BY 1820 KENTUCKY was becoming settled. Neighborhoods were smaller. The Indian threat had disappeared. Statehood
had come in 1792. In 1794 Wayne's victory effectually crushed the Indian power. The wild life of the old Kentucky
frontier now belonged to a day that was dead.
Daniel Boone long ago had become dissatisfied and had left Kentucky. He had settled at Point Pleasant in Virginia,
scene of the great battle with the Indians, at the junction of the Great Kanawha with the Ohio. But even there,
settlement was under way. Some settler pitched his cabin within eight miles of Boone; Boone, disgusted, pulled
up stakes and with his family and cattle set out westward, determined to find some spot where he would have elbow
room. He stopped in Upper Louisiana, in the then wilderness that is now Missouri, where his son, Daniel Morgan
Boone, had settled in 1792.
The young Elledges, Boone kinsmen, reared to a wilderness life, likewise were becoming restless. With eager ears
they listened to the stories Abraham Scholl and Alexander Beall brought back from the Illinois country. An inexplicable
yearning filled their hearts. Their thoughts turned to the western border, to the yet unpeopled lands of the Illinois.
The whole western movement was a miracle of the age. European observers looked on in wonderment. A Dr. Raphael
Dubois of the University of Lyons constructed an ingenious device to prove that man, like the squirrel in the cage,
is irresistibly impelled to step westward by the fact of the earth's rotation eastward. Others were content to
mention, diffidently, "mystic forces" and "far-seeing powers."
The wilderness laid hold of those early peoples. As the frontier receded, those of hardy natures followed: "Facing
the wilderness — its dark loneliness, its strange menace; the bitter privations it imposed, and the sudden bountifulness
it sometimes afforded — all men changed a little, as if their natures, like their mouths, were fed on the wild
fruit it offered."
The young Elledges, children of the wilderness, children of Francis Elledge and Charity Boone, now, in the early
1800s, were marrying their Kentucky sweethearts and with their young wives and household goods were taking the
great trails westward, seeking new frontiers. Up along the trails blazed by Scholl and Beall and John Scott and
Tommy Allen and his wife and their children came these Kentucky emigrants, brothers of Sarah (Charity) Elledge
Allen, first white woman in present Scott county, and their kinsmen and friends.
In 1818, in the closing days of Illinois Territory, Alexander Beall, first in this region of that family so much
intermarried with the Elledges, came on an exploring expedition up through this country, accompanied by a number
of men from the vicinities of Cahokia, Wood River and Edwardsville. This expedition explored the country in anticipation
of the extinguishment of the Indian titles to lands in this region. Some of these early explorers, including Beall,
penetrated as far as the Sangamon river.
Beall, long afterwards, informed Dr. Clark Roberts, an early settler in the Sangamo country, that in 1818-19 when
he traveled through this section there was not a house nor any other mark of civilization north of Apple Creek
(three miles south of present White Hall). There were plenty of Indians camped on Mauvaisterre and Sandy Creeks,
in what is now Scott county, and now and then a Creole French trader, one of whom had a shanty on the bank of the
Illinois river.
Beall, later, in the spring of 1821, while out hunting, stopped at a spring near the site of present Winchester
to drink; he was about leaving when he was startled by the rattling of a snake. He reached for a stick to strike
it, when a number of others set up their whirring notes of defiance around him; he killed a dozen or more. The
following spring, the place was watched and in one day 196 rattlers were killed. The place still bears the name
of Rattlesnake Spring.
On the hilltop above present Exeter, overlooking the valley of the Mauvaisterre, near the spot where now stands
a stone that marks his grave, the pioneer, Alexander Beall, while out hunting or exploring one day in December,
1818, is said to have paused and looked out over the valley, dotted then with the wigwams of the Indians. As he
looked, he made a prophecy to his companion, a man by the name of Cowhick (probably Thomas Cowhick whom we later
find as an appraiser of the estate of Edward Elledge and as one of the guardians of Edward's minor children, and
whose daughter Elizabeth, in Old Morgan, in 1828, married Peter Scholl, grandson of Kentucky Peter). Said he: "We
are looking at something that shall vanish those who follow us in a few years will not see what we see; something
new is about to happen around us."
As he spoke, the old Territory was passing and a new state was coming into the union. On December 3, 1818, the
President by his signature of the act of admission made Illinois Territory a state. Nearly a century and a half
before Beall, Louis Jolliet had also made a prophecy; he had prophesied the future development of these prairies.
His prescience was now about to be realized. Beall, at the age of 23, was standing upon the threshold of the new
order. The white population was pushing westward. The country of the Illinois, the most pivotal territory of the
great Valley, had become a state. Another experiment in free government by men of English speech was thus initiated
in the valley that was preordained to be the home of millions.
In Kentucky, on the day that Tippecanoe was fought, Alexander Beall's sister, Tabitha Beall, married William Elledge,
son of Francis Elledge and Charity Boone. Their first child, born just before the outbreak of the second war with
Britain (March 5, 1812), was Richard Boone Elledge, father of Leonard Boone Elledge, who now, at the age of 70,
is a resident of Griggsville where he and his sons are engaged in business.
A daughter of William Elledge and Tabitha Beall, Sarah D. Elledge, married, in Pike county in 1845, Riley J. Curry,
member of that noted pioneer Pike and Brown county family whose story has been told in an earlier chapter, one
of whom erected the first log cabin on the site of present Mt. Sterling, capital of Brown county. Riley J. Curry
was a kinsman of Mary (Curry) Coleman, mother of Eliza Jane Coleman, whose first husband was Abraham Scholl's son
Peter.
Another daughter of William Elledge and Tabitha Beall was Rebecca Jane Elledge, named for Tabitha's sister Rebecca,
who in Kentucky in 1809 had married William Elledge's brother Boone. Rebecca Jane, in Pike county in 1843, married
William Mortimer Ingalls, they being parents of Charles M. Ingalls, who at his home in Perry, on December 20, 1936
celebrated his 85th birthday. William M. Ingalls and Rebecca Jane Elledge were also parents of Darius W. Ingalls,
father of the late Dr. Clyde B. Ingalls, a former mayor of Pittsfield.
Leonard Boone Elledge, another son of William and Tabitha Elledge, married in Scott county in 1846 Miss Adaline
Hill, a descendant of Thomas Carlin, who was elected sixth governor of Illinois in 1838. Charity Margaret, daughter
of William and Tabitha Beall Elledge, married, in Pike county in 1848, Samuel M. Harrington of Griggsville, a descendant
of Abigail Putnam of the family of Israel Putnam of Revolutionary War renown, and a son of Judge Charles Harrington,
elected county judge of Pike county in 1850.
James Alexander Elledge, another son of William and Tabitha, and named for Alexander Beall, and by him in his will
on file in the Scott county courthouse at Winchester, as his heir-at-law, married in Pike county in 1846 Mary Jane
Ingalls, a sister of William M. Ingalls who married James Alexander's sister, Rebecca Jane Elledge. He was a wagon-maker
(as was also his brother, Leonard Boone) and also worked in early days in a plow factory at Perry, where the telephone
exchange now is.
William Riley Elledge, a brother of those named, made his will in 1852, going then to the California gold fields
where he died, unmarried, in 1853. By his will he divided his property equally among James A. Elledge, Richard
Boon Elledge, Rebecca Jane Ingalls, Sarah D. Curry, Margaret Harrington and Leonard Elledge, Richard Boon Elledge
being made executor. The will, dated February 10, 1852, was witnessed by J. K. Cleveland and B. D. Whitaker.
Thus it will be seen that from Edward Boone's grandson, William Elledge, and his wife Tabitha Beall, sprang a line
that played a noted part in early Pike county history. Tabitha Beall Elledge was unschooled, save in the hard rules
of the wilderness; she could not write her own name but, as we shall see later, she was one of the outstanding
personages of her generation and was universally respected in the early Pike county community as a woman of exceptional
business judgment. She sleeps in old Hinman, in north Pike county; around her lie many of her kin and those of
Boone descent. In the basement of the Pike county courthouse, among old records that are stored there, is many
a yellowed and time-stained documents inscribed with this legend, familiar in the early days:
TABITHA (X Her Mark) ELLEDGE
Major Alexander D. Beall served in the Black Hawk War, in 1832, with Major Whiteside's famous brigade. He was born
in Kentucky May 31, 1795, and died at Exeter, Scott county, Christmas Day, 1865. He is buried on the hilltop above
Exeter and beside him is buried his wife, Sarah D. Beall, who was born in Kentucky October 22, 1799 and died at
Exeter April 15, 1889 in her 90th year. The stone that marks the pioneer major's grave bears, in addition to his
birth and death dates, this inscription: "Maj. Alexander D. Beall — Major Whitesides Brig. — MTD ILL. Volunteers
- Black Hawk War - December 25, 1865."
Standing on this hilltop, beside the old Major's grave, in the haze of a late autumn evening, looking out over
the valley of the Mauvaisterre, as this pioneer had done before the coming of the white settlement, the ancient
wilderness seemed suddenly to reassert itself, as in John T. McCutcheon's famous and oft-repeated "Injun Summer"
cartoon: surely that "smoky sort o' smell" in the air was from the campfires and the pipes of the Indians;
surely that glimmer along the landscape was caused by the marching spirits of the red men, returned to their once
happy hunting grounds; surely, along yonder stream, those were not corn shocks but the tepees of the Indians, such
as pioneer Beall saw when he looked out from this very hilltop in the closing days of the Territory.
At the foot of the hill, the writer had just talked to a lady of 91 years, the widow of Henry Scott Peak, she who
had been Ada Armitage, daughter of Elihu Armitage of the early Exeter Mills, and now the sole survivor of a family
of nine children. Her fading memory had flickered and flamed at mention of such names as Beall, Elledge, Philips
and Scholl. She had not heard those names uttered for a third of a century. Descendants of those names had been
her partners in the dance in the old bottle-ceilinged Pike hall at Oxville, on the Philips Ferry Road, great thoroughfare
of the early days. She still cherished a bottle from the ceiling of the famous Pike hall. Dimly, but in recognizable
outline, as she groped in memory for those early names, there came trooping, one after another, the descendants
of the pioneers of the great trail, whom she had known and with whom she had danced when she was a girl. For a
little while the dear old lady lived again among the descendants of the pioneer Boones, who once made merry along
the Philips Ferry Road, in the days when Jemima and Lydia Elledge and Adaline Scholl and the Philips Ferry girls
were belles of the pioneer ballrooms.
It is unlikely that Alexander Beall had his wife with him when he explored this country in the last days of the
Territory. He may have left her in the settlement on Wood River or at Edwardsville; more likely, he had left her
in Kentucky while he pushed into the Illinois wilderness, returning there for her and bringing her out with him
at the time of the Elledge, Scholl and Philips migration in the early 1820s.
In Exeter village lives Ella Lee Perry, an elderly maiden lady, a daughter of Caleb Harrison Perry and Jane Hill,
early comers to the Sangamo country. She remembers some of the traditions of the Beall and Elledge families. Ella
Lee's mother was a sister of Adaline Hill who, in Scott county in 1846, married Leonard Boone Elledge, son of William
Elledge and Tabitha Beall. Miss Perry related the story of her mother's descent and that of Adaline Elledge, from
Governor Carlin, sixth governor of Illinois, who was born in Kentucky in 1789, came to Illinois in 1812, and died
at Carrollton February 14, 1852. Carlin and Alexander Beall served together in the campaign against Black Hawk
in 1832. Carlin was elected governor in 1838.
In Clark county, Kentucky, in 1809, another Elledge, Francis and Charity's son Boone, born in 1783, had married
another Beall (or Bell), Rebecca, recorded in Clark county records as "Rebecca Bell," the name "Beall"
being generally pronounced as "Bell" and frequently so written in the records both in Kentucky and Illinois.
Boone and Rebecca Elledge pioneered at Griggsville, where Boone died in 1841, his wife in 1859; both are buried
at Hinman, site of the early log chapel in north Pike county. Their license to wed was issued in Clark county,
Kentucky, June 9, 1809. Robert Alcorn, kinsman of those Alcorns buried in old Elledge cemeteries around Griggsville,
was bondsman; Joel Tanner was witness. Boone and Rebecca became the parents of William, Francis, James, Douglas,
Uriah, Thomas P., Joel, Benjamin F., and Maria Jane Elledge. The latter married in Pike county October 2, 1836,
Lewis H. Baldwin, kinsman of the Squire Boone branch of the noted Boone family. The stories of these pioneer- born
children of Boone Elledge will be related in succeeding chapters.
Edward Boone (Neddie) Elledge, who with his brother William was among the earliest comers to the present Scott
county region, had married in Clark County, Kentucky, Peter Scholl's daughter Malinda. Edward and Malinda were
first cousins, their mothers being Charity and Mary Boone, sisters and daughters of Edward and Martha (Bryan) Boone.
Peter Scholl, elder brother of Pike county Abraham and a colorful figure in early Kentucky history, had married
Charity Elledge's sister, Mary Boone, in Boone's Station, Kentucky, about 1782. Edward Elledge was born in 1792;
Malinda Scholl in 1795; both in Kentucky. And even as Edward was born, the fierce war cries of the Shawnees rang
in his mother's ears.
Edward and Malinda were married shortly after the beginning of the second war with Britain, their license having
been issued August 21, 1812. Their marriage occurred two days later, August 23. William Scholl, eldest son of Peter
and brother of Malinda, was bondsman for the license. The record in the courthouse at Winchester, county seat of
Clark county, Kentucky, shows that Malinda, who was but 16, had the consent of his father, Peter Scholl. A transcript
of this record by Miss Ludie J. Kinkead, curator of the Filson Club of Louisville, Kentucky, shows Malinda's name
with the quaint spelling "Mylinday."
Edward Elledge had, as had his brother William, several children when he arrived in the Illinois country in the
early 1820s. Both he and William located claims in what is now Winchester township in Scott county; Winchester
was not laid out until nine years later, 1831. Settling on these claims, they maintained "squatter rights"
temporarily, entering their lands from the government at later dates, after completion of the government surveys
which were begun in 1819 and mostly completed in 1821.
William Elledge entered the west half of the southeast quarter of Section 10 in township 14 north, Range 12 west
of the Third Principal Meridian (northeast of present Winchester and south of present Riggston), November 22, 1823,
this being the first Elledge entry of record. The first land entry of record in Scott county was that of Joel Meacham
(proprietor of early Meacham's Ferry, now Montezuma), August 15, 1822, the only parcel of land entered in that
year. Meacham, having all the vast public domain to pick from, any of which could be had for $1.25 per acre, picked
what is described as one of the "poorest eighties" in Scott county, located on the present public highway
from Winchester to Alsey. This tract in later years came into possession of William Neat, Winchester banker.
Edward Elledge acquired an 80 in Section 28, northeast of present Winchester, and also an 80 in Section 31, southwest
of Winchester. On his home 80 he built a log house, two cabins (spelled "cabbins" in the records of his
estate at Jacksonville) and a grist mill. Elledge's Mill was a great asset to the early settlement; it ceased to
operate following its owner's death in 1829.
Edward Elledge's eldest daughter Jemima (named for Daniel Boone's second daughter who, with the two Callaway girls,
was captured by Indians on the Kentucky river in 1776) married Richard Beall, a son of Zachariah H. Beall, Kentucky
emigrant who died in what is now Scott county in 1826. The Bealls, Richard and his wife Jemima, were early settlers
in Pike county, in the neighborhood of Griggsville. Others of Zachariah Beall's children who appear in the early
records were Thomas, Leonard, Susannah, Elizabeth, and two daughters who married Charles Hazelrigg and Michael
Flynn. Elizabeth married Alexander Wheeler, who, as will appear later, fell afoul of the early Regulators and was
lashed by them with a hundred stripes on his bare back, after which he removed with his wife to Monroe county,
Indiana.
Which brings us to a dark and troubled period in the history of this region, when the Regulators of the Valley
took the law into their own hands, held their own courts, pronounced their own judgments, and of their own volition
proceeded to execute those judgments in the most summary manner.