Thompson

Chapter 64

Indian Massacre at Wood River; Rangers' Pursuit Leads to Pike Border



THE COMING OF THE ELLEDGES, and their immediate predecessors, the Scotts and Bealls (or Bells), all kindred and inter-related families, to this region in 1818-19 and the early 1820s is one of the epic adventures of the great valley. The story of this first settlement, strangely enough, has its beginning in an Indian massacre on Wood River, near present Alton, in July, 1814. Col. John Shaw, noted pioneer and founder of Coles' Grove (first Pike county justice seat), told briefly of this massacre in his narrative of Indian war on the Pike county border, reproduced in earlier chapters of this history. Said he:

"In July, 1814, two families had been killed by the Indians in the Wood River settlement, east of Alton; their names were Moore and Reagan. Capt. Samuel Whitesides, who shortly after served on Major Taylor's expedition, immediately pursued the Indians with some 30 to 50 Illinois Rangers. Being then in that region seeking supplies as commissary (this was during the war of 1812), I went along as a spy and volunteer. We trailed the Indians towards the junction of the Sangamon with the Illinois and just at dusk of the evening we last saw them enter a thicket in the bottoms of the Illinois, just below the mouth of the Sangamon, where the Indians had probably left their canoes."

Shaw tells of the thrilling race for life across the prairies of Illinois, until the Indians, beating the Rangers to the river by barely a rifle-shot, finally climbed the bank on the western side into what is now Pike county, whence they escaped into the wild McGee creek country. He tells of sighting the fleeing Indians at various stages of the pursuit and of an old Indian, exhausted from the hot chase, dropping on the prairies just before his comrades entered the thickets bordering the river bank, and of the killing of this old fellow by the Rangers; after which they camped for the night near the spot where they killed him, some distance below present Naples, and the next morning set out on their return to the fort on Wood River.

On the east side of the river, seeking further data with reference to the episode thus briefly recorded by Shaw, the writer found much information corroborating and elaborating Shaw's account. The best account of the memorable pursuit is that of old Uncle Johnny Sample, who related the details to Judge Henderson, an early historian of the Sangamon country, which was in turn incorporated in a history of Scott county by the late Judge J. M. Riggs of Winchester. John Sample was with John Shaw in the pursuit; he was the father of Charles Sample, one time sheriff of Morgan county; he died many years ago on a farm near Jacksonville.
His story:

Early in the month of July, 1814, parts of three families were murdered on Wood River, near where Alton now stands, in what was then Madison county. (Note: Present Pike county was then also a part of Madison county.) Seven were killed in all. They had been up to the fort and were returning on Sunday evening. The killed were Reagan's wife and two of his children, two of Abel Moore's boys and two of William Moore's boys. All were killed except one little girl, who escaped and gave the alarm.

Soon, the Wood River settlement was in arms. Rifles were hurriedly cleaned and bullets moulded. Capt. William Whitesides and 50 rangers took the trail, leaving old George Moore and the women and children in the fort. The Indians were on foot. They proceeded northward through what are now Jersey, Greene and Morgan counties. Several were along who could "trail an Indian as fast as a horse could gallop." Among them were John Shaw (know among the Indians as Es-sap-pan or the Raccoon because of his cunning and sagacity), Peter Waggoner (kinsman of the early Pike county Waggoners), and Samuel Beeman, another noted figure on the old military tract.

In Indians took every advantage, threading almost impenetrable thickets and wading miry swamps. At Brown's Point, near present Manchester, Waggoner shot an Indian. The Indian had hidden behind the roots of a tree. Waggoner shot him without checking his horse from a gallop. A little further on, Samuel Beeman shot another Indian. The Indian had climbed up a grape vine and hidden among the branches of a tree. It was never known for certain whether or not these Indians belonged to the Wood River band of murderers. They may have been inoffensive hunters.

The following morning, the Rangers described in the Island Grove a spot where the Indians had camped over night; the fires were still burning. (Note: Island Grove was a large body of timber, surrounded with rich prairie, 16 miles west of present Springfield, on the road to present Jacksonville.) Everything indicated the pursuing horsemen were close onto the fleeing savages. The trail led westward, toward the Illinois river and present Pike county. Now it was a race for life; the Indians trying to reach the river, the Rangers urging their jaded steeds to overtake the band.

To Island Grove, pursued and pursuers had followed the "old Indian trail" that for centuries had been traveled by the tribes between Cahokia and Peoria. At Island Grove, the Indians, instead of crossing the Sangamon, turned west to take advantage of the high ground and brushy woods of the Mauvaisterre, which after starting from the headwaters afforded an unbroken line of shelter to the Illinois river. The high mounds on the prairie were used as posts of observation. On one of these mounds, northwest of present Alexander, the Indians rested and here they threw away everything that encumbered their flight.

Near present Jacksonville, the Rangers were so close upon the Indians that the latter ran into the swamp for safety. All the region between what is now the city of Jacksonville and Mauvaisterre Creek was then low marsh. Into this the Rangers attempted to follow on foot, a number of their horses having mired down. Here eighteen of the Rangers turned back, the remainder dividing into two parties, one to take care of the horses, the balance pursuing into the swamps on foot. The Indians at length emerged from the swamp lands at the north part of the groves, west of modern Jacksonville, and hurried west.

From here to the Illinois river the race was close. The Rangers repeatedly were in sight of the Indians. Nearing the river, south of modern Naples and north of early Philips Ferry, one of the Indians, a corpulent old fellow, gave out. He was armed with a gun and appeared ready to sell his life as dearly as possible. A rifle ball broke one of his legs and caused him to fall in the grass. Then one Ranger attracted his attention on one side, while another rose up on the opposite side and shot him. Meanwhile, the rest of the band disappeared in the thickets bordering the river. Rushing forward after dispatching the old Indian, the Rangers were just in time to see the Indians crossing the river about a mile below. Hastening down to the water's edge they discharged their guns at them as they climbed the opposite bank into present Pike county, whence they disappeared into the wilds of the McGee creek country.

Among those participating in this race for life across the Illinois prairies were John Shaw, William Moore, Abel Moore, Peter Waggoner, Samuel Beeman, and John and William Sample, the latter of whom settled later at West Port, Iowa. William and Abel Moore had each lost two sons in the Wood River massacre.

These men who in 1814 pursued this murdering band of Indians to the eastern border of what is now Pike county did not then know it, but they were paving the way for the first settlement of this region.

Five years later, in 1819, a party of six men, three of them with their families, started from Casey county, Kentucky, for the Illinois country. With these six was to have come, according to previous arrangement, Abraham Scholl, who had visited the region of present Pike county and explored the site of present Griggsville in 1816. For some reason not now known, Scholl failed to join up with the other six at the appointed rendezvous in Kentucky and the others came on without him. Scholl followed five years later, reaching Illinois in the spring of 1825.

The six friends of Scholl (who also were friends and relatives of the Kentucky Elledges), who came on in advance, were Thomas Stevens, James Scott, Alfred Miller, Thomas Allen, John Scott and Adam Miller. The first three were young unmarried men; the last three had their wives and children with them. Alfred Miller was a son of Adam Miller, and, according to James Stewart, late of Macoupin county and a descendant of Thomas Allen, was a brother of Asher Miller, who in Pike county in 1833 married Abraham Scholl's daughter Serelda. John and James Scott were brothers. Most authorities say Scott county was named for John Scott; he died at Griggsville, in Pike county, in January, 1856. Two of Pike county Boone Elledge's sons, Uriah and Benjamin F., married two of John Scott's daughters, Catherine and Nancy. These two Elledges were grandsons of Charity Boone, great grandsons of Edward Boone, and great great grandsons of Squire and Sarah (Morgan) Boone, the parents of Daniel.

David Lowery Elledge, 76, who resides on the Pittsfield-Griggsville road, in the first house south of Walnut Grove, is a son of Benjamin F. Elledge and Nancy Scott, a grandson of pioneer John Scott, and a great great grandson of Edward Boone, the brother of Daniel. Julia Catherine Pierson, widow of the late James H. Pierson of Pittsfield, is a daughter of Nancy Scott and a granddaughter of this John Scott of the early Scott county settlement; being also a great great granddaughter of Edward and Martha (Bryan) Boone. The late Mrs. William (Margaret Maria) Stumborg of Griggsville, who died last October 29 (1936) at the age of 73, was also of like relationship with pioneer John Scott and Edward Boone. Many other descendants of John Scott reside in Pike county, among then a numerous kin also of Edward Boone, including the families of Lovejoy, Pyle, Woods, Stiverson, Kennedy, Higdon, Kellogg, Hobbs, Ball, White and Reeves.

Thomas Allen, about 45 at the time of the Scott county settlement, was a brother of Zachariah Allen, one of Francis Marion's men of the Revolution, who married Dinah Boone, daughter of Edward and Daniel Boone's brother Jonathan; Zachariah followed Thomas to this region early in 1822, settling in what is now Detroit township in Pike county, where he died in 1825, his burial being in a lost grave in ground now included in the French cemetery at Milton.

The Millers were kinsmen of Kentucky Joseph Miller, whose daughters in 1813 and 1824 married Septimus and Jesse Scholl, sons of Abraham Scholl's brother Joseph and the latter's wife, Levina Boone, daughter of Daniel.

Abraham Scholl, who had visited the Illinois country in 1816, stopped on Wood River, where lived Abel and William Moore, whose sons had been slaughtered in the Indian massacre two years before and who had joined in the pursuit of their families' murderers that led to a point not far above the early Philips Ferry, on the Illinois river. The Moores described to Scholl the inviting lands and the numerous high and beautiful knolls and mounds they had observed in that direction, and Scholl, charmed by their representations, set out to explore the country they described, following in the main the route taken by the pursuit of the Indians in 1814. Scholl, however, did not stop at the Illinois river but crossed over and continued westward to the knoll where later he erected the first log cabin on the site of present Griggsville. At that time he located the claim on which he later settled north of that point.

Following the course taken by Scholl in 1816 from Cave-in-Rock on the Ohio to Wood River near where Alton now is, the six Sangamo country pioneers of 1819 stopped there and secured cabins in the forks of the creek for their families. There they all remained until January 5, 1820; then the six men, in the great Tennessee wagon in which they had made the journey from Kentucky, leaving their families behind them, pressed on northward into the wilderness in search of the high mound west of present Jacksonville of which Scholl had told them and concerning which they had now received additional information from the Moores on Wood River.

Following in the direction indicated by Scholl and the Moores, they traversed what are now Jersey and Greene counties. At old Dicky Rattan's, in a log cabin on Apple Creek, three miles south of present White Hall, they stopped overnight, just as Abraham Scholl and his family did on their trip from Kentucky to Pike county in 1825 Rattan's was then the last house on the border. Abraham Scholl's daughter Leah, it will be remembered, married Hiram Rattan of this family.

At Rattan's our six adventurers left their wagon and some of their horses and with three horses pushed on deeper into the northern wilderness. The outfit now comprised three horses, three rifles, two or three blankets and some provisions. They kept on until a few miles past present Manchester. Old Peter Waggoner had told them on Wood River where he had shot an Indian during the pursuit in 1814 and told them to look for the bones. James Scott, looking as directed, said: "Sure enough, there are the bones."

On or very near the site of present Manchester, two men had cut considerable hay the fall before (1819). The hay- cocks had been burned and these first farmers in this region, whose identity is still a mystery, may have been killed by the Indians. They never returned and the historians of that locality are still silent as to who they were. David Marks settled at present Manchester in 1821 and the place was known in early times as "Burnt Haystack Spring" because of the burned hay-cocks found there by the first comers.

Pushing northward from present Manchester, John Scott and his fellow adventurers kept a sharp lookout for landmarks described to them by Scholl and by the Moores at Wood River. Scott, Allen and the eldest Miller rode horseback, armed with axes; James Scott, Stevens and Alfred Miller walked ahead, with rifles on shoulders at "half mast" on the "lookout for squirrels, turkey, deer or Injuns." Crossing through the barrens, they emerged on the prairie on the north side of Sandy timber and then, in the distance, on their right, they saw the mound and grove which they sought.

(Note: This is the high mound surmounted now by a spacious residence, that looms off to the north of the long straightaway on U. S. 36 east of Riggston, north of present Lynnville and south of Mauvaisterre Creek and just east of the eastern border of present Scott county. This mound, known in early times as Olmsted's Mound, and later as Pleasant Mound and Allison's Mound, was the site of the first justice seat in old Morgan county, when that county included also present Scott and Cass.)

Crossing the prairie in the direction of this high mound, our adventurers stopped and pitched camp just west of present Lynnville, where William Gordon later lived. This was in the mid-winter of 1819-20.
Camp was made at this spot on January 8, 1820.

James Scott long afterwards related the story of this camp. Said he: "Coon tracks were pretty plenty and we started to track them. There was snow on the ground. We came across a flock of turkeys and two of the others (Stevens and Alfred Miller) and myself followed the turkeys and got seven. The three older ones hunted coons and killed nine. We dressed all of them and hung them to a limb.

"We camped for the night; our camp was two blankets hung up. In a day or two it snowed so hard the weight of the snow gapped the blankets and let the snow in. Allen, Alfred Miller and I started for the grove but it snowed so hard we couldn't see a rod before us and we had to beat our way back to camp.

"One day Miller and Allen went out to look at the country and I parboiled a lot of turkey and coon, half and half. Miller was squeamish about coon — couldn't eat it at all. All of them bragged on the turkey, especially Miller, who chose the fattest pieces, which were coon. After dinner, Tommy Allen said, ‘Now, Miller, don't never say you can't eat coon, for you have got about four pounds in you now.'"

The blanket tent proved insufficient for protection, so Allen proposed to build a regular camp. With his axe, the only implement he had but a rifle, he made a hand-maul and wooden froe, and with these rived good boards, some for siding seven feet in length. Dur- the month of February (1820), he built himself a log cabin, the first human habitation, other than Indian wigwams and French huts, ever built within the present limits of Scott, Morgan or Cass counties. (All of these counties, as well as present Pike county, were then in Madison county.

Allen, after completing his cabin, returned to Wood River for his family, taking James Scott with him. While he was gone after his family, Stephen M. Olmsted built a cabin on the north slope of the high mound north of Lynnville that later bore his name.

(Note: Judge Henderson, early historian of the Sangamon country, calls this man "Umpstead," but General Murray McConnell and other early writers, including J. M. Peck in "A Gazetteer of Illinois," published at Jacksonville in 1834, gives the name as "Olmstead" or "Olmsted.") Mrs. Olmsted was the first white woman of Anglo-Saxon blood to set foot in this part of the Sangamon country. "However," says an early historian, "she was not entirely deprived of female society for after supper she could take her knitting and call on her nearest neighbor, Mrs. Dicky Rattan, on Apple Creek, 25 miles due south of her residence."

In the month of April, 1820, Allen and Scott returned with the Tennessee wagon, household goods, a "kit" of carpenter tools (axe, froe, 2 augurs and 2 jack-planes), cows, pigs, poultry — and Sarah Allen, the first white woman to settle within the limits of Scott county.
(Note: Mrs. Olmsted lived just east of the present Scott county border.)

Allen, on this trip, also brought the first plows into this region; the irons had been made down on Wood River by William Moore, the blacksmith, and Allen had stocked them himself. Ironing consisted of a strip of iron from the point to the heel of the wooden moldboard.

Thomas Allen had married Sarah (Sarah Charity) Elledge in Casey county, Kentucky, and they brought with them five children into the Illinois wilderness. Sarah Elledge, known also as Charity Elledge, is believed to have been Francis and Charity (Boone) Elledge's eldest daughter; she was probably named for her mother, Charity Boone, and for her mother's sister, Sarah (Boone) Hunter, and, indirectly, for Edward and Daniel Boone's mother, Sarah (Morgan) Boone.

Adam Miller, about 50 at the time of the Scott county settlement, had married his wife Nellie (family name unknown) in North Carolina; they brought along a family of seven children. John Scott located on the place later known as the Ned Tankersley farm. Allen's house was the first, John Scott's the second, Adam Miller's the third within the present limits of Scott county. All located claims, the land not being surveyed until 1822. Both Millers later went to the St. Francis river country in southeastern Missouri. Allen and his family remained until after the formation of Scott county out of old Morgan in 1839, when he too moved to Missouri, where he died, as did his wife. James Scott remained until 1864, when he moved to Macoupin county, where he died sometime after 1903.

Meanwhile, on the heels of these first comers, two other Elledges, William and Edward Boone Elledge, grandsons of Edward Boone, with their families have left Kentucky on the long journey to the Illinois country.