MALINDA SCHOLL to those of her own time may have seemed but common clay; viewed, dimly, through the mists of a
century, in the light of old historic documents, she seems of more romantic mold. A century ago, she was First
Lady of the now long-forgotten town of Pleasant Vale. For thirty-three years she dwelt on or near the present site
of New Canton, in Pleasant Vale township, in Pike county, Illinois; yet Malinda Scholl's name has remained unnoted
in the pioneer recitals of early Pike county historians.
Possibly Malinda's Boone background was unknown to the Pike county community of a hundred years ago; that, however,
seems hardly probable. Perhaps the memory of that background had faded from the minds of men by the time the first
Pike county history was written; Malinda had been long dead and her immediate descendants had vanished from this
region when the first county historian began his task.
But Malinda escaped the notice not alone of the Pike county historians; she proved equally evasive for the historians
of the Boone family. Numerous attempts have been made by them to trace her, following her migration from the ancestral
home in Kentucky; all such attempts have failed. Some Boone family historians have traced her to an undefined settlement
somewhere in this western country; none has ever followed her to the region that is now Scott county, where was
her first settlement following the migration, and where her first husband, Neddie Boone Elledge, died in 1829;
nor has any Boone historian or genealogist ever located her in Pike county, Illinois, where, after her marriage
to Joseph Jackson in Morgan (now Scott) county, in 1832, she settled and spent the rest of her days, dying in the
town of Pleasant Vale (adjacent to present New Canton) in 1865, at the age of 70.
In the various efforts that have been made to trace this lost daughter of the Boones, Mrs. Hazel Atterbury Spraker,
herself a Boone descendant, has come nearest in her remarkable opus, published in 1922, entitled "The Boone
Family." Mrs. Spraker has Malinda married to a Joseph Jackson but has nothing relative to her first marriage
to Neddie Elledge. Mrs. Spraker locates Malinda at Canton, Missouri, instead of New Canton, Illinois. Malinda never
resided at Canton, nor at any other place in Missouri.
This Boone daughter, whose first husband was her first cousin, Edward (Neddie) Boone Elledge, and whose second
husband was Pike county pioneer Joseph Jackson, had a vivid Boone background. A daughter of the Revolutionary soldier,
Peter Scholl, and his wife, Mary Boone, a grandniece of Daniel Boone and a grandniece of Daniel Boone and a grandniece
of Daniel Boone's wife, Rebecca Bryan. Peter Scholl (her father) and Daniel Boone were comrades in the Indian wars,
and Peter Scholl's wife (Malinda's mother) was Daniel's niece. Malinda's first husband, Neddie Elledge, bore the
same relationship to Edward and Daniel Boone as she herself, she and Neddie being children of Mary and Charity
Boone, daughters of Edward.
Malinda was an elder sister of Edward Boone Scholl, pioneer citizen of Griggsville (where he once kept store) and
founder of Boonesville (now Perry) in north Pike county. Edward Boone Scholl died at Griggsville, March 9, 1862;
Malinda at Pleasant Vale, November 13, 1865. Boone Scholl, frequent Griggsville correspondent of Dr. Lyman C. Draper,
noted collector of Boone manuscripts and early secretary of the Wisconsin State Historical Society at Madison,
Wisconsin, in a letter from Griggsville to Dr. Draper dated January 28, 1862, wrote: "I live in Griggsville
and would take great pleasure in seeing you at my humble cottage and would be pleased to accompany you to my old
sister in this county, Mrs. M. Jackson, Canton, Pike County.
"I have one brother 78 living in Mo. But all younger than myself save on the first above (Mrs. Jackson). There
is in the immediate neighborhood of the brother in Galloway (Callaway) Co. 2 cousins grandsons of Daniel Boone
and many of his grandsons you will do us the honor of your company and I remain your brother in Christ — E. B.
Scholl." — As copied from the original Draper Mss. by A. C. Barrow, Auburn, Alabama, a great grandson of Abraham
Scholl.
The brother in Callaway county, Missouri, above referred to, was John Scholl, who married Adaline (Linah) Jones
and was the father of two sons and eight daughters; he was born in 1787 and must therefore have been about 75 at
the time of Boone Scholl's letter. The two cousins (grandsons of Daniel Boone), mentioned by Scholl, were Marcus
(Marquis) and Joseph Scholl, sons of Peter and Abraham Scholl's brother Joseph and the latter's wife, Levina Boone,
third daughter of Daniel. Matthew, a son of Daniel Boone's son Jesse, and Samuel Boone, a son of Daniel's brother
George, were also residents of the same vicinity, as was a daughter of Jesse Boone; the address of all of those
mentioned being Williamsburgh P. O., Callaway County, Missouri.
In reporting information as to his father's large family in a letter dated at Griggsville February 25, 1861, Boone
Scholl said of his sister Malinda: "Malinda born 95 (1795). Married Edward Elledge; he dyed in 1825, she in
1831. marrie Joseph Johnson (Jackson), she still lives in Pike Co." From this unfortunate punctuation, some
Scholl historians have been led to believe that Malinda died in 1831, whereas Boone Scholl meant to say that she
re- married in 1831. Mr. Scholl, however, was in error as to dates. Official records of Old Morgan county show
that Edward Elledge died in 1829 and that his widow re-married in 1832.
Mrs. Spraker gives Malinda's birth date as 1791; this date, however, is incorrect, as Malinda's elder brother,
Joseph, was born in 1791, and the first Dudley Scholl, born in 1793 and dying in infancy, was also born before
Malinda.
Malinda was born near early Schollsville, site of the present railway station of Hedges, in Clark county, Kentucky.
A part of the old Peter Scholl house in which she was born was still standing in 1920; it had been built on a land
grant that Daniel Boone settled and preempted and later assigned to his cousin, William Scholl, who in turn gave
it to his three sons, Peter, Abraham and Joseph, who settled the tract about 1792.
Malinda Elledge, Edward's widow, married Joseph Jackson, Pike county pioneer, in Morgan (now Scott) county, November
18, 1832, her brother-in-law and cousin, Preacher Jesse Elledge, saying the ceremony. Jackson at once removed his
bride and her children across the river into Pike county, the family settling in what is now Pleasant Vale township,
at the site of present New Canton, which dates from April 2, 1835. There, on April 16, 1836, Joseph Jackson and
Pearley Jackson laid out the town of Pleasant Vale, on the southwest quarter of Section 9, north of New Canton.
On that day, David Johnson, 1828 settler west of Philips Ferry and then county surveyor, certified as true the
copy and survey of the town plat, which was recorded April 19, 1836, in Volume 8, Page 348 of the Deed Records
of Pike County. This was the period of the great internal improvement boom, and Johnson, the surveyor, was kept
busy laying out and surveying new town sites. A few days before (April 7, 1836) he had laid out the town of Washington
for its proprietor, Nathan Winters. The name of this town was later changed to El Dara.
Pleasant Vale, of which Malinda Jackson was First Lady, remained a town site for many years. It was laid out to
become an important city. Main, Pleasant and Belfast Streets, chief arteries of travel and commerce, were intersected
by Jefferson, Washington, Snighcarty, Hampshire, Jackson and Clay. The plat was certified by the Jacksons before
Alfred Grubb, the "Little Bay Horse," then a Pike county justice of the peace. Not until May 26, 1873
was the town plat of Pleasant Vale vacated, by the then owners of the tract, Joseph McFarland and his wife Isabel,
the vacation being instituted before the notary public, J. W. Evans, who married Joseph and Malinda Jacksons' daughter
Martha.
Joseph Jackson, second husband of Malinda (Scholl) Elledge, came up from Kentucky into Pike county, Illinois, close
on the heels of the first Rosses at Atlas. Earlier historians have not located Joseph Jackson in Pike county prior
to 1828. We find indisputable record, however, of Jackson's presence here as early as 1821, the year in which Pike
county was erected on the Military Tract. Pike county became such on January 31, 1821; less than four months later,
May 26, 1821, we find Joseph Jackson at the log home of James McDonald on Sny Island, opposite present Louisiana,
on the Illinois side of the river. This proves to be a momentous day in Joseph Jackson's life. On this day he makes
a deal with McDonald and his wife Mary for 60 acres of land which McDonald had entered in what is now Derry township.
He probably stays at McDonald's for dinner; he probably likes Mrs. McDonald's cooking; at any rate, following McDonald's
death, he marries the widow.
The McDonalds, including James, his wife and their four daughters, had arrived only a few weeks previously from
Washington county, New York, and had taken up a shanty abode on Sny Island. Here McDonald started a rude ferry
and opened the first farm on the road between present Atlas and Louisiana. Floods drowned him out. The next spring
(1822) he was found dead at his ferry, supposedly murdered. The inquest, conducted by William Ross, was the first
inquest in Pike county. In the records of the early commissioners' court, kept by "My Lord Coke" Whitney,
under date of March 6, 1822, is found the following:
"Ordered, that the Treasurer pay unto William Ross the sum of sixteen Dollars and twenty-three cents for holding
an inquest over the dead body of James McDonald, and the charges of doing the same."
On May 26, 1821, at the McDonald house, an agreement had been entered into between the McDonalds and Joseph Jackson,
whereby they, for a consideration of $120, deeded to Jackson 60 acres in the southeast quarter of Section 18 in
present Derry township. The deed sets out that this lay in a tract "appropriated by the Acts of Congress of
the United States for Military Bounties in the late Territory (now State) of Illinois."
On the same day, we find James McDonald, his wife Mary, and Joseph Jackson crossing the river into Missouri to
have the deed drawn and acknowledged before a notary public. And here, while following Jackson, in the person of
the Missouri justice before whom the deed is acknowledged, we meet another great Pike county pioneer, destined
in 1842 to found Pike county's first newspaper, "The Sucker and Farmers' Record," first print-shop ancestor
of the present Pike County Republican. This man was Michael J. Noyes, grandfather of Miss May Noyes of Pittsfield,
and then a justice of the peace and county and circuit clerk of Pike county, Missouri.
Noyes, stalwart of early Pittsfield and Pike county, came from New Hampshire, where he was born at Landaff in Grafton
county March 30, 1791; and settled in Lincoln, Kentucky, Here he became acquainted with the Baileys, Lewises and
Collards, numerous of whom we find locating in St. Charles, Lincoln and Pike counties in Missouri, and in Pike
county, Illinois.
On Sunday, April 13, 1817, Noyes, with his family and household goods, started from Lincoln county, Kentucky, on
the long journey to Missouri Territory, following the route taken by Daniel Boone's family in 1797. As we write
there lies before us, in his own handwriting, the daily journal of this great adventure, a treasured keepsake of
his granddaughter.
Making the harbor of St. Charles on May 28, 1817, after a thrilling and dangerous voyage of 45 days in a $12.50
skiff up the Kentucky river to the Ohio, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, up the Mississippi to the St. Charles,
and up the St. Charles to the final landing, he there, on the following July 7, began teaching a Territorial subscription
school, two of his pupils being daughters of Samuel Harding Lewis (who died at Pleasant Hill in Pike county, Illinois,
in 1832). One of these pupils was Lewis' daughter Ursula (later the wife of James Galloways), reputed the first
white child born in Missouri Territory.
Here Noyes also, as a land surveyor, laid off large areas of land for the United States government, under contract.
His notebook, containing the journal of his voyage to the Territory, contains also page after page of his survey
notes at St. Charles and along the Missouri river. While engaged in this work he became acquainted with the venerable
Daniel Boone (who had settled in Upper Louisiana, later Missouri Territory, in 1797), and following Boone's death
on September 26, 1820, Noyes attended his funeral in the big barn at the home of Flanders Callaway (Boone's son-in-law)
and heard the funeral sermon preached over the pioneer's remains by the Reverend James Craig, a son-in-law of Daniel
Boone's son, Major Nathan Boone,
Noyes, whose journal of pioneer adventure is subject matter for another story, later removed to Pike county, Missouri,
where he held the offices of county and circuit clerk, county surveyor and justice of the peace, holding as many
offices as did his illustrious contemporary, James W. (My Lord Coke) Whitney on the Pike county (Illinois) side
of the river.
Following acknowledgment by the McDonalds of their deed to Jackson, before Noyes, the then Missouri justice, in
1821, the grantee proceeded to open up a farm on his new acreage in the west part of present Derry, this being
the first farm improvement in what is now Derry township. Jackson sold this tract in 1828 to Daniel H. Howard for
what he gave for it ($120). He then began opening lands in what is now Pleasant Vale, in the vicinity of modern
New Canton, acquiring a considerable body of land in that region. Other immigrants of the name of Jackson, among
them Amos, Pearley, Lorenzo, Charles and Francis, also settled there, forming a Jackson colony. To this settlement
came also Solomon Morey and his wife Jennet (her signature) and their children, kinsmen of Joseph Jackson. Here
also, on the bank of Keyes' Creek, was the log bachelors' hall of Willard Keyes and John Wood, the latter of whom
afterwards founded Quincy and followed Bissell as governor of Illinois.
Malinda Scholl Elledge, by her marriage to Joseph Jackson, became the mother of three more children, namely, Malinda,
Martha and Joseph S. Jackson. Joseph Jackson, Sr. died September 22, 1855. He left a will dated March 17, 1841,
witnessed by John Martin and Williamson Jennings, wherein he left all of his property to his widow, Malinda, with
this proviso: that "she cause to raised and educated in a decent manner my three youngest children, namely,
Malinda Jackson, Martha Jackson and Joseph S. Jackson (should they live to require it), and when the girls get
married give each of them $50 and when the boy becomes twenty-one years of age give him fifty dollars also to be
their property." The will further provided for execution of these bequests in the event of the widow's death
before they were paid. In the will he named his wife Malinda and his nephew Moses Morey as executors.
Joseph Jackson left 136 ½ acres of land in Sections 8, 9 and 16, Pleasant Vale township, and 66 town lots
in the town of Pleasant Vale. In addition to the three younger children, the records show four other heirs sharing
in the estate, namely, James R. Williams, Calvin Jackson (who, with Jesse Elledge officiating, married Nancy McDaniel
December 4, 1845), Calvin J. Jackson (minor son of Mrs. Elizabeth Henry of St. Louis), and Henry Digby (son of
James Digby who married Lucinda Jackson, January 8, 1835). Numerous receipts and other documents in the files of
the estate are dated at Pleasant Vale, Illinois, the pioneer town of the Jacksons.
Malinda's daughter, the second Malinda, was married April 22, 1852, in Pike county, to Moses Samuels, a descendant
of Daniel and Edward Boone's brother Squire and probably named for Squire Boone's son Moses. Back in the Squire
Boone and Benjamin and Boone Elledge settlement, in Harrison county, in the then Territory of Indiana, Squire Boone's
granddaughter Emily, daughter of Isaiah Boone, in the early 1800s had married Marshall Samuels, and Malinda joined
the family group on the Missouri side, following their marriage in Pike county, Illinois, in 1852.
About the same time, in Harrison county, Indiana, in the Boone and Elledge settlement near Laconia, Emily Boone's
sister Adaline had married Perry Marshall Baldwin, and they also had settled near Hannibal. Later, in Pike county,
we find other members of the Baldwin family intermarrying with the Elledge branch of the Boones; Lewis H. Baldwin
marrying Boone Elledge's daughter Maria Jane, and Samuel G. and Sheldon Baldwin, brothers, marrying two of the
Elledge sisters, Sarah and Adaline, daughters of Benjamin Elledge.
Malinda Scholl's daughter, Martha E. Jackson, was married April 10, 1856, in Pike county to John Wesley Evans,
with Moses Morey, a local justice and kinsman of the bride officiating. The Evans family resided at Pleasant Vale
and New Canton for many years, and in 1867 were residents of Pleasant Hill, being again located at New Canton,
where Evans was a justice of the peace, in 1873 when the town plat of Pleasant Vale was vacated.
Joseph S. Jackson, Malinda Scholl's son by her second husband, married in Pike county December 10, 1857, Eliza
G. Jackson. Moses Morey, the groom's cousin, officiated, he having said the ceremonies in the weddings of the groom's
two sisters.
Records show Joseph S. Jackson a resident of the town of Pleasant Vale as late as 1863; he later moved to Fremont
county, Iowa, and was residing there in 1867. Joseph S., Malinda and Martha E. Jackson, daughters of Malinda Scholl,
were half-brother and half-sisters of Edward and Malinda Elledge's children and great grandchildren of Edward Boone.
Malinda Scholl Elledge Jackson died at Pleasant Vale November 13, 1865, on the same day that Edward Boone Scholl's
widow, Susannah (Bently) Scholl, died at Griggsville. Said William P. Scholl (Susannah's son), writing from Griggsville
to Dr. Lyman C. Draper in April, 1868: "Aunt Linda died November 13, 1865 at 9 P. M. and my mother met her
I think just about that same hour same date."
Doctor Draper had planned a trip into Pike county for a personal interview with Malinda Scholl touching the thrilling
history of her people, but death intervened and Malinda died with her story untold.