WE MUST BELIEVE that Edward Boone Elledge's daughter Lydia was exceeding fair; on the flyleaf of an old hymnal
used in the Sandy Creek meeting-house (forerunner of the Winchester church and mother of churches in both Scott
and Pike counties), is indited in faded ink this entry: "Liddy Elledge farest blosum on the border."
The late Samuel Peak of Winchester related that the phrase "fairest blossom on the border" belonged to
a rollicking courting song of pioneer times.
The Sandy Creek swain of the 1820s may have been prejudiced; it is evident that something other than the weal of
his immortal soul took him to this early Morgan (now Scott) county meeting-house, in which the Word was preached
by Gorham Holmes and Jacob Bowers and Jesse Elledge. At any rate we have the opinion of one contemporary in the
foregoing tribute to this budding Elledge belle of the long ago, in a hymnal preserved by Mrs. Belle McKamey of
Scott county. Who penned the tribute to Lydia is unknown, it was not Benjamin Webb who later married her. Benjamin
Webb could not write his own name; nor could Lydia Elledge write hers. They belonged to a period when few of the
young men and fewer of the young women had an opportunity to acquire even the art of writing their own names. Benjamin
and Lydia Webb's signatures to official documents of record are invariably by mark.
Lydia (recorded in the marriage records of Old Morgan as Liddy Elledge) married Benjamin Webb in Morgan (now Scott)
county, August 12, 1830, in the year following her father's death. Justice Davis Bunch tied the martial knot. The
couple in 1832 (the year in which Lydia's mother married Joseph Jackson and settled in Pike county, near New Canton)
moved to the Jackson neighborhood in what is now Pleasant Vale township, where they settled on a 40-acre tract
entered directly from the government and described as the SW of the NE of Section 11, Pleasant Vale. On January
28, 1839, Benjamin and Lydia Webb transferred this tract to Samuel Clift.
James Boone and William Tilford, sons of Edward Elledge, following their mother's marriage to Jackson, accompanied
her to Pleasant Vale in Pike county and made their home with their stepfather. There, on February 16, 1837, James
Boone Elledge married Levina (or Lovina) Parkhurst. As usually was the case when a Boone kinsman was getting married,
old Jesse Elledge, the preacher grandson of the Boones (son of Francis Elledge and Charity Boone), was called upon
to perform the wedding ceremony. Preacher Elledge certified the marriage pronouncement as a "United Baptist
Minister of the Gospel."
Of this Elledge bride nothing is known; of her people no record is discoverable. It is possible that she was a
member of that Parkhurst family, early comers to this western country, which had in early days intermarried with
the Boone family. The bride's given name appears in the various records as Gevina, Levina, Lavinia and Lovina;
it was probably intended that she bear the name of Daniel Boone's daughter, Levina, who married Joseph Scholl.
Levina Boone's given name is variously spelled in old records. It is known that some of the Parkhursts came from
the Boone settlement in Kentucky.
Weddings were gala events in the early days. Boone family weddings, according to early chroniclers, were usually
celebrated with "much dancing" and "fiddle music." The Elledges, in early Pike county, apparently
adhered to their Boone traditions. Some of these Elledge weddings were long remembered as "grand occasions."
The wedding of James Boone Elledge and Levina Parkhurst appears to have been one of the remembered weddings of
early times. It was probably this wedding that was referred to by Solomon Shinn of Adams county, 1829 man in this
section, in his "Pike County Reminiscences" at an Old Settlers' meeting held in Pittsfield in August,
1877. Said he:
"Weddings, hoss racing and court weeks were the exciting events forty years ago. I remember attending the
wedding of one of the Elledges in this county (some of his kin are here today) just about forty years ago now.
The bride was a ‘fine lady' and the wedding was fine, too. It was a ‘ten gallon wedding.' I mean by that there
was ten gallons of whiskey circulated at the celebration. Weddings then were measured by the gallon. A one-gallon
wedding was for ‘pore folks.' A two-gallon wedding was only a step higher up the scale. A real society wedding
was a 10-gallon affair. But I don't recall that anybody got drunk at that wedding. Those were great times."
So wrote an observer of a Pike county wedding of a hundred years ago. Several of the early Elledges married what
were known in pioneer parlance as "fine ladies" but it may reasonably be supposed that reference was
here had to the wedding of James Boone Elledge, which occurred in February, 1837, he being the only Elledge bridegroom
of record in the county in the period 1836-37. There had, however, been several Elledge weddings in the county
prior to that period.
The first Elledge wedding of Pike county record was in the time of the "Big Snow," in the winter of 1830-31.
This was the wedding of Martha (Hannah) Elledge (daughter of Jesse) to William Philips (of the noted Philips Ferry
family) January 13, 1831; they became the parents of Jemima Philips (namesake of Daniel Boone's second daughter),
who in 1859 married Michael Bollman and became the mother of the now venerable John Bollman of Detroit. Venison,
roasted to a turn over a great log fire and served at the wedding feast, was supplied by an unlucky deer that was
killed by hand after it had broken through the crust that had formed on the deep snow.
The second Elledge wedding in the county followed in the early summer of the same year, being that of Francis Elledge
(namesake of his grandfather who married Charity Boone) and Sarah Philips (Nimrod's daughter), June 6, 1831. The
groom was a son of Boone Elledge, 1836 settler at Griggsville; Francis, with some of his brothers, came to this
country from Harrison county, Indiana, several years before his father, and worked for Abel Shelley school district
north of Griggsville, with whom he was staying at the time of his marriage and for whom he continued to work for
a number of years thereafter.
Catharine Reynolds, wife of Benjamin Elledge, 1834 pioneer of the Griggsville vicinity, was one of the Elledge
brides who was born a great lady. Raised by a rich uncle, an aristocratic tobacco planter of the Old South and
the possessor of many slaves, she had a Negro girl to wait on her, had her own carriage and liveried Negro to drive
it, and slaves to answer her beck and call. Her granddaughter, Mrs. Alice Carter of Kansas City, Missouri, remembers
the beautiful silks she had and the many other beautiful things that graced the pioneer and now long vanished home
northeast of Griggsville, on the land now occupied by Glenn Riley. "I remember," says this granddaughter,
"she did not allow me to touch a thing she had."
Mrs. Carter's mother, Zerilda Reynolds, who married Reynolds M. Elledge at Griggsville in 1853, was another Elledge
bride who came from a family of Southern aristocracy that had slaves to do all the work. This Elledge bride was
disowned by her family when she married a "Free Stater." — From the records of Boone and Elledge families
collected by Evelyn Thayne Elledge (Mrs. E. E. Boone), Hibbing, Minnesota.
Aside from the brief official entry in the Pike county "Register of Marriage," and the returned marriage
license and certificate, on file in the Pike county clerk's office, we have little of an authentic nature pertaining
to James Boone Elledge's wedding in 1837. There was not yet a newspaper published within the borders of Pike county;
even had there been, the editor doubtless would have "covered" it with a notice no more explicit than
the registry record. The practice of "covering" weddings and engagements was still far in the future.
There was no such thing as a society column in the 1830s, not even in the city newspapers. Marriage announcements
were merely that and nothing more.
The Quincy Whig, in its issue of September 8, 1838, blossomed out its first real society story, captioned "So
Fades the Lovely, Blooming Flower." Said the Whig: "In Scott County, Ia., after a residence of four years,
the last single lady found a market on the tenth ult."
By 1840 editors (those with vision) were beginning sometimes to add a "personal" touch to the stereotyped
contributed wedding announcement in cases where such announcement was accompanied by "K. K." (Kake and
Kompliments) from the "hand of the fair bride herself." In K. K." cases the editor would sometimes
go so far as to wish "peace and prosperity to the happy pair through life." The present policy of ferreting
out a wedding story or "going after" an engagement would in those days of early journalism have been
frowned upon as most unethical indeed. Consequently there was no use for a "lady reporter" or a "society
editor."
Says a chronicler of the period (1825-1840): "When a bachelor appeared in public in a suit of ‘boughten' clothes,
rumors flew throughout the settlement and everybody was on the qui vive for the appointed time. Feasting and dancing
marked these early celebrations. Whisky and rum flowed freely but there was little excessive drinking. Intoxication
was rare at these gatherings when hospitality was extended to all and the whole settlement made merry and showered
the bridal couple with broad quip and jest that would hardly meet with favor in modern times."
And this from another historian of the period: "Who can ever forget one of those weddings of the ‘thirties?
Then if ever the pioneers enjoyed themselves to the fullest. Everybody went to these weddings. Whisky was free
as water. Whisky was only 12 ½ cents a quart, 50 cents a gallon, and enormous quantities were consumed.
Sometimes there was fighting, but the dance went on. Usually, if the weather was crisp, logs had been drawn into
a heap in the clearing by sturdy oxen and when night came on these were kindled and the fun went on both inside
and outside the house until the wee sma' hours. I remember at one of these affairs out in Pleasant Vale township
they had arranged tables made of clapboards and placed upon sticks supported by stakes driven into the ground and
with all out-of-doors for a dining room the whole community feasted on venison, sweet potatoes, crab-apple sauce,
etc. One or two fiddlers and sometimes a third man with an accordion furnished the music for the dance which usually
continued until first signs of daybreak."
Still another recalls the "house-raisings" that often became a part of a wedding celebration, when, after
the groom had his logs cut and ready, the whole neighborhood gathered for the "raising." "Teams,
men, axes, all were on the ground at an early hour, logs were hauled, scored, one side hewed, it may be, and before
night willing hands had erected a residence as comfortable and commodious as any in the settlement, and at night
was ready for the ‘house- warming,' where dancing was kept up until the ‘wee, short hours,' and where all enjoyed
themselves in a manner unknown to the people of today."
Meanwhile, according to another chronicler, the newly-wedded couple was "set up for housekeeping" by
the bounty of their neighbors, one "sending a bushel or two of potatoes, another a slab of meat, another some
other article that could be used to eke out the larder."
Thus, from the narratives' of the early writers, we are able to envision a Pike county wedding of a century ago.
James B. Elledge in 1836 acquired 40 acres in Section 16 (a school section) in Pleasant Vale township, just south
of New Canton. Daniel B. Bush, then school commissioner, sold the 40 acres to Elledge for $6.27 an acre, the transfer
to Elledge being signed by Governor Joseph Duncan at Vandalia, December 8, 1836. This tract in 1847 passed to Solomon
Shewe.
In 1835 Elledge had acquired directly from the government the south half of SW of Section 6 in what is now Derry
township, and later, in 1847, added another and adjacent 40 to his acreage in a purchase from Isaac and Nancy Redferron,
paying $250 for the forty. On September 15, 1854, James B. Elledge and his wife Levina appear for the last time
in the Pike county records, signing deeds on that day transferring the entire 120 acres in Derry township to Joseph
Morgan for a consideration of $1200.
About this time, in the period 1849 to 1863, we find numerous of the Elledges "selling out" in Pike county
and joining in the gold rush to California. Some of them died in the gold fields; others found permanent residence
in the Pacific country. Some of them made history in the West. One of them, Charles W. Elledge, drove the stage
from Marysville to Dorris Bridge (now Alturas) during the exciting period of the Modoc war.
James Elledge was among the western Argonauts. Selling out here, he left Pike county by the overland trail to Marysville,
California. Richard Beall and his wife Jemima (the latter a sister of James Elledge) went also. Moses Samuels,
who had married Malinda Jackson (daughter of Malinda Scholl Elledge Jackson) in 1852, also, after a brief sojourn
among their relatives in missouri, went on to California. James H. Elledge was among the Griggsville emigrants.
In 1849, Uriah Elledge, son of Boone, with his son, Daniel Boone Elledge, had gone overland to California with
the first emigrant train that went from this region in search of gold. Daniel Boone Elledge died in the gold country.
Uriah and his son Daniel Boone, heading westward in a huge ox wagon, "joined up" in Missouri with the
wagon train of their kinsman, Boone Hays, son of the noted Kentuckian, Captain William Hays, and his wife, Susannah
Boone, fourth daughter of Daniel. Boone Hays had married as his first wife his cousin, Lydia Ann Scholl, sister
of Malinda and Edward Boone Scholl and a daughter of Kentucky Peter Scholl and Mary Boone. This marriage of Boone
Hays, son of Daniel Boone's daughter Susannah, and Lydia Ann Scholl, daughter of Edward Boone's daughter Mary,
occurred in Clark county, Kentucky, June 3, 1807. Boone Hays' second wife was a Mrs. Frazier of Memphis, Tennessee.
Boone Hays, born in 1783, the year in which Boone Elledge was born, settled in Darst's Bottom, St. Charles county,
Missouri, in 1801 and in 1804 made a trip to Kentucky with furs, in company with his brother, William Hays, Jr.,
and his cousin, James Callaway, son of Daniel Boone's daughter Jemima. Boone Hays had the rank of captain in Dodge's
party when it went up the Missouri river. In 1818, he moved to Callaway county, where he built the first horse
mill in that part of the vountry. He was described as "a man of robust constitution and iron nerves"
and to his indomitable courage as one of the famous "forty-niners" was ascribed in large measure the
success of the first wagon train adventure from this section to the land of gold. He, however, died soon after
reaching the gold fields, as did Daniel Boone Elledge. His death occurred in 1850 at Marysville, California.
William Tilford Elledge, James Boone's brother, had died at Pleasant Vale, August 17, 1840, unmarried and intestate,
leaving a considerable estate, which was administered by his stepfather, Joseph Jackson, with Pearley Jackson as
surety. A public sale of Tilford's property was held at Pleasant Vale October 10, 1840.
At sales, as at weddings, whisky circulated freely. It seems to have fallen to the lot of the clerk of the sale
to provide the whisky therefor, the records showing the clerk bringing in a bill for whisky for the sale along
with his charge for clerking. So at this sale Clerk Thomas Newenhall presented a bill against the estate for $1
for "2 gals. whisky for sale."
Among the bidders of record at this 1840 sale in Pleasant Vale are Charles Brewster (one of the three founders
of New Canton), Benjamin Barney (the early "county blacksmith"), Joseph B. Scholl (son of William Scholl
and Martha Elledge and grandson of Francis Elledge and Charity Boone), James B. Elledge (Tilford's brother), David
Dutton (noted early day Pike county commissioner), Joseph Jackson (second husband of Tilford's mother, Malinda
Scholl Elledge), Benjamin Webb (husband of Tilford's half-sister, Lucinda Jackson), Aury Brown, E. T. Martin, Amos
Morey, Cassada B. Williams, Lorenzo Jackson, James Minturn, Horace Palmer, Pat Freaks, Sam Jeffries, Francis Jackson,
Charles Jackson and Jesse Elledge. The sale was cried by Robert R. Davis and clerked by Thomas Newenhall.
The sale prices entered by the clerk on the yellowed sale bill of this "public vendue" reflect, as do
all those of the period, the then wide usage of the "bit" and "picayune," the 12 ½ and
6 1/4 cent pieces of the day. James Boone Elledge purchased his brother's "rifle gun" for $6.12 1/2;
also his brother's linen roundabout for $1, his "Sattenett pants" for $2.12 ½, his overcoat for
$7 and his arithmetic for 26 1/4 cents. Joseph Jackson bought Tilford's watch for $5.68 3/4, or $5.50 plus a "bit"
and a "picayune." Benjamin Webb, brother-in-law of Tilford, brought the latter's dress coat for $12.62
1/2, and James Digby bought his geography and atlas for $1.37 1/2.
This sale of 1840 also gives a line on the prevailing prices of oxen in this region at that time. Horace Palmer
bought a yoke of steers for $20; Sam Jeffries a yoke of oxen for $51.50; Francis Jackson a yoke of oxen for $35.50;
James B. Elledge a pair of steers for $20; Charles Jackson a yoke of oxen for $27.25.
Records of the estate show that Moses Clauson, early Pleasant Vale wood workers, made Tilford Elledge's coffin,
for which he charged the estate $6.
Tilford Elledge held title at his death to the W ½ of the NW 1/4 of Section 14 in Pleasant Vale, this eighty
being more recently a part of the land owned by Louis Meyers.