FAR BACK IN THE DIM PAST, in the days of the Revolution and the years immediately succeeding, the first Elliges
or Willeges appear in history, shadowy figures, dimly discernible, moving like men in a mist along the pioneer
trails. Some of them are to be seen on Boone's Trace; others, two others at least, branch off with another party
seeking a water route westward to the Mississippi.
Daniel Boone has gone before, blazing a history of his passage on the trunks of trees, scratching his sign on boulders
along the way, tracing his way westward "in quest of the country of Kentucke." Crude indeed is the record
he leaves behind him. For instance, this, on the trunk of a tree:
D. Boon Cilled A Bar On
The Tree
In year
1760
Francis Elledge, who married Charity Boone and founded the Elledge family here in the west, is reputed to have
been upon Boone's Trace as early as 1775, helping Boone blaze the early trail, marking fording places at the rivers,
felling trees to make "raccoon bridges" across creeks. A man named James Colk or Calk kept a diary of
one of these journeys:
"1775 Mon 13th — I set out from prince william to travel to caintuck ... Thursday 16th We started early it
rained Chief part of the day ... Wednesday 22nd — We start early and git to foart Chiesel whear we git some good
loaf bread and good whiskey."
Then on again, from the little military outpost, along Boone's Trace. One of the party wanders into the forest
and is lost. They wait; they fire their guns and beat about in the thicket, yelling his name: he is gone, his fate
unknown. The wilderness has gulped him. They move on:
"April Saturday 1st — This morning there is ice at our camp half inch thick we start early and travel this
day along a very Bad hilly way ... we cross Clinch river and travell till late in the night and camp on Cove creek
having two men with us that wair pilates ... Tuesday 11th — this is a lowry morning and like for Rain but we all
agree to start Early and we cross Cumberland River and travel Down it about 10 miles through some turrable cain
brakes ... it is a very raney Eavening we take up camp near Richland Creek they kill a beef Mr. Drake Bakes Bread
without washing his hands we Keep Sentry this night for fear of the indians."
On they go; food is gone. The great forest, full of menace, leans about them.
"Wednesday 19th — smart frost this morning they kill 3 bofelos about 11 o'clock we come to where Indians fired
on Boon's company ... Thursday 20th — this morning is clear and cold. We start early to git Down to caintuck to
Boons foart ..."
Thus, while Francis Elledge is on Boone's Trace, two others, named Leonard and Benjamin, are off, according to
Elledge family tradition, with a man named Donelson, over the water route to the West. This was doubtless Colonel
John Donelson, who bought a flat-boat and set forth, his daughter Rachel with him — "a black-eyed, black-haired
brunette, as gay, bold and handsome a lass as ever danced on the deck of a flat-boat or took the helm while her
father took a shot at the Indians."
All the way they fight Indians; Indians "armed and painted" dog their journey, keeping pace with them
along the shores of the streams. A man named Stuart, following behind in another flatboat, is fallen upon and his
party perishes in pitiless massacre. Donelson's Journal tells the story:
"Stuart, his friends and family to the number of 28 persons ... was at some distance in the rear. The Indians
fell upon him, killed and took prisoner the whole crew; their cries were distinctly heard."
Day after the Indians kept pace, firing upon the flatboat from every point of vantage. Donelson's entries record
incident after incident, escape after escape in this watery gantlet he runs with death. But on they go — Donelson
to found, with James Robertson, the city of Nashville; his daughter, eventually, to take her place in history as
the wife of Andrew Jackson.
There were giants in those days, upon the early trails: Captain Hall, Major Winchester — famous Indian fighters
both; the mighty Major Harvey: "his arm was as powerful as a trip-hammer — an Anak among men;" "he
could take two medium-sized men and hold them up at arm's length;" Colonel Bledsoe and the man Spencer, Boone's
companion, "who lived one winter in a hollow tree, shooting deer that came to a salt-lick at its base."
Mighty men they; but few lived long, or died any way but violently. Anthony Bledsoe was killed in July, 1787, his
brother Isaac in 1793; both, fighting Indians. Two sons died in the same way. Captain Hall was attacked while moving
his family to the settlement at Mansco's Lick; he and his son were killed and scalped. But while these contemporaries
of the early Elledges died along the way, others followed to replace them. One sees them, their figures blurred
and indistinct, moving like men in a mist, their faces turned westward.
And as the emigrants came, following these sturdy trail-blazers, "the brawny-limbed, sturdy husband and head
of the family was seen driving his pack-horse before him, his rifle upon his shoulder, his tomahawk and butcher-
knife at his side, and followed by a stout, healthy, ruddy-cheeked, strong-armed, nimble-tongued wife, with a numerous
train of greasy-faced smutty-browed brats, shaking their tattered garments in the wind."
They came by the thousands, "all sorts and conditions of men; mountaineers from the Blue Ridge and the Yadkin
Valley — ‘the strength of their rough hands could break bones'; pack-peddlers, traders, army men, disgruntled soldiers
— ‘the original settlers comprised a large number who had fought in the Revolution'; farm boys, city men, men of
all trades — ‘carpenters, hostlers, mechanicks'; men embittered, seeking solitude — Aaron Burr, John Fitch with
his despised steamboat model, Fannie Wright and Robert Owens seeking Utopia; proud, fearless men and women with
heavy secrets to conceal — ‘desperadoes flying from justice, suspected or convicted felons escaped from the grasp
of the law ... the horse thief, the counterfeiter and the robber ... ‘By water and by land they came, hammering
their way into the wilderness, pushing on toward the scented River, the dreamed-of Mississippi, that lay like a
liquid spine in the wilderness' midst."
What became of those two Elledges, Leonard and Benjamin, who followed Donelson into the West, is unknown. Perhaps
it was the lure of "something beyond the mountains" that impelled them westward; perhaps it was the sparkle
in Rachel Donelson's eye that lured them to this last adventure. The wilderness swallowed them. Their story, their
ultimate fate, is unknown; but their names have carried on, down through the generations. Every generation of Elledges
has had its Leonards and Benjamins. In Pike county, at Griggsville, there dwells today a Leonard Boone Elledge,
a great great grandson of Edward Boone; and in cemeteries at and near Griggsville are stones that bear the names
of Benjamin and Leonard Elledges of early times, all of them descendants of Edward Boone of the noted pioneer family.
The story of the Pike county Elledges opens on Boone's Trace in the year 1779, during the War of the Revolution.
Up through the Great Smoky Mountains ran Boone's Trace and down along the Watauga river on the other side, to its
juncture with the Clinch, where the way forked. From there, one branch led southward to Knoxville, and so westward
through Tennessee; the other fork turned sharply northward, climbed through the Cumberland Gap and, descending
into Kentucky, curved gradually west and south again; this latter trail became known as the Wilderness Road.
On Boone's Trace, in the summer of 1779, a long pack-train of emigrants from Virginia and North Carolina moved
westward toward Kentucky, at its head the noted Daniel Boone. In earlier chapters, we have seen William Scholl
and his wife and nine children, among them Abraham, Peter and Joseph, and the first Abraham Lincoln, destined to
become the grandfather of a president, moving along the trace as members of this company that followed Daniel Boone
on his last trip out to Kentucky. But just now we are more particularly concerned with other members of that company,
namely, Edward (Neddie) Boone (Daniel's younger brother) and his family, among whom are his eldest daughter Charity,
who had married Francis Elledge back in North Carolina, and who now, with her young husband, is on her honeymoon
on the Wilderness Road, "mounted on a trusty horse and leading another packhorse loaded with family belongings,"
moving at the "rate of only a few miles a day" along the great pioneer trail to found a home in the "country
of Kentucke."
Mary Boone, 15, a younger sister of Charity, is another of the party. Later, at Boone's Station in Kentucky, Mary
is to marry Peter Scholl, who now, at the age of 25, travels with her on this perilous journey. Two other sisters
are along, Jane and Sarah Boone. Jane, in Kentucky, marries Morgan Morgan, and Sarah marries William Hunter. In
the party also are Edward Boone's two sons, George and Joseph. Joseph Boone and the writer's great grandfather,
James Thompson, 12 years later, on a wild November morning in 1791, find themselves thrown together in the furious
rout of the whites at St. Clair's defeat in the wilderness that is now Ohio, and for three days, both desperately
wounded, nurse each other's wounds, secreted in a dense thicket where they escape the observation of the victorious
Miamis, being rescued from their perilous position on the third day following the rout. Joseph's wound eventually
heals but James Thompson remained a cripple for life.
Of this expedition upon Boone's Trace in 1779, Edward Boone Scholl, son of Mary Boone who married Peter Scholl,
wrote, in a letter addressed to Lyman C. Draper, collector of Boone manuscripts at Madison, Wisconsin, and dated
at Griggsville, February 25, 1861, as follows:
"Daniel and Edward Boone with others started for Kentucky. Got as far as Powell's Valley and was attacked
by the Indians. Daniel lost his eldest son (James Boone, born 1757). They then returned to the settlement (on the
Clinch) until they could recoup their strength. There W. Scholl with others came up with them and they all came
through together; the Boones from the Yadkin, the Scholls from Virginia. That was in ‘73 (1773)."
Note: Edward Boone Scholl in this statement is in disagreement with other historians as to the date of the Edward
Boone and William Scholl family migrations. Others, writing of Daniel's ill-fated attempt to take his family out
to Kentucky in 1773, speak of his brother, Squire Boone, Jr., being with him on that occasion but do not mention
Edward as a member of the company.
Daniel Boone, on September 25, 1773, with his wife and children and brother Squire set out for Kentucky, taking
this cattle with them and with pack-horses carrying their bedding and household effects. At Powell's Valley, below
Cumberland Gap, they were joined by five other emigrant families and no less than 40 able-bodied men, well- armed
and provisioned. They advanced until October 6, when, as they approached the pass in the Appalachians called Cumberland
Gap, the young men engaged in driving the cattle at some distance in the rear of the main party were fallen upon
by Indians, who killed six of their number and dispersed the cattle in the woods. A seventh man escaped with a
wound. Hearing the reports of the musketry. Daniel and the other men of the main body hurried to the rescue and
drove off the Indians, but not until the latter had "sculped" their victim. Among the slain was James
Boone, Daniel's eldest son, then 16. The dead were buried where they had fallen, in the Clinch mountains of Virginia.
Although Boone was ready to push on, others of the party, discouraged by this pitiless massacre of the young men,
insisted on turning back. Daniel and his brother, yielding to their wishes, retired to the settlement on the Clinch
river in southwestern Virginia, about 40 miles from the scene of the massacre. Here Boone's family remained until
they were taken out for the first time by him to his fort on the Kentucky river in 1775.
In 1778, while Boone was a captive among the Indians, Mrs. Boone, having given her husband up for dead, took her
family back to her father's home on the Yadkin, and it was when Boone, after escaping the Indians, and defending
his fort at Boonesborough against the Indian siege in 1778, was again bringing his family out to Kentucky in 1779
that he was joined by Edward Boone and William Scholl and their families all of whom came through to Boonesborough
together.
In Draper Manuscripts is also the following with reference to Edward Boone's migration to Kentucky, being a further
excerpt from the Boone Scholl letter heretofore quoted:
"Edward Boone packed twenty-two horses besides what the family rode. His family consisted of two sons, George
and Joseph, and four daughters. Charity married Francis Elledge in North Carolina. Mary married Peter Scholl in
Boone's Station (Ky.); by whom or what year I cannot tell. Jane married a man by the name of Morgan. I never saw
any of them. Sarah married W. Hunter, and had three children, Joseph, Dudly and Marcy."
Of Edward Boone's children little is known, excepting the daughter Mary, whose son, Edward Boone Scholl, founder
of the Pike county town of Booneville (present Perry), has left considerable written record of his mother which
will be given later in connection with the Scholl branch of Edward Boone's Pike county descendants. Seven of Mary
Boone's 14 children settled in Pike and Scott counties; one of them (Edward) founded Booneville, a now forgotten
Pike county town, and another, Matilda, was First Lady of the early Pike county town of Pleasant Vale, likewise
now forgotten. Mary Boone was born in North Carolina in November, 1764, and died in Clark county, Kentucky, September
27, 1825, lacking two months of 65. She raised 13 sons and daughters to manhood and womanhood, and in 1856, Boone
Scholl in a letter related that her youngest daughter (his sister), Charity Boone Scholl, was then the mother of
12.
George Boone, Edward's oldest son, lived on Stoner Creek, Kentucky, where he died at an advanced age, leaving descendants.
Joseph Boone, Edward's second son, married a Miss Fry. Mrs. Hazel Atterbury Spraker, quoting from the Draper Mss.
data, relates that Joseph "was badly wounded in the ankle at St. Clair's Defeat. He crawled off into the bushes
and hid as the Indians passed him in pursuit of the whites. After lying in hiding for several days, he was rescued
and carried on horseback to Fort Jefferson. He settled in Indiana." Boone Scholl related having visited his
uncle, Joseph Boone, accompanied by his cousin, Dudley Hunter (son of Sarah Boone), in Bath county, Kentucky, about
1820. Scholl, writing in 1861, said this was his last visit to his uncle Joseph, who later left Bath county and
that he (Scholl) in 1825 came to Illinois and had "lost sight of the family ever since."
Jane Boone married Morgan Morgan, and settled a few miles east of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where they were living
about 1807. (Draper Mss. 22 S 269-74.)
Charity Boone, according to Mrs. Spraker's "The Boone Family," based on Draper Mss., married Francis
Elledge or Ellege or Willege. "They followed their children into Illinois, settling near Winchester, where
they both died — he first, and she later, about 1853." (Note: As will appear, there is reason for believing
that both are buried in a long-abandoned burying-ground of the Boone kin near Griggsville.)
Sarah Boone, fourth daughter of Edward Boone and Martha Bryan, married William Hunter, had three children, Joseph,
Dudley and Marcy, and was living in Dry Valley, Tennessee, in 1853. Sarah Boone must have been the baby of the
family at the time of the migration. She lived to a very advanced age, Boone Scholl relating in a letter written
in 1861 at Griggsville that "Sarah Hunter was living not long since." She must then have been no less
than 85.
There is a tradition in the Elledge family that on the migration of their forebears from North Carolina to Kentucky,
on one of Edward's pack-horses carrying his family and household goods, slung in a crude basket made of woven hickory
withes, rode the baby of the family, Charity Boone, who later married Francis Elledge. In this tradition, Charity
is reckoned as the last-born of Edward's children; but according to Edward Boone Scholl, Charity was the first-born
of the daughters and had married Francis Elledge in North Carolina prior to the migration. It is therefore probable
that Sarah, instead of Charity, was the privileged occupant of the hickory sling on the long journey into Kentucky
in 1779.