URIAH ELLEDGE at one time owned much fine land on Griggsville Prairie. A survey map of 1872 shows him then the
possessor of 560 acres in Sections 12, 13 and 14, east and north of Griggsville. Of this broad domain, 120 acres
lay in Section 12, 240 acres (the homestead) in Section 13, and 200 acres across the road west of the residence,
in Section 14. Most of this land is now owned by the Newmans. The old Uriah Elledge homestead and nursery site
in Section 13 is now the property of the Wartons. The Uriah Elledge cemetery plot is on land belonging to Lee Newman.
Adversities in later years absorbed this splendid estate, until at last it passed from the Elledge name. Had it
been preserved, the heirs of Uriah Elledge would have come into a substantial legacy. Kentucky-born Catharine Scott,
Uriah's wife, appears to have been a woman of unusual business ability, although born and reared in a land that
at the time offered few educational privileges, and they of the rudest character.
Catharine "carried on" during the time that her husband was away in the Winnebago war in 1827 and again
when he sojourned for some years in the California gold fields. During Uriah's stay in the mining region, she conducted
the business of the farm, met the family's various obligations, paid off several notes of indebtedness, assisted
in the cultivation of crops, marketed the produce of the field, and accumulated a substantial reserve.
There were no banks in the county in those days, and the country was over-run with thieves, sharpers and low characters
of various sorts. With the country flooded with spurious notes of issue, Catharine is said to have insisted on
gold in payment for the produce of her fields. She is said to have done her banking in a real clay bank, entrusting
her gold to the keeping of Mother Earth, burying her coin in a spot of which she alone knew. There is a tradition
among her descendants, related to the writer by her granddaughter, Mrs. Carrie Windsor of Griggsville, that long
after Catharine's death, a then tenant of the old Uriah Elledge place, plowing up a wood lot that had never before
known the plow, turned out an iron kettle containing a horde of gold, supposedly buried there by Catharine, knowledge
of the spot having perished with her.
Catharine Scott Elledge died on the Griggsville farm January 9, 1855, and was buried on the Elledge land. Uriah
had returned from the gold fields in December, 1851, after nearly three years' absence. In the mining region he
and his son Daniel had opened a store, selling goods at fabulous prices to the miners and adventurers.
Catharine Scott was born in Casey county, Kentucky, November 9, 1806. She was 13 years old when her father, pioneer
John Scott, brought his family up from Kentucky into the Illinois country, reaching Wood River, in the vicinity
of present Alton, in the closing days of 1819, whence the father and five other men in the company pushed on to
what is now Scott county; there log cabins were built and in April, 1820, the Scott family occupied their log house
on what later was known as the Ned Tankersley farm, southeast of present Winchester.
It was Catharine Scott Elledge who in the early days of the Griggsville community was responsible for Charles Harrington
becoming a preacher of the Baptist gospel here in the west. The circumstances are related by Mrs. Mary Harrington
Ingalls, widow of the late Dr. Clyde B. Ingalls and daughter of George Putnam Harrington, who was a son of the
Rev. Charles Harrington.
Charles Harrington, coming to Pike county from New York in 1835, expected to follow his profession of mill- wright
here in the west. His aptness had earned him a license to preach from the church in Schenectady but he had no thought
of preaching in the Illinois country. Engaging as a millwright he built several mills in this section. Remnants
of one of the mills he built exist on McGee Creek, northwest of Griggsville.
One day there was a death in the Elledge neighborhood. Among the assembled friends was Mrs. Catharine Elledge and
Charles Harrington. All felt the need for some religious service, some word of prayer. Catharine Elledge, perhaps
knowing something of Charles Harrington's background, called upon him to render the needed service. He responded
so eloquently and feelingly that all present were impressed. Out of this incident arose a general call to Harrington
to preach in the new community. He eventually was called to the pastoral charge of the Perry Baptist church, which
he served many years. He also entered politics and was elected county judge on the Whig ticket in 1853.
Mr. Harrington located in Section 1 in the northwest corner of Griggsville township at the big spring west of the
creek. To his house came many couples in pioneer days to be wed. On the floor of his living room he marked a circle,
within which many a couple stood for the marriage ceremony. Often, from the fields, the son, George P. Harrington,
who became the father of Mary Harrington Ingalls, was called to serve as a witness for a wedding.
Following the death of his first wife, Catharine Scott, Uriah Elledge on December 12, 1853, married Mrs. Delia
A. (Kellogg) Ball, widow of Gideon O. Ball, a pioneer in the Illinois country and a descendant of a prominent New
York family.
Gideon Olin Ball was born in 1814, a son of Gideon Olin Ball, Sr., a native of Rome, New York. In 1843, in Jacksonville,
he married Miss Lucile Holmes. She died in 1845, at Perry, leaving one daughter, Harriett (Hattie) Sophia Ball.
Harriett Ball, on April 12, 1863, married in Pike county Daniel Hulsizer Bodine, a native of Trenton, New Jersey,
where he was born in May, 1827. Daniel Bodine, coming to Illinois in the early 1850s, located at Perry, moved thence
to Meredosia, where he taught school in 1854, moved from Meredosia to Bushnell, and later to Pittsfield prior to
1875.
The story of Bodine is an interesting one. Fifty-four different spellings of the family name appear in the long
genealogical record. The family traces back to ancient France, to Le Boudin or De Baudain, who was known in Cambray,
originally a district in the French lowlands, as early as 1126 A. D. Jean Bodin, a philosophical thinker and reasoner,
native of Angers, France, born May 31, 1530, died of the plague in 1596 at Laon. He wrote six books of reliable
treatise on philosophy of government and legislation. A descendant, Jean Bodine, landed on Staten Island in the
new world on November 3, 1677, the first of the Bodine family in America. He died on Staten Island late in the
year 1694. His son had emigrated from France to America just before his father's death, and is supposed to have
been on Staten Island at that time. The son later moved to Middlesex county, New Jersey, and on May 12, 1701 purchased
80 acres of land on the west side of Staten Island, at Charles Neck, and immediately moved there. He was the son
of the first Jean Bodine of Staten Island.
On Staten Island, to which New York City later extended, Jean Bodine set about increasing his estate. From one
Francis Bridon he bought another 80-acre tract, and two of Bridon's daughters, heirs-at-law, later, in 1736, deeded
him another ten acres. He lived on these lands, now incorporated in New York City, as late as March 7, 1736, when
he sold his lands on Staten Island to Francois Coden and John Lis. He married Esther, daughter of John Crocheron.
Jean Bodine appears also in the records as John Bodean.
Dan Bodine, descendant of Jean of Staten Island, was out of college at 21, taught school, became an accomplished
bookkeeper, was proficient in mathematics, read, spoke and wrote French, German and English with equal facility,
taught a class of twenty Pittsfield businessmen more than a half century ago (among them the late John and Adam
Hesley), was deputy county treasurer under Thomas Reynolds, was secretary of the old Pike County Fair Association
at Pittsfield for ten years, was a Pike justice of the peace, was political writer from Pike county for the old
St. Louis Republic, was rated as a friend by Governor Dick Oglesby of Illinois and by Pike county's noted early
jurist, Judge Chauncey Higbee, for whom he named one of his sons, Chauncey Higbee Bodine.
Daniel Bodine died in Pittsfield in the house where Allie Heck now lives, November 3, 1883, and a Pittsfield paper
of the period says that Governor Richard Oglesby came from the state capital to attend his funeral. He was bried
in the West cemetery. Known among his contemporaries as a man of rather unusual genius, he was said to be somewhat
lacking in the element of practicality necessary to put his genius to full accomplishment.
Daniel Bodine and Harriett Ball had eight children, namely: John Franklin, born at Bushnell and now of Minong,
Wisconsin; Lizzie Sutphin, named for Perry's noted early day physician; Minnie Melvina, who married Edward A. Renoud,
native of Wisconsin, July 25, 1885, and is now a resident of Pittsfield; Charles of New Salem; William of St. Louis;
Chauncey Higbee of Pittsfield, who married Florence Edith Hanisch of Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Anna, who married Otto
Fisher and resides at Redondo Beach, California; and Daniel Ball Bodine, who married Mary Clostermery and is at
present a resident of Pittsfield. The daughter, Lizzie Sutphin, died at Bushnell, Illinois, at the age of two years.
Following the death of Daniel Bodine, his widow, the former Harriett Ball, again married, her second husband being
Edwin Chappell of Pittsfield, whom she married December 14, 1898. She resides in Pittsfield, in her 94thyear, having
been born at Jacksonville, Illinois, February 20, 1844.
Gideon Olin Ball, following the death of his first wife, Lucile Holmes, on May 5, 1847 married Delia A. Kellogg,
a daughter of Ira Kellogg, Sr., and his wife Lydia, who had come out in 1833 from New York and settled at Naples;
in 1835 they moved near Perry. Delia was a sister of Theodore Kellogg, who was once proprietor of the old Pittsfield
House hotel and who in 1878 was elected sheriff of Pike county, serving four years. He carried the mails between
Quincy and Perry for five years in the early days of the county, and was at one time proprietor of a hotel at Perry.
He was the father of the late Mrs. Mayme K. Grigsby of Pittsfield, and of Mrs. Anna Ward of Evanston, Dr. John
Kellogg of Chicago and Joseph Kellogg of Los Angeles.
The name of Kellogg, far back in the dim beginning of history in the valley, is found associated with the names
of Elledge and Scholl. William Elledge, William Scholl and Seymour Kellogg (the latter had settled in the Sangamo
country of Illinois in the closing days of the Territory in 1818) appear to have been closely associated in the
early development of old Morgan county. In Pike county, Seymour Kellogg surveyed lands for Boone Scholl near present
Griggsville and Perry.
In 1825 we find Seymour Kellogg of Morgan county and David Dutton of Pike county named by the fourth legislature
at Vandalia to fix a seat of justice for the new county of Adams, that had been erected out of Pike county, meeting
at a point near the present Quincy square, which they solemnly declared was the geographical center of Adams county,
and there driving a stake which officially inaugurated the town of Quincy, Kellogg, a staunch supporter of John
Quincy Adams, who had just been inaugurated President of the United States, placing his hand upon the stake, with
all the solemnity due the occasion, said: "I now pronounce the name of this town Quincy!"
To Gideon O. Ball and Delia Kellogg were born three children, Theodore, Lydia A. and Emma Ball. Theodore K., born
in 1848, married Anna Cadwell in 1867 and they had six children; he died in Springfield. Lydia Affie married Robert
C. Lovejoy, April 11, 1877, with Justice Henry Lynde of Griggsville officiating; she died in Valley City. Emma
married, first, Henry Clay Maxwell, who died and is buried in the Uriah Elledge cemetery. He was a member of Company
C, 8th Illinois Infantry, in the Civil War. His burial is believed to have been the last in the old Elledge cemetery.
After his death, Emma married John Ball and resided at Valley City. She died in Dunkirk, New York.
Gideon O. Ball died March 13, 1855 and is buried in McCord cemetery at Perry. He was 41 years old. His burial is
near those of the Kelloggs, Ira and his wife Lydia, Ira, Jr., and Theodore and his two wives, Margaret A. Morrison
and Sarah C. Cockill.
On December 12, 1858, Mr. Ball's widow, Delia, married Uriah Elledge. They had four children, Anna Bell, Florence
M., Charles H. and Frederick O.
Anna Bell and Florence both became school teachers and located in Kansas City, Missouri. Anna Bell died there in
1920 and was buried in Griggsville cemetery. She was unmarried. Florence M. still resides in Kansas City, at 3605
South Benton Street.
Charles H. Elledge, now residing in Galt, Missouri, married Jennie Wilford at Shipman, Missouri, January 22, 1888.
They had six children, Eva May, Gertrude Jane, Uriah Wilford, Florence Christine, Anna Belle, and one who died
in infancy.
Gertrude Jane, born in Griggsville, March 11, 1895, married Raymond Roy Shaw, at Pittsfield June 3, 1914, he a
son of John Conway Shaw and Martha Ann Crawford. They reside in the northern edge of Griggsville and have eight
children, all unmarried: Raymond Ralph, 22; Iris Evelyn, 20; Florence Irene, 18; Bessie Gertrude, 16; Anna Maxine,
12; Eulagene May and Eugene Ray (twins) 9; and Donald LeRoy, 5.
Uriah Wilford Elledge, born December 7, 1900, married Naomi Lee Paramore, December 18, 1919, and they have one
son, Charles William, now 16, who lives at Trenton, Missouri. Uriah Wilford married as his second wife a Minnesota
girl, and they had two children, Glennice, 5, and Jerome Wilford, 3, now living in Duluth. Uriah Wilford Elledge's
last known address was Fargo, North Dakota.
Florence Christine Elledge, born April 10, 1904, married Alva Hobbs at Trenton, Missouri. They live at Hickory,
Missouri. They have no children.
Anna Belle Elledge, born October 14, 1907, married Theodore (Ted) Bolser of Galt, Missouri. They live at Galt and
have four living children, Betty Jean, Billy Joe, Charles Reason, and one whose name is missing. Two children,
John Richard and Lawrence, are dead.
Charles Elledge and Jennie Wilford had one child, born in May, 1889, who died the day of birth. Another daughter,
Eva May, born July 8, 1890, died November 26, 1893. Mrs. Elledge died at Galt, Missouri. Mr. Elledge still resides
there.
Frederick O. Elledge, last born of Uriah Elledge's children, married Ida Anthony, daughter of William Anthony of
Griggsville, and they had two children, who died young. The mother also died. Fred went west, where he again married.
He died in Idaho and the body was brought to Griggsville for burial.
Uriah Elledge died April 12, 1887, aged 84 years, four months and 21 days. He was buried in the little plot on
the old Elledge farm. His brother, Thomas P. Elledge, administered his estate, with the late Henry Bush of Pittsfied
as his bondsman. Richard Perry, Richard Wade and A. Hughes were appraisers of the estate. The latter, Arnold Hughes,
was then publisher of the Griggsville Independent Press. The landed estate comprised about twelve acres at the
old Griggsville Landing in fractional Section 20 in Flint township; also a house and lot in Naples, taken by the
administrator in collection of a desperate note due the Elledge heirs.
Uriah Elledge's wife, Delia A., died at the home of her daughter Florence in Kansas City. Burial was in McCord
cemetery at Perry where sleep numerous of her kin, including her parents, the first Illinois river pilot and his
wife, and her brothers, Theodore and Ira, Jr. Her father, Ira Kellogg, Sr., was a soldier in the War of 1812, a
New York private in the 23rd U. S. Infantry. He died at Perry February 3, 1854, according to his tombstone inscription
(February 3, 1855, according to the courthouse record); his wife, Lydia, died at Perry July 5, 1888, aged 88 years,
seven months and four days.