"STEAM MILL SQUARE" in Chambersburg, on the north fork of McGee, was a scene of bustling activity in
the year 1872. There stood the old Elledge Mills, flouring mill and saw mill, with log yard and teams of oxen snaking
logs from the adjacent hills. The clank of log chains and the halloos of the loggers in those days mingled with
the screech of the old up-and-down saw and the whir of the grist mill. Nothing is there now to suggest the busy
scenes of those distant days.
A residence now stands where stood the mill. Nothing is there to indicate that it was ever a mill-site. In the
town are a few old settlers who remember the Elledge Mills, who recall the days when Steam Mill Square, at the
corner of Mill and Main Streets, hummed with business. Today a hard road, State Route No. 104, dropping down from
the western bluffs, runs through old Mill Square.
It was in 1869 that William Boone Elledge, descendant of the noted Kentucky Boones, bought Mill Square. He was
a son of Alexander Elledge, a grandson of pioneer Boone Elledge and a great grandson of Charity Boone, eldest daughter
of Edward Boone, who was Daniel's brother. William Boone (young Boone) Elledge was then 36; old Boone was long
dead. Young Boone Elledge operated the mills for many years, doing a large and profitable business. Chambersburg
in those days was a thriving town, with an important commerce.
Alexander Elledge, son of Boone Elledge, had married Amanda French in Indiana. They were both natives of Kentucky.
The Elledge and French families moved from Kentucky to Indiana about the same time, shortly prior to the second
war with Britain. Alexander and Amanda were married in 1832. Leaving Harrison county, Indiana, they settled first
in Madison county, that state, where their first child, William Boone Elledge, was born September 19, 1833.
In 1834, Alexander Elledge, accompanied by his wife and baby son, came to Pike county, Illinois, at about the same
time as his uncle, Benjamin Elledge, who settled northeast of Griggsville. Alexander also came to Griggsville township
where he worked for some time for pioneer Robert Walker, for whom he was working when his father, Boone Elledge,
arrived from Indiana with his family in June, 1836.
Alexander Elledge engaged in farming and stock raising after he left Walker's, a vocation he had earlier followed
in Indiana. He and his wife had three children, William Boone Elledge, French Elledge and Joel Elledge. French
and Joel were born in Pike county.
Alexander Elledge, the father, died in Pike county in September, 1844, and on September 3, 1846, his widow, Amanda
(French) Elledge, married her first husband's cousin, Alfred Andrew Elledge, a son of pioneer Jesse Elledge and
his wife, Elizabeth Philips.
William Boone Elledge at the age of 21, September 14, 1854, married Sarah Jane Beatty, a daughter of James and
Anna Beatty, formerly of Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Elledge was born July 15, 1836. She was two years
old when her parents located in St. Louis.
Boone Elledge and Jennie Beatty had no children of their own. While living in Shelby county they took in a little
runaway girl, Sarah Annie Gass, sheltered her, raised her as their own. The girl had come from near Moweaqua, in
Shelby county, Illinois. Her mother had died; her father, Joseph Gass, had married again. The girl did not take
to her stepmother. She ran away. Her father found her, took her home. He told her he did not blame her, that if
she ran away again and found a good home he would not take her from it. The girl again left home, came to the Elledges',
grew up there as their own daughter. On March 1, 1874 she married Ephraim Wilson High, Justice James L. Metz officiating.
The groom was a native of Lewistown, Illinois, a son of Ephraim Marsh High, who was a native of New Jersey.
Mr. and Mrs. High had a son, Oza W. High. He married in 1923 Mrs. Pearl (Chenoweth) Metz, daughter of James M.
Chenoweth and Ada Brown of Chambersburg. On November 30, 1904, when 21, she had married as her first husband Virgil
A. Metz, a son of Albert G. Metz and Elizabeth Morris of Chambersburg and a grandson of Benjamin Metz and Jane
Lawson. The rev. Nathan English said the ceremony, which was witnessed by H. B. Chenoweth and Ella Metz.
Mr. and Mrs. Oza High live on the old John Pool place, one mile northwest of Chambersburg, on the Summit school
road. From their house is a wonderful view across the great Illinois valley, a land of surpassing fertility. Five
and a half miles away, across the rich Illinois and McGee bottoms, looms the high traffic bridge across the Illinois
river at Meredosia, glistening white, the largest bridge on the river.
Annie High, foster daughter of the William Boone Elledges, died at Chambersburg August 18, 1919, aged 64. She was
born in Shelby county, Illinois, February 22, 1855, a daughter of Joseph Gass, native of Ohio. Her husband, Ephraim
High, died May 17, 1931, aged 81 years, five months and nine days. Both are buried in Brown cemetery. Their son
Oza and his wife have no children. A little niece resides in their home. Mrs. High has two daughters by her first
husband, Ada and Nellie Metz. Ada married Donald Stone of Beardstown April 2, 1923; she lives at Kewanee. Nellie
married Glenn Hobbs of Chambersburg; she lives at Chambersburg. Mrs. High is a sister of Harry Chenoweth and Mrs.
Grace Ladley.
William Boone Elledge and his wife left Chambersburg in 1878, locating in Morgan county. Shortly after their removal
they negotiated the sale of old Steam Mill Square to Elmore D. Cooper. The deed of transfer is dated September
24, 1878. It was executed by the Elledges at Jacksonville. Cooper at once began operating the mills at Chambersburg.
Elmore D. Cooper was a son of George and Elizabeth Cooper, the former of North Carolina, the latter of Tennessee.
He was born in 1812 in Sumner county, Tennessee. With his parents he moved to Kentucky, coming thence to Illinois
in 1829, and a little later to the then new town of Pittsfield where he worked at his carpenter's ared. In 1843
he married Venturia Hobbs who had been born in Kentucky in 1818, coming here in the Hobbs migration of 1836. He
farmed in Pike county until 1857, then embarked in the grocery business, later went west, returned to Illinois
in 1860 and resumed the grocery business until 1865, engaged in milling for two years, farmed a year, engaged in
milling at Versailles for a year and a half, farmed again for seven years, then bought the Elledge mills in 1878,
which he operated, both flour and saw mills, until his death which occurred at Chambersburg June 11, 1880. He is
buried in Dorsey cemetery at Perry.
John Loer and Solomon Hobbs succeeded Cooper in the mills at Chambersburg, together for a long time, then Hobbs
later taking it alone. Hobbs it was who substituted a circular saw for the old up-and-down of earlier sawing days.
Lincoln Metz of Chambersburg recalls a tragedy that occurred in the log yard at the mills in the early 1880s. Anderson
Wells, a small adopted boy, was playing in the log yard on the hillside back of the mill, where logs were being
rolled down for sawing. He had been warned to keep back. A huge rolling log caught the boy's clothing, whirled
him to the ground and rolled over his body, crushing him. John Loer was then running the mill.
John Loer's business experiences at Chambersburg are most interesting. He had married Martha Hickman in Ohio in
1835 and in 1839 moved to Pike county and located in Chambersburg township. He was a cooper by trade and brought
five coopers with him, intending to embark in that business here. He built a frame cooper shop, 20x40, bought timber
and opened for business, continuing successfully for two years. He then went into pork speculation in which he
lost heavily, buying pork at $1.50 per hundredweight, or $5.00 per barrel, which he shipped by water to New Orleans.
He continued in this business until 1849. During the wildcat money period he took a cargo of barrels to Alton and
was compelled to sell them for 50 cents, when they had cost him 62 ½ cents for the making, besides the freight
which was 25 cents each. He took Shawneetown money for pay and was advised to hurry home and dispose of it, as
it was liable to become worthless any day. In 1849 he invested in a saw mill on McGee Creek which he operated until
1862, then traded for a farm in Section 16, Chambersburg, where he carried on farming until 1877. Later he sold
the farm and went into the milling business in Chambersburg.
His wife died in 1847, leaving five children. In 1849 he married Mary Reese, daughter of John Reese and Hannah
Hall of Kentucky, and they had six children. He was born August 22, 1814, in Hamilton county, Ohio, a son of Thomas
Loer, native of Virginia, who was a son of Henry Loer, a native of Germany who emigrated with his parents to America
before the Revolution, being then eight years of age. He served under Washington in the War of Independence, for
which he received a pension until his death. After the war he married Sarah Barkus and settled in Virginia; they
removed to Ohio about 1795, where he died in Hamilton county in 1841. Thomas Loer, father of John, died in Henry
county, Indiana, in 1878, aged 86. John's mother, Sarah Patterson, was a daughter of George Patterson, a native
of Scotland, who came to America before the Revolution, settling in Grant county, Kentucky, where he resided until
his death.
Steam Mill Square was in Metz's Addition to the original town of Chambersburg. It embraced five town lots lying
between Main and Mechanic Streets. Route 104, a paved road, now runs through the north part of the square. The
old mill stood on the right of the road as one enters Chambersburg from the west. The residence of Alfred Reathaford
now stands on the mill site. Immediately back of the mill site, on the higher ground, stands the old brick house
that was the home of the Elledges. The hard road right-of-way included 15 feet of the house in the original survey.
The line was dropped back and a retaining wall built where the cut was made for the road by the house. David Leahr,
son of John Leahr, an 1857 settler at Chambersburg, now occupies the house which, with its antique portico and
extra thick walls, stands much as it did when the Elledges lived there. Mrs. Leahr, who was Lillie Patton, a daughter
of Joseph Patton, says she can remember the mill and the old log yard. She says her father worked in the old mill,
when Sol Hobbs was running it. The Leahrs have owned the house since 1921, when they bought it from George Lidgard.
An engraved lithograph of 1872 shows Steam Mill Square in the heyday of its glory. The mill was a large three-
story frame structure, with a huge block smoke stack on the south. In the picture appears also a portion of the
log yard, with three teams of oxen equipped with tackle and hook for :snaking" the logs. In the background
stands the Elledge residence with its old-fashioned small window panes in seven windows on the east, just as they
are today. Farther back are the primeval groves that clothed the river bluffs. The lithograph is entitled "Residence,
Grist and Saw Mill of W. B. Elledge, Esq., Chambersburg, Pike Co., Ills."
Elledge in 1878 sold his holdings in Chambersburg to Cooper for $5,700. The sale included Steam Mill Square and
Lot 5 in Metz's Addition, and Lot 24 and the south part of Lot 17 directly north in the original town, together
with 20 acres lying west of the original town, described as the north quarter of the northwest quarter of the southwest
quarter of Section 8; also Lota 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in Block 9, Metz's Addition, this being the property on which
the house stood.
These properties were on ground that came down by transfer from the Metz family. The ground had been surveyed and
laid out as a town site on May 7, 1833, by Seabourn Gilmore and B. B. Metz. This town was named Chambersburg. Two
men, named McIntosh and Givens, first settlers on the present town site, had a distillery there on the north fork
of McGee before the town was laid out.
The early settlement here on the north fork lived life in the raw. Nearly all were farmers, farming after a fashion
now unknown. Says an early historian about this settlement:
"They raised a little corn and a few vegetables and, like their red neighbors, depended largely upon their
rifles for subsistence. Their houses were but little superior to those of the Indians, being merely little cabins
erected only with the help of the axe and perhaps an auger. No locks, nails or any other article of iron entered
into their construction, but such devices as could be wrought out on the ground by the use of the tools named and
of such materials as the locality afforded. The only boards used for any purpose were such as could be hewed out
of logs."
Benjamin B. Metz, one of the founders and early proprietors of the town of Chambersburg, was born in Maryland in
1806, moved from there to Virginia, where he married Jane Lawson, who was born in Ohio in 1812; the couple came
to Pike county in 1833 and settled in what is now Chambersburg township.
Benjamin B. Metz deeded his interest in the old Elledge mill and home site to John Metz in 1867 and on April 3,
1869, John Metz transferred title to William Boone Elledge
William Boone, following his marriage in 1854, remained for some time in the Chambersburg vicinity, going later
to Shelby county, Illinois, where he and his wife and his brother, French Elledge, were residing in 1865. From
Shelby county, William B. returned to Pike county, where he purchased the mills at Chambersburg in 1869. Leaving
Chambersburg in 1878, he went to Morgan county, Illinois, thence to the state of Kansas where he and his wife died
and are buried.
French Elledge, a younger brother of William Boone and named for his mother, Amanda French, married Rebecca Snyder
and resided in Shelby county, Illinois, moving thence to the state of Washington. He had three children, namely,
Elizabeth, Mary and William.
Elizabeth Elledge married Otto Klaus of St. Louis and they reside in Seattle, Washington. They have one son, Arthur
Klaus.
Mary Elledge married E. b. Williamson of Washington state and they live at Prosser, Washington.
William Elledge went west, disappearing from the ken to his relatives who do not know whether he is alive. When
last heard of, he was unmarried.
Joel Elledge, third and last child of Alexander Elledge and Amanda French, was killed in the Civil War and buried
on a southern battlefield. He was never married.