainment." The cave became known as the "Cave
Inn," later twisted to "Cave-in-Rock." Here was written a lurid chapter in the history of border
piracy.
Boat wreckers waited along the bank; watching a boat pass they would sometimes offer to pilot it through the channel.
If the unskilled steersman chose to run the rip unaided, he was more than likely to run aground. If he fired one
of the supposed pilots, he was certain to run aground. Once beached, the boat and its occupants fell an easy prey
to the Wilson gang. Sometimes the travelers would beach their boats of their own accord, planning to spend the
night at the cave and run the rip in the morning. " Next morning another crew would man the barge and a few
more names be added to the long list of those home-seekers who never reached their destinations in the west.
Wilson had a sense of humor; he used to stand above the cave, watching the flatboats drifting down to the ambush.
"Those people are taking their goods to market for me," he would say. Wilson's sway, however, was not
undisputed. One of his rivals was Colonel Fluger, known all through the west as "Colonel Pug," renowned
for his deviltry, as was also his lieutenant, "Nine-Eyes." The notorious Harpes, Big Harpe and Little
Harpe, and their three women, as ruthless and lawless as they, harbored at the cave. Such homicidal maniacs were
they that the spines even of the hardiest outlaws shivered in their presence. Cave-in-Rock became a vertable hive
of western outlaws.
Murder on the wilderness trace was an almost necessary concomitant of a robbery. The traveler then broke all the
links of past and future; he went into the wilderness as into a temporary oblivion, from which no word or other
warning of his passing might be expected to issue until he appeared again at his destination. Such a man, met on
the wilderness trail and merely robbed, might reach the settlements and spread word of the attack; kill him and
the gap between the beginning and end of his journey often remained forever unbridged. Thus it was over trails
infested with bandits with a lust to rob and kill that our travelers started for the far country of the Illinois.
It is known from Abraham Scholl's accounts to the early settlers that he was robbed after crossing the Ohio to
Cave-in-Rock. From Robert Coates' "The Outlaw Years," loaned by William Howerton Saunders of Council
Bluffs, Iowa, is drawn the story of Cave-in-Rock and the piracy that flourished there.
At Ford's Ferry was the home of the notorious James Ford. He was reputed to be a river pirate but this was bitterly
denied by his friends. Because of his wealth and his charming personality he was influential in many public developments
that took place. He constructed what is known as the "Ford Road" (crossing the Ohio to Cave-in- Rock),
and operated a ferry over which most of the migration from Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas passed into Illinois.
Ford for years combined the functions of justice of the peace, ferryman and bandit chieftain. His ferry catered
to the travelers on the trace, his bandits robbed them, his court listened to their complaints. It was an impregnable
position and for years he maintained it with despotic rigor.
Coats gives us a picture of Ford: he was a tall man "about six feet and very strong and broad." His head
was large and his features heavy; "on the whole when in repose he gives one the idea of a rather surly bulldog."
At a row he was a fury. His end came as the result of a split in his own gang. One of his pals, a man named Simpson,
quarreled with him. Ford shot Simpson a few nights later. "As he sat on his porch in his great armchair,"
one of his men approached with a note for him to read. To give him light the fellow held a candle over his head;
thus illuminated, Ford made a perfect target. A confederate hidden behind a bush in the yard shot him dead.
A great mass of legend grew up about Ford. Coates chronicles the tales, such as were told among the early settlers
of Pike county, of how Ford would fasten the head of an offending slave in a vise and then burn out his eyes, tongue
and nose; of how he poisoned a friend to marry the friend's widow; of how finally when they came to bury him the
sky suddenly clouded and it thundered heavily and the devil's hand reached up from the open grave and snatched
Ford's coffin down.
On the other hand was the charming romance of Charles Webb, who escaped from a flatboat attacked by Ford's gang,
dragged himself wounded to the bank, where he was found by Cassandra Ford, the outlaw's daughter, who carried him
home with her, nursed him while he lay helpless in the robber's stronghold and at last eloped with him to the west,
where they married, lived and made their fortune.
The bloody Harpes were followed on the pioneer trails by Joseph Thompson Hare and Samuel Mason; the latter, born
in Virginia about 1750, joined the ranks of George Rogers Clark's "Long Knives," and made a brave record
in the period of the Revolution but later became one of the most desperate outlaws upon the western trails.
Greatest of all the outlaws, however, was John A. Murrel, and it was by Murrel's gang that Abraham Scholl was robbed
on his journey from Kentucky to Pike county, Illinois. Says Dr. W. H. Saunders, a son of Charles and Amanda (Wilson)
Saunders and a great grandson of Abraham Scholl:
"Abraham Scholl was robbed of one thousand dollars in gold from his wagon while enroute to Illinois from Kentucky.
The robbery was one of many committed by the Murrel gang, which was active at that time."