SQUIRE BOONE, brother of the murdered Edward and the noted Daniel, was a colorful figure. He appears often in the
background of Pike county history. He dressed oddly, and was the observed of all, as was his Pike county kinsman,
Edward Boone Scholl, the founder of Booneville (Perry). His habit of dress was thus described by George Bryan,
a cousin of Mrs. Daniel Boone:
"Squire Boone wore a scarlet vest trimmed with gold lace and gold (or gilted) buttons, and a macaroni hat
and a coarse check shirt on. He was sometimes dressed as a British officer, and sometimes as a hunter. A curious
oddity."
Squire's was a checkered life. His nephew, Daniel Bryan, once said of him:
"One night as we lay out together (on some hunt or campaign) I asked Squire for the story of his life. He
said he had been so honored that he had been a member of the legislature (Virginia) and invited to dine with the
Governor; and that he had been so poor that he had been obliged to steal hominy from a negro."
Squire once started to build his home within a two hours' ride of present Pittsfield. This was in the Cuivre River
country, scene of many of Pike county John Shaw's remarkable exploits, across the river from the lower end of early
Pike county, in the then Upper Louisiana (later Missouri) Territory. Squire had come out to this (now) Missouri
region, then under Spanish dominion, with his brother Daniel when the latter moved his family to old St. Charles
county from Point Pleasant, West Virginia, near the close of the 18th century.
When Boone moved his family to this then remote western country, part came by boat and part came overland with
the cattle. "In the boat," according to one account, "was Mrs. Boone (Daniel's wife), Daniel Morgan
Boone (son), then unmarried, and Squire Boone (brother). Squire went out and spent the winter and perhaps a year
or two. He took Spanish protection and received a grant of 700 acres a few miles from Daniel's, on Cuivre River.
Here he began to build a stone house, but when about one-half finished two of his sons went out and pursued him
to go back to Kentucky. His family were tired of so much moving, refusing to go to Missouri, remaining in Shelby
county, Ky."
Already, in a previous chapter, we have encountered Squire Boone, in the mid-winter of 1769-70, in the then wilderness
that is now Kentucky, riding the wild trail with Samuel Alexander Neeley, kinsman of that Joseph Neeley who emigrated
from the Boone country on the Yadkin to Tennessee, and then to Illinois, and in the middle 1820s to Pike county,
and whose son, Henry Neeley, 1831 settler in what is now Detroit township (Pike county), was at Horse-Shoe Bend,
on the Sangamon River, before Illinois was a state.
Daniel Boone, as related in an earlier chapter, left the banks of the Yadkin on May 1, 1769, accompanied by John
Finley, John Stuart, Joseph Holden, William Cool and James Murray, to explore and hunt in the region that is now
Kentucky. For more than a half-year these six adventurers hunted in the wild land. Boone and Stuart, pairing in
the hunt, were captured by the Indians; later, they escaped, and returning to the hut where all had been wont to
meet, they found their comrades gone, and with them all the peltries they had garnered.
What became of Finley, Holden, Cool and Murray was a secret of the old wilderness. Edward Boone Scholl, grandson
of Daniel Boone's brother Edward, writing from Griggsville in 1861, said he remembered hearing his father, Peter
Scholl (Daniel Boone's comrade in the Indian wars) talk of all those men but not being connected with any of them
he could not "tell anything satisfactory."
Boone and Stuart, left alone in the wilderness, continued their hunting. In January, 1770, Boone one day hailed
two men he saw riding through the woods. On the alert, he was ready for peace or war. The two men proved to be
his brother Squire, and Squire's friend, Samuel Alexander Neeley. They had penetrated the wilderness in a search
for Daniel, whom Squire had almost given up as dead.
Squire Boone and Neeley had brought plenty of ammunition on their pack-horses. The four now set about hunting.
Boone and Stuart paired as before; Squire and Neeley hunted together. One night Stuart did not return to camp.
Years later, Boone, blazing the Wilderness Road into Kentucky found Stuart's bones in a hollow tree. His powder
horn, with his name cut on it, lying with the bones, identified the remains. Boone Scholl, questioned by Dr. Draper
in 1861 as to his recollection of the fate of Stuart, wrote in reply: "John Stuart was burnt or supposed to
as the bones of a man was found where some Indians had reveld."
Neeley, maddened by the terrors of the wilderness, decided to return. He set forth, alone, leaving Daniel and Squire
in the Kentucky wilds. Neeley never arrived at his destination; the wilderness gulped him. Bones of a man found
years later, along a dim trail, may have been his. Boone Scholl did not remember the name of Neeley. Said he, in
a letter to Draper. "I recollect the circumstances but not the name." Draper had asked him" "Who
was the man who accompanied Squire Boone into Kentucky in 1770 and returned by himself?"
Daniel and Squire continued to hunt. In the spring (1770), their ammunition running low, Squire started alone for
the settlements, facing 500 miles of howling wilderness, leading his pack-horses carrying the pelts. Daniel remained
alone. Says one historian: "It took courage to go, courage to stay; which was the more courageous it would
be hard to say."
Thus, in the wild Kentucky land of 1769-70, we catch a glimpse of this Squire Boone who rubbed elbows with numerous
of Pike county's early settlers. In Squire Boone's settlement, on Buck Creek, in the then Territory of Indiana,
in what is now Harrison county, Benjamin Elledge and his brother Boone, Griggsville pioneers of a century ago,
lived for years, intimate friends and neighbors of the Squire Boone family.
Squire Boone was a noted figure in early Kentucky. One of the historic stockades erected for defense against the
Indians was "Squire Boone's Station" on Brashear Creek, sometimes called "Painted Stone," near
present Shelbyville. In October, 1780, Squire's brother Edward, ancestor of the Elledges, was slain and scalped
by the Indians; old Colonel Callaway, William Bryan and his son, William, Jr., and other noted Kentuckians fell
in rapid succession, victims of savage warfare.
In April, 1781, six months after Edward was killed, men of Squire Boone's Station, while clearing ground for the
spring planting, were attacked by redskins, about sunrise one morning. One man in the work party managed to get
through to the stockade and gave the alarm. Squire Boone "in his shirt tail" and about ten or twelve
others caught up their guns and ran out to the fields. About twenty Indians had hidden behind brushwood on each
side of the path, and fired upon Squire's party, killing some and wounding others.
Squire Boone, who was covering the retreat of Alexander Bryan, a kinsman of his sisters-in-law, Mrs. Edward and
Mrs. Daniel Boone, received two wounds, one in his right arm and then a second in his right side. He was so badly
wounded no one thought he could live; but after several months' suffering he recovered. However, his arm was so
badly shattered it was ever after an inch and a half shorter than the other and partly crippled. During the rest
of his life, splinters of bone would work out occasionally. It is told that afterwards, Simon Girty, the notorious
renegade who had led this attack, used to laugh and boast about how he "had made Squire Boone's white shirt
fly."
Squire Boone had a mill at his station in Kentucky, and his brother, Jonathan Boone (father of Dinah Boone Allen,
who is buried near Milton, in Pike county) tended the mill in the early 1780s. Squire Boone was a Calvinistic Baptist
minister and married many couples at his station in 1780-81.
Indians became so troublesome that in September, 1781 it was resolved to abandon the station. "All the families
with the exception of Squire Boone's and the ‘widow Hinton's'-there were not enough pack horses to take them too
- started off on 14 Sept., 1781, but were ambuscaded by the Indians when 21 miles away and still 8 miles from Linn's
Station. No men were left at Squire Boone's Station except Squire himself, still weak from his wounds, and his
son, Moses, a boy of about 12."
John Hinton's widow, above referred to, a noted character in Kentucky history, later married William Chenoweth,
who went out to Kentucky from Virginia when a young man, and took part in many an Indian fight on "the dark
and bloody ground." The Widow Hinton's maiden name was Mary VanMeter. Marrying William Chenoweth, she became
the mother of Jacob, William, Abraham and James Chenoweth, Pike county (Illinois) pioneers of more than a century
ago. James H., the noted "Uncle Jim" Chenoweth of Perry, first came to Illinois in 1832, stopping for
a while in what is now Scott (then Morgan) county, coming to Pike county in the spring of 1833; he located on Sections
27 and 28, Perry township, and entered 240 acres of land. On this land he at once erected a double log cabin, in
which he lived for several years, the log structure being succeeded later by a frame dwelling. Thirty acres of
this original entry Mr. Chenoweth laid off into town lots, which became "Chenoweth's Addition to the Town
of Perry." He became a large landowner, owning between 500 and 600 acres of Pike county land, besides land
in Missouri.
James H. Chenoweth married in 1831, Artemisia Burkhead, of Nelson county, Kentucky. One child, Abraham, was born
to them in Kentucky. James H., Jr., Jacob V., and Susanna R., were born in Pike county. The son, Robert A., served
two years in the Northern Army during the Rebellion, in the 33d Illinois infantry. The Chenoweths were prominent
in the history of the Christian church at Perry.
At Perry it was said of "Uncle Jim" that no man in the township was better known or had fewer enemies.
He was always full of fun, and liked to fish and hunt, and enjoy himself in such sport. His average weight was
212 pounds. One of his favorite diversions was tying men who boasted of their strength. He would take his rope
and tell his man that he would tie him, giving him leave to fight or adopt any means of defense except gouging
or biting; that was all he asked of the strongest contender, and it is said he never failed to vanquish his opponent.
Church member though he was, "Uncle Jim' liked his liquor and in those days when whisky was plentiful and
cheap and there was much drinking and little intoxication, he delighted to "drink with the boys" and
carried his liquor with the stoutest of them. He related that he drank liquor from the time he was 16 until he
was 74; from that age on he took only wine.
The historian of 1880, interviewing this grand old pioneer when he was 78, wrote of him as follows:
"He (Uncle Jim) thinks he averaged a quart of liquor per day for 57 years; and the other day he figured it
up, counting only one pint per day, and it made over 72 barrels, of 44 gallons each! He is willing to throw off
two barrels in the estimate, which would leave even 70 barrels, or 3,080 gallons. Now, if it would cost $2 per
gallon, it would amount to $6,160; and if the whisky he has drank were sold at 10 cents a drink, allowing 10 drinks
to the pint, it would amount to $24,640; and he thinks he has drank twice that amount, or $49,280 worth of whisky!
Perhaps he has given away as much as he has drank, which would make a total expense of $98,560! And he is yet stout
enough to round this number out to even $100,000, either by drinking the liquor or giving it away!" - History
of Pike County, Chicago, Chas. C. Chapman & Co., 1880, pp. 483-4.
Mr. Chenoweth died April 19, 1882, aged 80 years, 2 months and 20 days. He is buried at Perry. His wife, the former
Artemisia Burkhead of Kentucky, died January 4, 1874, after which Mr. Chenoweth resided with his daughter, Mrs.
Charles O. Turner. He left surviving him these children: Abraham B., James H., Joseph S., Mary E. (wife of Thomas
J. Johnston), David J. and Jacob V.
Abraham and Rachel Chenoweth, natives of Kentucky, emigrated to Pike county November 16, 1836 and settled one mile
east of Perry. Their son, H. J. Chenoweth, started the first hotel in Perry in 1872.
William Chenoweth, second of the name and one of the pioneers, died in Pike county, July 28, 1849, survived by
his widow, Sarah, and sons and daughters, Abraham, John S., Calista, Rachel, Mary Ann and James W.
Jacob V., another of the early Chenoweths, died in Pike county, July 29, 1851. Another Jacob V., born in Perry
township in 1850, a son of James H., married Elizabeth Parke.
Many descendants of William Chenoweth, the old Indian fighter, and the "Widow Hinton," who was in the
thick of the Indian fighting at Squire Boone's Station in Kentucky in 1781, reside in Pike county today.