PIKE COUNTY was a vast domain, occupying a third of the state, when Uriah Elledge arrived in this region in the
opening days of 1823. John Kinzie, dwelling near the mouth of the Chicago river, a survivor with his family of
the Fort Dearborn massacre of August 15, 1812, was then a Pike county justice of the peace. A few days after Elledge's
arrival, Pike county lost the little French and half-breed settlement on the shore of Lake Michigan, now Chicago.
On January 28, 1823, Fulton county was erected out of Pike county and the lake shore settlement passed to the control
of Fulton, in the attached portion thereof. The legislature making these changes was sitting at Vandalia.
Elledge had come up by way of Upper Alton, following the old Indian trail leading to Peoria. Over this trail, in
the beginning of 1820, had come the pioneering party of John Scott, who later became Elledge's father-in-law. Over
this same trail, in 1814, had swept the wild Ranger pursuit of a murdering band of Indians, who had slaughtered
several whites (women and children) on Wood River, near present Alton. A monument to the victims of this massacre
was erected and dedicated at Wood River, September 12, 1910. It will be recalled from an earlier chapter that pioneer
John Shaw (founder of Pike's first county seat at Coles' Grove) participated as a scout for the pursuing Rangers
in this tumultuous chase over the prairies of Illinois. Three Indians were shot down during the pursuit, the last
perishing at the edge of the Illinois river bottoms a short distance above old Philips Ferry, now Valley City,
the remainder of the band escaping across the river into the wild McGee Creek country, in what is now Pike county.
Uriah Elledge saw mighty changes wrought in this western country. He saw the old wilderness disappear and a new
empire arise in the great valley. Dying in 1887, he was one of the very few pioneers of that time who had known
Pike county in its original vastness, when it reached to Wisconsin and Lake Michigan. Out of the great county which
Elledge knew, 32 counties and six parts of counties have since been erected.
In 1849, Uriah Elledge joined in the gold rush to California, going in the first emigrant train that left this
section enroute to the gold fields. He went by ox wagon, crossed the Mississippi river at Louisiana, camped on
Salt Lick Creek (now Salt River) in Missouri, thence crossed Missouri by a succession of camps to St. Joe (St.
Joseph), great rendezvous of the old emigrant trails to California and Oregon. With him was his son, Daniel Boone,
destined never to return to the country of his birth.
At St. Joe, he joined the outfit of his kinsman, Boone Hays, and together these two descendants of the Boones crossed
the great plains, enduring many a harrowing adventure. Boone Hays and Boone Elledge (Uriah's father) were both
Boone grandsons, the former a grandson of Daniel, the latter a grandson of Neddie. Boone Hays was a son of the
noted Kentuckian, Captain William Hays, who married Daniel Boone's fourth daughter, Susannah. Boone Hays was further
related to the Pike county Elledges and Scholls by marriage, his first wife being Lydia Ann Scholl, a niece of
Pike county Abraham, being a daughter of Abraham's brother, Kentucky Peter Scholl. Lydia Ann's mother was Mary
Boone, daughter of Neddie and younger sister of Charity Boone, who was Boone Elledge's mother and Uriah's grandmother.
Boone Hays and Boone Elledge were born in Kentucky in the same year, 1783.
Boone Hays settled in Darst's Bottom, in old St. Charles county, Missouri Territory, in 1801. There is record of
his making a trip to Kentucky in 1804 with furs, in company with his brother, William Hays, Jr., and his cousin,
James Callaway, son of Daniel Boone's daughter, Jemima. He ranked as captain in Dodge's party when it went up the
Missouri river. In 1818, the year Illinois became a state, Boone Hays moved to Callaway county, Missouri, where
he built the first horse mill in that part of the country. He is described in an old writing as "a man of
robust constitution and iron nerves." To his indomitable courage and foresight is attributed the success of
this first emigrant wagon train from this section to California. He, like Uriah Elledge's son, Daniel, was to find
a grave in the Pacific country. He died at Marysville, California, in 1850.
In the gold fields, Daniel Boone Elledge, in common with other adventurers, went armed against the perils of that
wild land. In his pocket he carried a big horse pistol. One day, at a spring, he died from a shot from this pistol.
His body, found at the brink of the spring, was so disposed as to suggest that the pistol in his pocket had been
accidentally discharged as he crouched to put his lips to the water. Relatives never knew. Some suspected he was
killed for the gold he carried. His body was buried near the spring where he died. His is one of the now nameless
graves of the Forty-Niners.
James L. Thompson, an early dweller on Section 18 in Flint township, had gone overland to California in 1850. He
was in the gold country when Daniel Boone Elledge was killed. He made some investigations of his own that convinced
him young Daniel Boone had been murdered. Returning to Pike county in 1856, he so reported to the Elledge relatives
here. David Lowery Elledge, residing on the Pittsfield-Griggsville road, a cousin of Daniel Boone Elledge, remembers
hearing James L. Thompson's conclusions as to Daniel Boone's death.
James L. Thompson, long neighbor of the early Elledges, had himself a notable career. Born in Charlestown (now
part of Boston), Massachusetts, September 11, 1812, he was a son of Dr. Abraham R. Thompson, a native of the same
place and a college classmate of Daniel Webster, the two being intimate friends through life. Dr. Thompson died
in Charlestown in 1870. James L. was educated in Boston, in the school of Willard Parker, later a noted physician
of New York City. He was commissioned merchant in the city of Boston for four or five years, when he suffered severe
losses in the crisis of 1836. In the fall of 1837, he emigrated west and settled in what is now Flint township.
When but 19 he had gone to sea, taking a cargo of ice from Boston to New Orleans, where he loaded his ship with
staves, cotton and coffee which he carried to Tarragona, Spain. There he loaded with a cargo of wine and dried
fruit, and shipped for Buenos Aires, South America; at this place he took on a cargo of jerked beef which he transported
to Havana, Cuba, whence he took a load of coffee and sugar to Boston. Fifteen months had been consumed in this
round trip, attended with many frightful scenes of hardship.
In 1850, going overland to California, he suffered untold privations on the way. Enroute he met and engaged in
conversation with Colonel Robert Anderson, who later at Fort Sumpter was compelled to haul down the Stars and Stripes
in the first engagement of the Civil War. In California, Mr. Thompson met with Admiral James Alden, who procured
for him a situation as purser on the U. S. surveying steamer, "Active." He was on the survey of the northwestern
boundary, the report of which was accepted by Emperor William. This report, requiring about a quire of foolscap,
was all written in longhand by Mr. Thompson. It took two seasons to complete this survey. After being absent five
or six years, he returned to his family here in Pike county in 1856. He was married four times and was the father
of seven children.
Daniel Boone Elledge was 23 when he died. He was born in what is now Scott county, his mother being Catharine Scott,
a daughter of John Scott, for whom Scott county (erected in 1839) was named. He died before any of the Pike county
Elledges now living were born.
Another version of Daniel Boone Elledge's death is extant among descendants of his youngest brother, Uriah Douglas
Elledge. This version has it that Daniel Boone remained in the gold fields when his father returned to Illinois
and that he had a store in the mining camp and was killed in his store. Mrs. W. H. Ward of Burlington, Iowa, a
daughter of Uriah Douglas and a niece of Daniel Boone Elledge, says: "Daniel went with his father to California
as a gold seeker in ‘49. Grandfather (Uriah Elledge) left him there, and he was killed in his store, by whom, they
never fully proved."
Another son of Uriah Elledge and Catharine M. Scott and younger brother of Daniel Boone, was William Harrison Elledge,
born near Griggsville, April 23, 1842. At the age of 19, he enlisted in the Civil War, in the opening year of that
conflict. His health failed while in the service, he was furloughed and started home, dying on the river hill coming
up from Valley City, on December 28, 1861. He was 19 years, eight months and five days old. He was buried on his
father's farm east of Griggsville, in the almost impenetrable thicket of briar and vine. His is one of the unmarked
graves of Pike county's Civil War veterans.
Emily J., one of the three daughters of Uriah Elledge and Catharine Scott, married John G. White of Griggsville,
September 13, 1860, Justice James W. Mackintosh performed the ceremony. The groom was a brother of William H. White,
who later, in 1872, married Emily's sister, Mary Margaret, whose first husband was Finis Lowery Hobbs, son of Solomon
J. Hobbs, who was born in 1791 in the old fort that stood on the site of present Cincinnati, Ohio. The Hobbs family,
famous in the pioneer history of the west, Indian fighters in old forting days in Kentucky and Ohio, were early
associated with the Boones and and Elledges, and intermarried with them. Among the Pike county intermarriages were
those of Finis Lowery Hobbs and Mary Margaret Elledge and, at a later date, the marriage of Eli Hobbs and Mrs.
Loucinda Wade Elledge, young widow of Joel L. Elledge, a brother of Uriah and a grandson of the Boones. Charity
D. Hobbs, daughter of Eli and Loucinda Hobbs, who died in 1926 and is buried at Perry, was named for Charity Boone,
ancestress of the far-flung Boone line in Pike county. Charity Hobbs and Fred Hobbs of Pittsfield were half-brother
and sister, the father having twice married. The thrilling story of the Hobbs family and their alliance with the
families of Vertrees, Haycraft and Van Meter for Indian defense in the early days of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, will
be related in a subsequent chapter.
William H. White and his wife, soon after their marriage, went to California, and there, in Los Angeles, Emily
J. died, and there she is buried. She left five children, two of whom have since died. The living children are
Mrs. W. Ross of New York, Norman White and Mrs. Florence Stewart of Los Angeles.
Uriah Douglas (Dock) Elledge was the latest born of Uriah and Catharine Elledge's children. He was born at Griggsville.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, too young to enlist as a soldier of the line, he entered the service as a drummer
boy, going with the Seventh Illinois. Two of his brothers, William Harrison and John H., also saw service in the
Civil War, the former in Company G, Seventh Illinois Infantry, and the latter in the Tenth Illinois Cavalry. William
and his kinsman, James C. Alcorn, comrades in the Seventh Illinois, both died in the first year of the war, and
both are buried in the old Uriah Elledge cemetery near Griggsville. Both were great grandsons of Charity Boone,
the daughter of noted Kentucky Edward.
Uriah Douglas Elledge married Maggie A. Haines at Griggsville, November 7, 1867. They were married by Justice Leonard
Boone Elledge, son of Boone Elledge's brother Benjamin, the marriage certification being of record at the Pike
county court house in the beautiful script of which Leonard Boone was master. Maggie Haines was of Ohio birth,
a daughter of Mack Haines' daughter, Mrs. Ben Windsor of Griggsville, recalls hearing her mother tell of the harrowing
experiences encountered on the river trip to Illinois. Asiatic cholera, carried to the northern streams by steamboats
from the lower Mississippi, broke out aboard the river vessel that carried them. Two little brothers, stricken
by the plague, died aboardship, and were buried somewhere on the water route. Landing finally at a river port,
the family sought a hotel and there the father died of the plague. About this time the scourge menaced many sections
of the country. In Pike county, in and about Pittsfield, Dr. Comstock, DeWitt St. John, David Ober and wife, A.
Main, Mrs. Alvin Hash and several strangers died, and at Kinderhook there were 15 or 20 cases of the disease. It
supposedly entered Pike county from the river port at Louisiana, Missouri.
Mary Cawthon, maternal grandmother of Uriah Douglas Elledge's children, was twice married, her second marriage
being to John Hanlin, whose son James married Julia Hodges, daughter of Rebecca Elledge and granddaughter of the
elder Uriah. Maggie Haines and James Hanlin, therefore, were half-sister and brother. Mary Cawthon was a sister
of James, Joe and Ben Cawthon, and of Mrs. Sarah Hensell, Mrs. Ann Miller and Eviline Cawthon, who married Robert
Hanlin, a brother of John Hanlin, who married Mary. All were residents of the Griggsville-Valley City neighborhood.
All are now dead.
Uriah Douglas Elledge and Maggie A. Haines had six children, namely, Mary Katherine, Carrie Lee, Olive, Samuel,
Estella and Jessie.
Mary Katherine married Milton Luthy, a son of Samuel Luthy and Mary Stuart of Pittsfield, well-known Pike county
pioneers, he a native of Martinsburg, Virginia, she a native of Winchester, Illinois. Milton was a brother of Charles
S. Luthy, former Pittsfield shoe merchant, who married Cordie A. Kibler, daughter of Nathan Kibler; a brother also
of Douglas Luthy (telegrapher), Julia Luthy (Pittsfield millinery expert), Ada Luthy (who married Dr. Richard Ovid
Smith of Pittsfield and became the mother of Ida Smith, now Mrs. Mark Smith of Pittsfield, and of Dr. Stuart Luthy
Smith, now deceased), Virginia E. Luthy (who married Dr. J. I. Doss of Milton), and Mrs. Ida Leete (now a resident
of Carmel, Indiana, and the only one of the Samuel Luthy family now living). Ada, who married Dr. R. O. Smith,
November 20, 1889, died at Excelsior Springs, Missouri, March 9, 1921. Virginia, who married Dr. Judson Doss, September
12, 1883, died at Milton, Illinois, December 20, 1925. Milton Luthy, husband of Mary Katherine Elledge, died at
St. Louis in 1911. Mrs. Luthy still resides in St Louis, at 1617 North Leffingwell Avenue. Samuel and Mary Luthy,
parents of the above named Luthys, both died in Pike county, he at Milton August 26, 1906, aged 77, she at Pittsfield
December 6, 1907, aged 71. Both are buried in the Pittsfield West cemetery.
Carrie Lee Elledge, now Mrs. Ben Windsor, occupies a pretty home in the city of Griggsville, the residence standing
on a small city farm comprising six town lots. This granddaughter of the Boones, now 72, is not afraid of work,
and this season (spring of 1937), her husband being unable to work and help difficult to get, she herself planted
four town lots to corn, dropping the hills by hand from a bucket. She has been three times married, twice to one
husband, George D. Bright of Griggsville, whom she married first on August 1, 1889, with the Rev. W. A. Meloan
of the Pittsfield Christian church officiating, and second on July 29, 1906 at Pittsfield.
Mr. and Mrs. Bright had two children, Vernard and Jennie Edith. Vernard married Grace Seamans of Bushnell, Illinois,
at Pittsfield on August 20, 1911. They reside in Bushnell. They have no children. Jennie Edith married William
Perry of Griggsville, a son of William Perry, Sr., in St. Louis in 1910. They reside at 6718 Marmaduke Avenue,
St. Louis. They have no children.
Mrs. Bright married as her second husband Ben F. Windsor of Griggsville, a son of Andrew J. (Jack) Windsor and
Alice May Gratton, the latter a sister of Mary E. Gratton (known in the family as "Aunt Easter"), who
married Jesse Elledge Alcorn, a grandson of Charity Boone. Alice and Mary Gratton were daughters of John Gratton,
a native of Virginia. Their mother was one of the Kentucky Scotts, a relative of Catharine Scott who married the
elder Uriah Elledge. Alice Gratton Windsor, mother of Ben Windsor, is buried in the Uriah Elledge cemetery, on
what is now the Lee Newman farm east of Griggsville, Squire S. P. Rupert married the Windsors in Pittsfield, May
24, 1916. Mr. and Mrs. Windsor have no children.
Olive Elledge, third daughter of Uriah Douglas and Maggie Haines Elledge, at the age of 22 married James Fred Wardlow,
a son of Minor Wardlow and Emiline Brown of Griggsville. They were married at Griggsville, December 27, 1893. The
Rev. P. F. Gay officiated, with Mollie and Estella Elledge witnessing. Mr. and Mrs.Wardlow went to California,
and reside at 223 West 71st Street, Los Angeles. They have four daughters.
Samuel Elledge, born at Griggsville in January, 1885, married Nette Ball of Springfield, Illinois. He died March
24, 1923 at Denver, Colorado. He is buried in Griggsville cemetery.
Estella Elledge, fourth daughter and fifth child of Uriah Douglas, at the age of 21 married William H. Ward, a
son of Samuel Ward, formerly of Naples, Illinois. The Rev. Joseph E. Deihl married them at Griggsville, December
26, 1899, with Mollie Elledge and Alice Ward witnessing. Mr. and Mrs. Ward reside at 531 South Central Avenue,
Burlington, Iowa. They have no children. Mrs. Ward writes a beautiful script, suggesting that of her kinsman, Leonard
Boone Elledge, one of the finest scribes in early Pike county.
Jessie Elledge, sixth and last child of Uriah Douglas, married Mellvin Phillips of Lima, Ohio. She died in February,
1913.
Uriah Douglas Elledge and his family at one time lived at Valley City where the two Uriahs, Uriah Douglas and his
father, operated the Valley City ferry, formerly Philips Ferry. Uriah Douglas later moved to the state of Missouri.
He died at Joplin, Missouri, March 4, 1925, in his 82nd year. Mrs. Elledge died in St. Louis October 26, 1927.
Both are buried in Griggsville cemetery.