EDWARD BOONE'S many descendants in Pike county know little of this ancestor, who, scalped and mangled by the Indians,
was buried by Abraham Scholl and six others on a Kentucky hillside in 1780. From the Draper Manuscripts at Madison,
Wisconsin, and from the letters of Edward's Pike county grandson and namesake, Edward Boone Scholl, and from "The
Boone Family," a remarkable genealogical work by Mrs. Hazel Atterbury Spraker, herself a Boone descendant,
we are able to get a fairly clear picture of this son of Squire and Sarah (Morgan) Boone, who appears to have been
Daniel's favorite brother.
Edward Boone was born November 19 (O. S. ) or November 30 (N. S.), 1740, a difference of 11 days being reckoned
between Old Style and New Style time. His birth was in Exeter township, Berks county, Pennsylvania. He married
Martha Bryan, a daughter of Joseph and Alee Bryan, and a sister of Rebecca Bryan, who married his brother Daniel.
When a small boy of about 10, Edward accompanied his parents on their migration from Pennsylvania to the Yadkin
country in North Carolina. This was about 1750-52. It is probable that he was married on the Yadkin, as it is known
that the Bryan family lived in that neighborhood, and it was there that his brother Daniel and Rebecca Bryan were
married. It is probable too that all of his children were born in the Yadkin country.
Edward's life was brief in Kentucky. He was killed on October 5, 1780, in the year following his arrival there.
In the bitter winter of 1779-80, recorded as the coldest winter of the 18th century in Kentucky, Edward and his
family passed over the Kentucky river from Boonesboro and settled at Boone's Station, where Daniel Boone and William
Scholl and their families had paused on Christmas Day, 1779, to cook a young buffalo cow that Daniel killed, and
where they later erected cabins and stockaded them, with port-holes for defense against the Indians, calling their
new stockade "Boone's Station." Samuel Boone and his family, and the family of William Hays, who had
married Daniel Boone's daughter, Susannah, also settled at Boone's Station along with Edward. Here Edward Boone
was living when he went out one day with Daniel to the Blue Licks to kill game for Bryan's Station.
There are several accounts of Edward Boone's death, handed down by grandsons and nephews. We quote here a brief
account by his grandson, John Scholl, son of Peter Scholl and Edward's daughter Mary:
"Daniel and Edward Boone went hunting, on Hinkston. Found a good grassy spot and stopped to let their horses
graze. Edward Boone picked up some nuts and commenced cracking them on a stone in his lap, and watching the horses,
while Daniel Boone said he would take a round and come back by the time the horses were through picking; and had
scarcely gone when several guns cracked and he soon saw two or three Indians after him. He started off into the
cane and was followed by a dog. Finally to evade him, stopped behind a tree and shot the dog as it approached.
Indians came up and rolled over the defunct dog, looked at it regretfully and departed. Col. Boone saw the Indians
but thought it wisest to remain quiet. Seven balls had been shot into Edward Boone and he must have been killed
instantly." (Draper Mss. 22 S 269-74.)
A more complete account of Edward's death has been left by his Pike county grandson, Edward Boone Scholl, who in
a letter dated at Griggsville August 25, 1854, and now among the Draper Manuscripts, says:
"I think I have heard it repeated so often that I can give you a more definite account than any other I have
ever said, which is as follows: The two brothers (Edward and Daniel) went to the Blue Licks to get provisions for
Briants (Bryan's) Station (which had been settled by two of Edward's sisters and their families and other kinsmen).
"Took five horses with them; got three horses pretty well loaded. Thought they would make out their load in
the Licks and for that purpose struck the nearest course for the scene. Struck the main track 3/4 of a mile from
the Licks and discovered the trail of the Indians. No. 14 (meaning there were 14 Indians).
"There being a light rain they could easily track them. Daniel cautioned Edward to keep a lookout. They soon
arrived in sight of the Licks and saw the fourteen Indians; at the same time they was seen. They struck their course
for the Station and traveled some twenty miles and Edward proposed to let their horses feed. Daniel objected, saying
he knew the Indians knew him and could follow their trail and would make a effort to capture them. Edward insisted,
and they got to Hinkston in Montgomery County, Ky., as now is. They went into the creek, followed the same one
mile, then turned out on the opposite side, unloaded their horses, and Daniel says I will take my gun and walk
up the creek and see if I can see anything to shoot, you keep a good lookout.
"When Daniel got 1/4 mile up the creek he saw a bear and shot the same and at the very same moment there was
seven guns fired at Edward and five bullets entered his body. At the same moment, Daniel looked around and saw
the other seven running right at him. He being satisfied of his brother's fall thought best to make his own escape.
He ran into the cane; the Indians then set their dog on him, this giving them the advantage of the attack. He first
tried coaxing the dog and finally shot him and got behind a tree and waited the approach of the Indians, and in
hearing distance they decided it would not do to follow him or he would serve them as their dog had been. This
was on the 5th day of October 1780.
"He (Daniel) then started to Lexington and got there at breakfast. Immediately they raised a company and Abraham
Scholl was of the company and when they arrived at the place they saw a wildcat eating the wound. I have heard
Abraham tell the circumstances."
Again, on January 5, 1856, Boone Scholl, writing from Griggsville, repeated the story of young Edward Boone's death
in further detail, as follows: "They unloaded their horses and turned them out to graze. Daniel feeling uneasy
said to Edward who had gathered some hickory nuts he had better keep a good lookout and he would take his gun and
walk up the stream, where we presume as appears they (the Indians) was in sight when the two brothers separated
and had agreed among themselves for seven followed Daniel and the other seven crawled so near as to enable five
of them to shoot Edward at the same time. The only thing that saved Daniel was he shot a bear and at the crack
of his rifle the other seven fired at Edward and looking around he saw the seven that was dogging him so near as
to prepare him but made several bullet holes through his hunting shirt.
"He knew what the fate of his brother was and he immediately ran for the cane to screen him. The Indians set
their dog on him and he tried to coax the dog, then to aggravate him, but to no purpose. The constant barking of
the dog gave the Indians the advantage as they could get near him by the barking of the dog. At last he shot the
dog and stopped so near as to hear the Indians consult and say that he would kill them all if they followed him;
so decided if they followed to shoot and run in the cane and hide and shoot as they would have to follow his track
and he could watch his back track and shoot the whole of them.
"He then started for Lexington and traveled by (staves). He arrived in Lexington while they was at breakfast
and they immediately raised a company and when they got to the place there was a wildcat eating at the wound in
the breast; for the Indians had scalped Edward. They then buried him on the side of the hill. I have been past
the place when a boy several times."
Statements of Rachel Denton (Abraham Scholl's sister) made in 1844 when she was 71 throw some light upon Edward's
settlement at Boone's Station and the hard life the family endured there in the terrible winter of 1779-80. Boone's
Station, settled on the pre-emption of Israel Boone (Daniel's son who was killed at the battle of the Blue Licks
in 1782), was several miles northwest of Boonesborough and about 12 miles southeast of Lexington, the location
being within then Fayette county and near the site of Athens in present Fayette. Said Mrs. Denton:
"Soon after Boone and kinsman Scholl took up camp (at Boone's Station) they were joined by three or four other
families, Edward and Samuel Boones, Wm. Hays (Boone's son-in-law) among them. That cold winter lived on Buffalo,
bear, deer and turkies. All were very lean and poor from the severe winter and 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 new comers.
"In the spring of 80, 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 filled it with wool or more commonly buffalo hair.
"When Boone's brother Edward was killed, Boone escaped by killing the Indian dog and reached home in the night
with the heart rendering intelligence. Edward left a widow and five children." (Note: Edward had six children,
all living at the time of his death.)
Edward Boone was a Baptist. In Kentucky he espoused the Baptist faith and back in North Carolina he had been a
sturdy adherent thereto and was prominent in Baptist councils. Said Edward Boone Scholl:
"E. Boone migrated at the same time with his brother and the Scholls. He was Clerk and Deacon of the Baptist
church in North Carolina. Everybody called him Uncle Nedda. He was never in any encounter that I heard of. He was
a peace man."
Edward Boone, according to Boone Scholl, had gone out with Daniel to kill game for Briants (Bryan's) Station when
he was killed by the Indians. Bryan's Station was on Elkhorn Creek in Fayette county, about five miles from Lexington
and not far from Boone's Station where Edward and his family lived. Several of Edward's kin had settled at Bryan's,
among them two of his sisters, Mary Boone (wife of William Bryan) and Elizabeth Boone (wife of William Grant).
It is probable that William Bryant and his wife, Rachel Wilcoxson (or Wilcoxsen), daughter of John Wilcoxson and
Edward's sister Sarah Boone, and therefore a niece of Edward, had also settled at this place; and it may be from
this settlement of the Bryants that confusion arose regarding the Station's name, sometimes (as by Boone Scholl)
called Bryant's or Briants.
Bryan's Station had been settled as early as March, 1776, by four Bryan brothers from North Carolina, who were
sons of Morgan and Martha (Strode) Bryan and uncles of Edward Boone's wife, Martha Bryan, and also of Daniel Boone's
wife, Rebecca. One of these Bryan brothers, William, was Edward Boone's brother-in-law, having married Edward's
sister, Mary Boone, who was born in 1736 and died in 1819 at the age of 83, and who is reputed in Lewis family
tradition to have first married James Lewis, kinsman of the Lewis pioneers at Pleasant Hill.
The Bryans, making camp on the north fork of the Elkhorn, near where the historic battle of Blue Licks later took
place (August 19, 1782), cleared 60 acres and planted corn, and leaving two men to look after the crop returned
to North Carolina to bring out their families the following fall (1776); but the Cherokees had commenced war against
Virginia and the North and South Carolina frontiers, preventing the Bryans' return until April, 1779, when again
at the Bryan camp they erected a small fort, put in a corn crop and returned to North Carolina to remove their
families to the Station, leaving several, including Samuel Bryan and William Grant (the latter Edward Boone's brother-in-law),
with their respective families to protect the fort. In the summer of 1779, Joseph, Morgan and James Bryan and their
families and a number of their neighbors all emigrated to Kentucky and settled at Bryan's Station. This was a frontier
post and greatly exposed to the hostilities of the savages. (Spraker: "The Boone Family.")
Several noted Kentuckians fell victims to savage attack in 1780, the year in which Edward Boone was killed. In
the spring of that year, the noted Colonel Richard Callaway was killed at Boonesborough. On May 1 that year, the
elder William Bryan, husband of Edward's sister Mary, was wounded in an encounter with Indians while out hunting
with eleven other men from Bryan's Station in quest of meat for their families; he died in the Station a few days
later, May 7, 1780. In the same encounter, Bryan's young son, William, Jr., was killed. The Bryans then left Kentucky,
returning to North Carolina where they remained until the Indian troubles were over.
When Edward Boone was killed a party of men from several stations in the vicinity was formed to go out and bring
in Edward's body and pursue the Indians and avenge his death. With this party was Daniel Boone, Daniel's son Israel
(who fell later at Blue Licks) and Peter Scholl, who later married Edward's daughter Mary, and Peter's brother
Abraham, the Pike county pioneer. They failed to overtake the Indians who had slain Edward.
Edward Boone's wife, Martha (Bryan) Boone, probably was still in her thirties when her husband was killed. She
never remarried. The date of her death is uncertain. She is known to have resided on Boone's Creek in Fayette county,
Kentucky, after her husband's death, as her grandson, John Scholl, remembered being taken as a small boy to visit
her there, and though it was about 1795. Edward Boone Scholl said: "His (Edward's) widow died at her oldest
son's, George Boone's, at the mouth of Boone's Creek, Clark county, Kentucky."
Martha Boone's will, signed by her May 12, 1793, is of record in Kentucky. Following is a copy of her will, as
it appears in Mrs. Spraker's "The Boone Family":
"In the name of God Amen, I Martha Boone of Clarke County and State of Kentucky being sick in body but of
perfect mind and memory thanks be to Almighty God I calling to mind the certainty of death and that all people
once must assuredly die when it shall please God to call do constitute ordain and declare this to be my last Will
and Testament in the form and manner following, revising and disannulling by these presents all and Every Testament,
Will and Wills heretofore made by me either by word or writing this only to be taken for my last Will and Testament
and none other to be considered as my Will intent ir desire and for what worldly goods and chattels it has pleased
God help me with shall be disposed of in form and manner following, first I do positively order that all just debts
and demands owed either by right or conscience to any person or persons shall well and truly be paid or satisfied
as soon as convenient after my decease by my son George Boone. Item I give and bequeath unto my daughter Charity
Elledge all my right and interest in that tract or parcel of land on which she now lives containing by estimation
one hundred and twenty-five acres or more or less with all its appurtenances free to her and her heirs forever.
Item I give and bequeath unto my daughter Jane Morgan my negro woman named Lilly. Item I give and bequeath unto
my daughter Mary Scholl one horse colt one year old at present came of the dun mare. Item I give and bequeath unto
my son Joseph Boone one sorrell filly three years and one young cow and calf. Item I give and bequeath unto my
daughter Sarah Hunter one small mare named bon and the colt to her son Joseph Hunter. Item I give and bequeath
all my wearing appearell to my four daughters they taking choice of garments by Seniority according to their age.
Item I give and bequeath unto my son George Boone all the remainder and remainders of my lands, negroes, goods
and chattels whatsoever that is not mentioned. Lastly I do make constitute and appoint John Morgan, Junr., executor
of this my last will and testament and trustee for the same.
"In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this twelfth day of May in the year of our Lord one
thousand seven hundred and ninety-three.
her
MARTHA X BOONE"
mark
This will is attested by John Morran, William Craycraft and John Stilwell, the latter by mark.
Edward and Martha Boone's eldest daughter Charity, who was 20 when her father was killed, is believed to be buried
in a lost grave in the old Benjamin Elledge cemetery on the farm now occupied by Glen Riley, northeast of Griggsville.
Benjamin Elledge (kinsman of that Benjamin who followed Donelson), who, with numerous of his descendants is also
buried there, was her son. The only relic betraying that a daughter of the Boones may sleep there is a fragment
of stone found in a farm driveway (site of the early cemetery) on which may still be deciphered this much of an
inscription: "- - ity, wife of - - -." This fragment probably is from a stone that marked the grave of
"Charity, wife of Francis Elledge," who was the daughter of Edward and Martha (Bryan) Boone. Benjamin
Elledge had a daughter Charity, named for his mother, Charity Boone, but she died and was buried in Indiana.
Color of the belief that here is the burial place of Francis Elledge and Charity Boone is lent by the statement
of the late Samuel Peak, who died at Winchester, Illinois, November 17, 1936, at the age of 96, and who in his
youth knew Francis Elledge's son, old Jesse (Preacher) Elledge. Said he: "I remember that old Jesse Elledge
was a Boone and of hearing that his father married some Boone daughter somewhere in the south, who died over in
Pike county and was buried there."
IT IS SUPPOSED THAT those two Elledges (Benjamin and Leonard) who took the water route westward with Donelson were
brothers of Francis Elledge whom we have already met on Boone's Trace. In the same year (1779) in which we discover
Francis Elledge and Charity Boone, with her parents and brothers and sisters upon the Wilderness Road, we find
these two other Elledges setting forth with Donelson, in a flotilla of open boats, a 2,000 mile journey through
hostile Indian country, down the wild Tennessee to the Ohio and up the Cumberland to French Lick (site of present
Nashville).
Whether these two Elledges endured to the end of the journey is unknown. Many who started, died along the way.
They may have perished with Stuart, commander of the boats, who "with his friends and family to the number
of 28" were victims of Indian massacre; they may have fallen at any one of many points of attack along the
journey, under the pitiless fire of pursuing savages; they may have reached "journey's end" and have
walked the streets of that early metropolis of the middle valley the Town of Nashville meeting place of both
forks of Boone's Trace; which not long after its founding boasted a population of near 1,000 inhabitants, housed
in cabins "built of cedar logs with stone or mud chimneys," and with a postoffice and a general store
run by Lardner Clark, Esq., "Merchant and Ordinary Keeper"; a town boasting "more wheeled vehicles
than any other frontier town."
Perhaps those two Elledges, if they could but speak, could tell of old Timote DeMonbreun, the French-Canadian trader,
who as early as 1760 had come down from Canada and established a trading-camp with the Indians on the site where
Donelson and Robertson founded the town of Nashville, and who, taking up residence in the new town, strolled of
a sunny day in the public square, "wearing knee-breeches with silver buckles," for "even to the
end he favored the old-time clothes," showing off his "plump, well-shaped leg."
Note: DeMonbreun was credited with being the first white man to enter Middle Tennessee, and the town was at first
called French Lick in his honor, but even he could remember that there had been others. On his first voyage, he
stumbled on a small party of wanderers. There were five men and a woman, and there had been a sixth the woman's
husband: he had fallen sick a while back and they had left him to die; a healthier member of the party had claimed
the bride. DeMonbreun went on his way; the next day he found the man's body and buried him. The others had been
heading vaguely westward; they were never heard of again. "This," the old trader used to say, "was
no doubt the first white woman ever seen in Tennessee." (Robert Coates: "The outlaw Years.")
If those two Elledges of that momentous expedition of 1779 endured to the end, they must have shared with Donelson
and the others those adventures along the way of which Donelson has written in his "Journal of a Voyage, intended
by God's permission, in the good boat Adventure." This, from Donelson's Journal:
"Wed. 8th. Cast off at 10 o'clock..... We had not gone far before we discovered a number of Indians, armed
and painted"....
The boats sweep on, down the Tennessee: "The Indians follow, keeping pace along the bank, growing continually
in force: occasionally, where the banks narrow, their bullets thwack against the boat's planking; occasionally,
from some sheltered cove, a fleet of war canoes comes dashing to swarm about the clumsy barge....
"All these skirmishing attacks are repulsed; the men crouch at the boat's bulwarks, firing, passing down their
muskets through the cabin ports for the women to reload. But still the main force of the Indian army marches along
the shore abreast of them, waiting patiently for the moment when snagged, beached or stranded the boat will
be helpless against attack."
(Coates: "The Outlaw Years.")
Again Donelson, in his Journal:
"Monday. Got under way before sunrise.... We still perceived them (the Indians), marching down the river in
considerable bodies...."
And now the air on the river grows chill; the great American winter is approaching:
"Captain Hutchins' negro man died, being much frosted in his feet and legs, of which he died.... The Indians
keeping pace with us....
Friday. We landed on the north shore at a level spot when the Indians appeared immediately over us, and commenced
firing down upon us. We immediately moved off....
"The Indians lining the bluffs along continued their fire on our boats below, without doing any other injury
than wounding four...."
At last the Indians are left behind; and then a new danger appears: "jagged rocks fill the channel and the
current, where it is not boiling over hidden snags, has accelerated to that silent rush that rivers take as they
approach a waterfall. They are nearing the Muscle Shoals."
Says Donelson: "After running until 10 o'clock came in sight of the Shoals. When we approached them they had
a dreadful appearance.... The water being high made a terrible roaring...."
Coates depicts the scene of tumult:
"Every man takes an oar, the women helping: the clumsy flat-boat swings into the current, yaws, and then suddenly
is gripped by the water's force and flung rocking and careening down among the rapids. It goes scraping, straining,
bumping....there are quick cries of command, frenzied heavings at the oars: over all there is the ominous dull
thunder of the boiling river and then at last with a sighing satisfaction they are safe again."
"....Passed by the hand of Providence," says Donelson. "We are much encouraged."
Days pass; they reach the Ohio, but in what a pitiable condition food, strength, courage exhausted:
"....Our situation here is truly disagreeable.... our provisions exhausted, the crews almost worn down with
hunger and fatigues, and know not what distance we have to go, or what time it will take us...."
But on they go, up the Ohio, to the mouth of the Cumberland:
"Sunday, 26 Got under way early....
"Monday, 27 Set out again; killed a swan, which was very delicious....
"Wednesday, 29 Proceeded. Gathered some herbs on the bottoms which some of the company called Shawnee Sallad....
"Friday, 31 Proceeded on. We are now without bread, worn out....progress is slow--"
So runs the record of that perilous adventure to which those early Elledges committed themselves in the time of
the Revolution. On Holston, at Fort Patrick Henry, they had started, bidding farewell to the older settlements
their faces westward where lay the far-off Mississippi. Down the Tennessee, and on the waters of the Ohio, and
up the Cumberland two thousand miles, in open boats, facing the incessant peril of the wilderness, with spirits
indomitable an epic of pioneer resolution. This was in 1779-80.
Boone Scholl, Illinois pioneer of 1825, related of these early Elledges:
"Charity Boone (Scholl's aunt), married Francis Elledge about 76 (1776) in North Carolina. They lived in
Fayette and Clark county, Ky., and had a large family, most of them settling in Indiana and Illinois. The Elledges
came from Virginia and North Carolina. They came out early, some of them with Boone, others by water with a man
named Donaldson (Donelson). I heard it said that one of them along about the time or a few years before I was born
was helping run a ferry across the river where St. Louis is." (Note: Edward Boone Scholl was born in 1801.)
Boone Scholl's account leaves us in the dark as to the identity of this early St. Louis Elledge, whom he mentions
elsewhere as a singing Elledge." Perhaps he was among those who "sang and hallooed at the sweep"
as the rude ferry of those days plied between the American and the Spanish shores, for what is now Missouri was
then under Spanish dominion. Later we shall see another "singing Ellegde," long a resident of the Griggsville
neighborhood, who, in his blind old age, sang his sorrows away; who ever, as his daughter says, "sang while
death came for him."
The Boones and their kin often raised their voices in song; of Edward, the Elledge Kentucky ancestor, it has been
written that he "sometimes filled the wilderness with some old hymn of the Saviour." Daniel's voice,
too, was often heard in song on the wild frontier. A daughter of that Elledge "exile into darkness" mentioned
above, writes: "I like that story of Daniel Boone where his brothers and others of a searching party found
him alone in his rude shack in the then wilderness of Kentucky, lying on the floor of this hut, his arms crossed
beneath his head, singing at the top of his voice!" Evelyn Thayne Elledge (Mrs. E. E. Boone), Hibbing, Minnesota.
Perhaps the "singing Elledge of the early St. Louis Ferry" was one of those two Elledges who had come
out with Donelson in 1779-80 and who, surviving the perils of the wilderness streams, had at last reached the "scented
Mississippi." Perhaps it was Charity Boone's son James, who tarried in Pike county in early days and died
in Grant county, Territory of Wisconsin, in 1847, and whose son, Banner Boone Elledge, entered, with Abraham Scholl,
a quarter section of land one mile north of Griggsville in 1834.
From Boone Scholl's account, it follows that this Elledge of whom he speaks must have been associated with either
Piggott or Campbell in the operation of the early St. Louis ferry. If so, he was identified with the beginning
of one of the great business romances of the West.
On January 5, 1795, when John Baptist Lewis (kinsman of the pioneer Pleasant Hill Lewises), whose daughter five
years later married a son of Daniel Boone, reached the Illinois bank of the Mississippi opposite St. Louis, with
his family and huge Kentucky wagon, there was no ferry to take him across to the Upper Louisiana side (St. Louis,
under Spanish dominion, was then the capital of Upper Louisiana), and much time was taken in building a ferry of
canoes and logs together with hickory withes in order to make the crossing.
In 1797, in consideration, it is said, of an annual stipend of fowls and wild game, Captain James Piggott obtained
from Zenon Trudeau, Spanish commandant of Upper Louisiana, the privilege to establish a crude ferry, operated by
means of hollowed logs or pirogues, between Illinois and St. Louis. Thus was established St. Louis' first ferry
which today, as the Wiggins Ferry, is one of the oldest institutions of St. Louis and one of the wealthiest monopolies
in the West.
Piggott also was founder of Illinoistown, now East St. Louis. He is said to have been born in Connecticut and to
have engaged in privateering during the Revolution. He served under General St. Clair and, according to tradition,
under Washington. He was commissioned captain August 9, 1776, and resigned from the army October 22, 1777. He is
said to have joined Clark's expedition to the Northwest and to have served through the Kaskaskia campaign. He was
a colonist at Fort Jefferson, near the mouth of the Ohio, and in command, as tradition has it, during the severe
siege of the Chickasaw Indians.
After the siege, Piggott moved to Kaskaskia and in 1783 built Piggott's Fort, or the Fort of the Grand Ruisseau,
reputed the largest fortification erected by the Americans in Illinois. In 1787, when the Northwest Territory was
created, St. Clair, appointed governor, made Piggott judge of the county court at Cahokia. In the winter of 1792-93
he erected a log cabin on the site of East St. Louis. In 1795, after Mad Anthony Wayne's successful campaign against
the Indians, he removed his family from the fort to the site of future Illinoistown, where he completed a road
and a bridge over Cahokia Creek and established a ferry from Illinois to the Missouri shore and in 1797 petitioned
for the exclusive right to collect ferriage at St. Louis, then under the dominion of the Spanish crown.
Wooden pirogues, manned by strong-armed Creoles, comprised the ferry; a railed platform across the pirogues carried
stock and the crude craft with its cargo was propelled across the river by means of long poles or sweeps. So narrow
was the ferry in Piggott's day that persons on either shore could easily make him hear the old-time shout of "O--ver!"
Piggott operated the ferry until his death in Illinois in 1799. It then became known for a time as Campbell's Ferry,
until about 1820 when it was acquired by Samuel Wiggins. Wiggins added a boat propelled by horsepower but continued
to employ Creole from Cahokia to ferry the passengers and stock by canoes lashed together. In 1828 he added the
St. Clair, the first steam ferry on the river.
So effective was the ferry service that not until 1874, seventy-seven years after the founding of Piggott's Ferry,
was St. Louis served by a bridge. (The foregoing story of Piggott and the St. Louis Ferry from the historical writings
of Floyd C. Shoemaker, secretary of the Missouri State Historical Society.)
While Benjamin and Leonard Elledge, first known of those names, were westward bound with Donelson, Francis Elledge,
and his wife Charity Boone, founded a home in the Kentucky wilderness. There, on the bank of Boone's Creek, they
raised a large family of children. They were living there, on Edward Boone's preemption, when Charity's father
was killed by the Indians in 1780. They were still living there in 1793, when Edward Boone's widow made her will,
leaving to her daughter Charity Elledge the 125-acre tract on which the Elledges then resided.
Whether Francis Elledge participated in the battle of the Blue Licks, the records do not disclose. Since he resided
in the vicinity of the battle and not far from Bryan's Station, which housed some of his wife's kinsmen, it is
probable that he was among those who pursued the Indians after their attack on Bryan's, which pursuit culminated
in the disastrous Blue Licks Defeat. It is likewise probable that Charity Elledge and her first-born children sought
protection behind the stockades of either Boone's or Bryan's Station at the time of this Indian invasion. It was
at this critical period in Kentucky history that Charity's son, Benjamin Elledge, Griggsville pioneer of more than
a century ago, was born.
Something of the atmosphere surrounding Edward Boone and his family and the family of Francis Elledge in those
early days of Kentucky history may be had from the account of Edward's nephew and Charity Elledge's cousin, Daniel
Bryan, son of William Bryan and Mary Boone, given in an interview about 1844 or 45, by Rev. John D. Shane, who
died in Cincinnati and whose notes were purchased by De. Draper, being now among the Draper Manuscripts in the
Wisconsin State Historical collection. Said he (Draper Mss. 22 C 14):
"My father William Bryan (Edward Boone's brother-in-law) came out as far as Holston (1776) and there taking
sick, turned back, but sent on the negroes, two men. My father sent out two negroes with the company that settled
first at Bryan's Station to open the place. The station was named after himself (my father) and several of his
brothers, but he was the principal. Each man had two acre lots.
"A part of the company that was out in 1776, including my father and myself and some others, now came on again
in the spring of 1779, put up some cabins and houses and stockaded a little fort. My brother Samuel Bryan, Mr.
William Grant (another of Edward Boone's brothers-in-law) and Mr. Stephen Jones brought their families out in the
spring.
"I came out in 1779 to make corn at Bryan's in order to make corn for my father to move his family there in
1779 (April). The station was commenced in a short time. Cabins were built, but not more than a half dozen. I think
there were only four, but some of them were double cabins. The space between was stockaded. The enclosure at first
was only about thirty yards square, oblong east and west. In the fall it was enlarged to upwards of 100 yards,
making near 200 yards in all length, that fall and spring. But this was not all stockaded in until after Martin's
and Ruddle's were taken in the fall of 1780. (Note: It was at the fall of Ruddle's that Stephen Ruddle, who preached
the first sermon in north Pike county at Abraham Scholl's house in 1826, was captured and carried away into 16
years of Indian captivity.)
"In the fall of 1780, after the attack on Martin's and Ruddle's Stations, my mother (Mary Boone Bryan, sister
of Edward Boone and aunt of Charity Elledge) returned from the troubles of Kentucky to the troubles of North Carolina.
The man who bought our place in North Carolina was from Virginia. He hadn't paid for the place, and was anxious
to give it up, that he might get rid of the difficulties with the British and Tories and return to Virginia. We
traded to him the packhorses we had returned to North Carolina on, for the truck and corn, and then we remained
there in the old house until the fall of 1785. We then came back to Kentucky and lived in Daniel Boone's house
on Marble Creek (the one he left to go a mile, etc.) Many others with my mother (had) dispersed, some to Va. And
some to N. C. and perhaps all would have done so if they had possessed the means. The Station, however, recruited
after a time, and so strengthened as to enable them to withstand the Big Siege."
Bryan's Station, as related in earlier chapters, was attacked on the night of August 15, 1782 (just prior to the
Blue Licks Defeat) by several hundred Indians and British, the attack continuing two days. It was here that the
brave women went out for water to the spring at the edge of the savage-haunted thicket.
Thus, on the Indian infested frontier, Francis Elledge and Charity Boone began raising a family in the Kentucky
wilderness. This was still the heroic period of Kentucky settlement. Around these pioneers stretched the wilderness
grim, menacing, full of deadly perils. They, and those who settled with them, lived in constant danger. Accounts
of harrowing atrocity, of savage attack, of captivity and burning at the stake, filled every settler's home with
uneasiness.
Existence for them was hard: "The bread of the pioneers was either johnny (journey) cake or ash-cake; the
butter, bear's fat or goose-fat; the coffee, a decoction of parched rye or dried beans. The people wore home-spun
and buckskin, the women with huge calico bonnets, the men with raccoon-skin caps, and both with buckskin moccasins.
Their homes were log huts; their churches, barns; their laundries, the woodland springs, and their forts, palisades
running around the cabins."
With such a background, Francis and Charity Elledge's children were born. How many there were, is uncertain. We
know of eight; there may have been, probably were, others, who died young or who did not come to Illinois. Known
children include Jesse, Charity, James, Benjamin, Boone (his full name probably "Leonard Boone"), Martha,
William and Edward. They were born, most of them, in the darkest days of Kentucky's history. Charity was born about
the time her mother's father (Edward Boone) was killed by the Indians. The Licking river ran red with the blood
of Kentucky heroes at Blue Licks, when Benjamin Elledge, pioneer of the Griggsville vicinity, was born in August,
1782. Boone Elledge, another Griggsville pioneer and father of eight Griggsville Elledges (seven sons and a daughter),
was born in December of the following year (1783), also a year of harrowing Indian atrocity in Kentucky.
In succeeding chapters we shall follow these children of the dark and bloody ground to their settlements in Illinois,
where they in turn begin raising families on a new frontier.