JAMES ELLEDGE has left scant record of his stay here. He was doubtless here long before there were any kept records.
He was probably the first of the sons of Francis Elledge and Charity Boone to inhabit the great valley. He may
have seen this region from a canoe upon our border streams in the closing days of the 1700s or very early in 1800.
It may have been he whom Boone Scholl referred to as the "singing Elledge" of the early St. Louis ferry,
at about the time of the changing centuries.
The late Hannah Dalby of Griggsville, daughter of pioneer Rebecca Burlend, whose story of early settlement in Pike
county has thrilled both this country and England, related that there was a James Elledge in the vicinity of Philips
Ferry when her family landed there in the fall of 1831. She remembered him telling of St. Louis when it was a Spanish
and French town, and of exploring trips he made up the neighboring rivers in the days of the Territory.
She remembered in particular one story that was told by "Uncle Jim" Elledge in her father's cabin on
Big Blue, of his almost miraculous escape from death at the hands of an Indian in Kentucky. Elledge, once, when
a mere boy in the wild Kentucky land, had been attracted by the frequent gobbling of a turkey "over back of
the ridge." Finally he took a gun and stole around behind the ridge to get a shot at the gobbler. He caught
his foot in a twisted root, stumbled and fell just as a rifle cracked from the fork of a tree. The turkey gobbler
was a painted Indian.
This story of James Elledge and the gobbling turkey suggests a similar story related of Elledge's kinsman, Daniel
Boone, by John H. Achor of Montgomery, Alabama, in a letter to E. E. Boone, husband of James Elledge's grand niece,
Evelyn Thayne Elledge, dated August 29, 1935. This letter, including also other incidents in the life of the great
frontiersman, is as follows:
"It (the story of Boone) calls my mind back when I was a boy, and my father, David Achor, would tell me often
things that Daniel Boone did. I remember one thing he told me, that the Indians was so bad them days that the white
settlers had to live in a group with several families for protection and one day they was all sitting around the
homes and they heard a wild turkey gobble up on the side of the mountain and one of the white men said I believe
I will go up there and kill that turkey. The white man did not come back and Daniel Boone said he would go and
kill the turkey, and he went way around back of the sound of the turkey gobbling and he found out the turkey was
an Indian in a hollow stump and the Indian would raise his head out of the hollow stump and gobble down towards
the village, and when he did Daniel Boone shot and killed the Indian.
"And another story he told me was that the Indians captured Daniel Boone and Daniel told the Indians that
if they would let him load the rifle they could not kill him, and they agreed to that, and Daniel had some balls
that he had molded and he had cut them half in two and when Daniel loaded the rifle he had the balls in his hunting
sack and he would get the two halves together and would show the Indians the ball when he loaded the rifle, and
then Daniel would stand off some distance against a tree and they would shoot at him and when the ball would leave
the muzzle of the rifle the ball would separate one half to the right and the other half to the left.
"My father was born and raised at Regisville, nine miles from Washington, Indiana. There was nine brothers
and two sisters. My father's grandfather was kin to Isac Ellis, who built a pole cabbin where Louisville, Ky.,
now stands. Isac Ellis and Daniel Boone were great friends and traveled around together a great deal. My father
was the only one of the nine brothers that came South. He ran a locomotive for 40 years and dropped dead in his
back yard at Birmingham, Ala. He hauled the provisions in the battlefields in the Civil war. I was born on top
of Lookout Mountain, Nov. 7th, 1860. My father was running the pusher engine on the Nashville and Chattanooga railroad."
A classic story of the Blue Creek country in early days was one that Jim Elledge delighted to tell on his good
wife, Polly. Settlements were sparse when the Elledge family first located in the valley. One Sunday afternoon,
Uncle Jim, as he was called, suggested to Aunt Polly that they take a stroll through the woodlands. They set forth
from their cabin and threaded the dense forest, following winding and devious paths, climbing the rugged bluffs
and crossing creeks and branches on fallen tree trunks or natural stepping stones. At length, Aunt Polly, from
a high vantage point, discovered a settler's cabin nestling in the valley.
"Who lives there?" she asked, pointing out the place to her husband. "Some people we ought to get
acquainted with," replied Uncle Jim; "suppose we go and call on them." "Pshaw, now, Jim, you
know I'm not tidied up fit to go calling on strangers," remonstrated Aunt Polly, at the same time patting
her hair into better order and smoothing her dress. "Oh, come on, you look all right," urged her husband.
So down into the valley they went to call on the strangers.
As they approached the cabin and were passing the cow-lot, Aunt Polly exclaimed: "Look, Jim, these folks have
got a little baby calf that's the spittin' image of our little calf at home." Aunt Polly, at this point turning
towards her husband, beheld a man on the point of bursting with suppressed laughter. Then, looking around, she
discovered that they had come by a back trail to their own back-yard and that it was their own calf she had been
admiring.
James Elledge and his wife Polly appear to have been associated at one time with the early Ramsey Creek settlement
in Pike county, Missouri. This was a settlement of Kentuckians, dating back to 1810, when the pioneer McCoys, McCunes,
Buckaloos, Harpoles, and others of Kentucky origin came and settled there. Thither, in 1817, came Stephen Ruddle
who, as a boy of 14, was captured by the Indians in the assault on Ruddle's Station in Kentucky in 1780. Just what
the relationship was between the James Elledge family and Stephen Ruddle cannot be determined; it may have been
merely a neighborly relationship or it may have been a blood kinship, possibly through Polly Elledge, whose family
history is unknown. Stephen Ruddle appears in one instance as bondsman for James Elledge and in another instance
Stephen Ruddle and Polly Elledge appear as sureties on James Elledge's note.
Stephen Ruddle, as we have already related, was a friend of Abraham Scholl, at whose log house north of Griggsville
he preached in 1826 the first sermon heard in the northern Pike county woods. Held captive among the Indians for
16 years, Ruddle later became a flaming minister of the gospel here in the west. In 1826, he preached also in the
log home of Thomas and Rebecca Barton in what is now Pleasant Hill township. The Barton family was related to the
Boones, through Lydia (Blunt) Barton, wife of John Barton, her father being an own cousin of Daniel Boone. John
Barton, a miller, after leaving Harrison county, Missouri (near Eagleville), located at Bedford in Pike county,
Illinois, and later at Nebo, where he built a mill. One of his sons, James A. Barton, was long a resident of Scott
county.
It is probable that the Ruddle family was among the numerous party that came out to Kentucky with the families
of Daniel and Edward Boone, William Scholl, Abraham Lincoln (grandfather of the President) and Francis Elledge,
in 1779. It appears that the Ruddles settled at a place at some distance from Daniel Boone's fort at Boonesborough,
where, on the Licking river, they built a stockade called Ruddle's Station.
In 1780, a powerful force was dispatched by Governor Hamilton, British commander at Detroit, against the frontier
settlements. Colonel Byrd was in command of the expedition, numbering some 600 Indians and Canadians, supplied
with two or more pieces of artillery, the first that had been brought into Kentucky. This was in the time of the
Revolution. Crossing the Ohio river and marching inland to the Licking settlements, they appeared before Ruddle's
Station, which was inadequately manned and in no position to withstand the battering of cannons, small though they
were.
The little garrison was called upon by Colonel Byrd to surrender in the name of his British Majesty. The terms
of surrender carried the promise to spare the lives of those within. The post surrendered, and the Indian swarmed
in, eager for plunder. Says Hartley:
"The inmates of the fort were instantly seized; families were separated, for each Indian caught the first
person whom he met, and claimed him or her as his prisoner. Three who made some resistance were killed upon the
spot. It was in vain that the settlers remonstrated with the British commander (Byrd). He said it was impossible
to restrain them."
Martin's, another station on the Licking, also fell at this time. Some say that the same scene was enacted at Martin's;
others state that so strongly was Byrd affected by the horrors at Ruddle's that he refused to advance further unless
the barbarous Indians would consent beforehand to allow him to take charge of all prisoners that should be taken.
These chroniclers state that this demand was complied with, and that on the surrender of Martin's the Indians took
possession of the property and the British the prisoners. This, for some unexplained reason, was the last operation
of that memorable campaign, which, had it been pressed, backed up as it was by cannon, doubtless would have subjugated
all of the stations in Kentucky and have changed the entire history of the West.
Hartley further says: "The unfortunate people who had fallen into the hands of the Indians at Ruddle's Station
were obliged to accompany their captors on their rapid retreat, heavily laden with the plunder of their own dwellings.
Some returned after peace was made, but too many, sinking under the fatigues of the journey, perished by the tomahawk."
Among those seized by the Indian invaders were Stephen Ruddle and his brother, Andrew, the former then a boy of
14. Dragged along in the retreat to the Ohio, Stephen, separated from his brother, was hurried into the Indian
fastnesses in Ohio and there remained a captive for 16 years, when he escaped, returning to Kentucky, pretty much
an Indian in his ways by then, located in Scott county that state, whence he came in 1817 to Ramsey Creek in Pike
county, Missouri.
Daniel Boone, in an autobiography dictated to John Filsom in 1784, said of the fall of Ruddle's:
"On the 22nd of June, 1780, a large party of Indians and Canadians, about 600 in number, commanded by Colonel
Byrd, attacked Ruddle's and Martin's Stations, at the forks of Licking River, with six pieces of artillery. They
carried this expedition so secretly, that the unwary inhabitants did not discover them until they fired upon the
forts; and, not being prepared to oppose them, were obliged to surrender themselves miserable captives to barbarous
savages, who immediately after tomahawked one man and two women, and loaded all the others with heavy baggage,
forced them along toward their towns, able and unable to march. Such as were weak and faint by the way, they tomahawked.
The tender women and helpless children fell victims to their cruelty. This, and the savage treatment they received
afterward, is shocking to humanity and too barbarous to relate."
Such was the Kentucky background of this pioneer Christian minister, who, either by the ties of blood or a strong
friendship, was so closely bound here in the west to the families of Scholl and Elledge. The story of Ruddle as
it was related by Abraham Scholl does not reveal whether the captive ever again found any member of his family,
or what was the fate of the family following the fall of the Station. So far as known, the brother who was carried
into captivity along with Stephen, was never again heard of; it was supposed that he died among the Indians.
James Elledge, some time prior to 1825, was a squatter on land a mile and a half north and a mile west of what
was then known as Sackett's Harbor, site of present Griggsville. In 1825, Abraham Scholl settled a mile to the
northeast of him, on what is now the Griggsville-Perry road, then a wild trail that lost itself in the McGee Creek
country. In the same year (1825) James Elledge's son, Banner Boone Elledge, located on the 80 just west of Scholl.
Banner Boone entered this 80 (the west half of the northeast quarter of Section 10 in now Griggsville township)
October 27, 1830. Banner Boone deeded it to Richard Beall (who married Jemima Elledge), March 13, 1846, and Beall
deeded it to Edward Boone Scholl, grandson of Edward Boone, March 5, 1850.
James and Polly Elledge's early settlement northwest of present Griggsville was on the southeast quarter of Section
9. James Elledge entered 40 acres of this tract from the government on November 27, 1833. On December 6, 1834 he
entered an additional 80 acres, and on December 23 the same year acquired title from the United States to the remainder
of this quarter. He deeded this quarter section (160 acres) to Sylvanus Hatch for a consideration of $1,000, April
13, 1844. The quarter was later owned by Mason Hatch.
James Elledge also, in 1837, acquired from Thomas K. and Louisa Scholl Norris a 40-acre tract in Section 3, one-
half mile west of Shelley school house, in the neighborhood of his brother Benjamin's settlement. Thomas K. Norris
was a son of Nancy Elledge Norris, who was a daughter of Francis Elledge and Charity Boone; his wife, Louisa Scholl,
was a daughter of Charity's sister, Mary Boone, and Kentucky Peter Scholl, brother of Pike county Abraham. Louisa
Scholl's first husband was one of the Keys of Kentucky, kinsman of Marshall Key who married Abraham Scholl's daughter,
Sarah. He died, and she, later, in Pike county, married Thomas K. Norris, son of Nancy Elledge, who married as
her second husband Nimrod Philips of the famous ferry across the Illinois river at what is now Valley City.
James Elledge's daughter Lucy married Chauncey Underwood in Pike county December 6, 1838, with Jesse Elledge, Baptist
minister of the gospel, saying the ceremony. In 1843 James Elledge and his son, Banner Boone, with the Underwood
family, emigrated to Wisconsin Territory and settled in Grant county in the lead ore region. Marshall Key and his
family had emigrated from Griggsville to this same region in 1841. A note, dated at Griggsville April 12, 1843,
signed by James Elledge, proves that he was still in Pike county at that time, while another record shows that
on April 13, 1844, he and his wife Polly appeared before Samuel Tompkins, a justice of the peace for Grant county
in the Territory of Wisconsin, and acknowledged a deed to Sylvanus Hatch, conveying the Elledge 160 acres northwest
of Griggsville.
James Elledge died in Grant county, Wisconsin, November 19, 1847, and is buried there. He left a will which was
admitted to probate in Grant county November 20, 1847. His widow, Polly Elledge, later, in 1850, appears in the
records as the assignee of Chauncey Underwood and Banner Elledge in a suit brought in the Pike county court to
collect an indebtedness due the creditor estate of her deceased husband, James Elledge.