On Sunday, May 22, 1836, Boone Elledge and his wife Rebecca, with a numerous family of children, started from the
neighborhood of Laconia, Harrison county, Indiana (25 miles from Louisville, Kentucky), by wagon, enroute to Pike
county, Illinois. In a rude memorandum book, Boone Elledge kept a record of the journey, accounting each day for
every penny expended the trip took 17 days. The last expense entry is June 7, "trip took 17 days. The last
expense entry is of June 7, "ferige $1.12 1/2." This refers to the ferriage of the Illinois river at
Philips Ferry. The same day the emigrants reached their destination in what is now Griggsville township.
"The whole expense in travelling from Laconia, Indiana, to Griggsville, Illinois, $21.68 3/4," wrote
Boone Elledge, in summing up the journey. Expenses were mostly for ferriage. Starting from Laconia on May 22, they
reached the East Fork of White River on May 26. "Dr. to ferry $1.25," reads the diary. The following
day they ferried the West Fork of the White River. Ferriage at this point was $1.00. On May 28 they reached Vincennes,
ancient capital of the Illinois country. "Dr. to bread at Vincennes, 50c," reads the diary. The same
day, Elledge paid $1.25 to ferry the Wabash. Then, same day, is the entry: "Dr. to across Purgatory Swamp
$1.00." Elledge also bought a bushel of corn for which he paid 37 ½ cents. This was in the days of
the 12 ½ cent piece (bit) and the 6 1/4 cent piece (picayune). In the evening of May 28, the party reached
Lawrenceville, in Illinois.
On May 30, Elledge crossed a toll bridge, paying a toll of 56 1/4 cents. On June 2, there was another ferriage
charge, 75 cents. This was at the Kaskaskia river. On the same day is an entry, "Dr. to corn cider .56 1/4."
On June 3, the emigrants had reached a point near Hillsboro; on the 6th they reached Alexander and the old Philips
Ferry road.
Boone Elledge brought with him an interesting record of Boone Settlement in Boone township in Harrison county,
Indiana, in the form of an old account and memorandum book covering his many years as storekeeper in the settlement,
beginning in the time of the 1812 war. This old record, dating back to 1815, is now in the keeping of Boone Elledge's
great granddaughter, Mrs. Lawrence Harvey of Griggsville, as is also the journal of the trip to Illinois in 1836.
These records are still as legible as when they were written more than a century ago.
Among Boone Elledge's customers in the settlement store were various members of the Boone family, notably John
Boone, who in 1816 was a member of the convention that framed Indiana's constitution and who later was a member
of the new state's legislature. For instance, in Boone Elledge's account book is this entry:
"John Boob, Nov. 1, 1822, upon Wm. Elledge's acc't." Boone's brother, benjamin, was also a customer at
the store, as was John Bell (Beall), who later settled in Pike county, being a kinsman of Boone Elledge's wife.
Members of the Holaday family, intermarried with the Woolfolks, also were customers.
Prices were entered by Elledge in terms of shillings and pence. For instance, this: "Richard Tapington, churn
at 4 shillings and sixpence." One Robert McIntyre (spelled Macintire in the account book) was the prize whisky
customer. This customer sometimes bought by the barrel. Again, an entry reads: "Macintire 1 cag full of whisky
$2." Another liquor entry: "2 gals. whisky for Widow Gaither's sale, .75."
An interesting record is Boone Elledge's "Sault Acc't. It appears from the record that Boone loaned salt to
those in need. A few items from this record: "Sault to Matthew Roberson one crock ful." "To Miss
John Bell one bole ful." "To Bettye Miller one tin ful." "To Gane Young two boles ful."
"To Benjamin Elledge six pounds." "To Miss Calvin one bole ful." "To Miss Armstrong one
bole ful."
James Bell on one occasion bought "6 doz horn butens" from Elledge; also some "spun cotten."
Steven Joans was a purchaser of "potaters."
Interspersed with the "stoar accounts" are some personal jottings and commentaries. In March, 1819, Boone
Elledge set an orchard in Boone Settlement. Here is the entry: "March 6, 1819, Eye set out 52 apple trese."
He then names the order of setting, and the varieties, "Rainboes, old wine, Whittaker Reds, Pryor Reds, Pippins."
He concludes his orchard entry thus: "Boon Elledge, his apples when they Bare."
Boone Elledge's brother, Benjamin, came to Pike county ahead of Boone, having settled on Griggsville Prairie in
1834. On March 13, 1836 (about two months before Boone started for Illinois), Benjamin Elledge addressed a letter
at Griggsville to his brother Boone at Laconia, Indiana. On the same double sheet of paper Benjamin's wife, Catharine,
wrote to Boone's wife, Rebecca. The more than a century old letters, written on a sheet of paper folded and addressed,
without an envelope, are still legible, being now in the possession of Mrs. Harvey, the great granddaughter of
Boone and Rebecca. The letter is addressed "To Boone and Rebeckah Elledge," at Laconia.
In this letter, Boone tells of the sickly season that had prevailed at Griggsville in the spring of 1836. He says:
"My nearest neighbor, Mr. John Cavender, died in last month. Corn and pork is plenty but heigh. Corn 30 cents
and pork pickled is seven cents and wheat one dollar per bushel. There has been more government land bought in
this county this winter than has in any one year since the country has been settled."
The quaint spelling of the period is shown in Catharine's letter to Rebecca. She says: "Ecepting of the fetige
of the gourney to this country and this last spel (she had previously told of a serious sickness) have engoyed
better health than I have for seven years hear to four. I want you to give my best Respects of all the old Neighbours
and friends and in particular to Mr. Armstrong and family. I want you to go to Wm. Lindsey's and git some garden
seads, Cabbage and turnips, beats and all the vegetabels and flour seads you can git as they are scarce in this
Country. Give my respects to Mariah (Mrs. Harvey's maternal grandmother) and all the children." Simple records
these, but memorials of a mighty period in western history.
Among Boone Elledge's effects preserved by his great granddaughter are also some printed minutes of the meetings
of Blue River Association held at Sinking Spring and Hebron meeting houses in Washington county, Indiana, in September,
1824 and 1825. Washington county joins Harrison on the north. The Boones and Elledges were members of the Goshen
church in Harrison county. Messengers from the Goshen church to the Association meeting in 1824 included Moses
Boone, George Boone and James W. Gaither (Gather). In 1825 the messengers were Isaiah Boone, John Cotner and Benjamin
Elledge. Moses and Isaiah Boone were sons of Squire boone, brother of Daniel and Edward, and George Boone was a
son of Samuel. Moses had been appointed in 1808 as a judge of Harrison county, in Indiana Territory, by William
Henry Harrison, then governor of the Territory, and later was reappointed by Governor Thomas Posey. He was one
of the three commissioners directing the building of the first house in Indiana, at Corydon, in Harrison county.
One of Isaiah Boone's daughters, adaline, married Perry Marshall Baldwin, and another, Emily, married Marshall
Samuels, whose descendant, Moses Samuels, in pike county married Malinda Jackson, daughter of Malinda Scholl, whose
first husband was Edward Elledge. These two daughters of Isaiah, with their families, settled near Hannibal, Missouri,
about 1850.
Coming up the river road from Philips Ferry, Boone Elledge and his family spent their first night in Pike county
at the home of the son, Uriah, east of the town of Griggsville. Another son, William, was also at Uriah's at this
time, having come out to the Illinois country in 1834. Francis, another son, who had come in 1830, was at Abel
Shelley's near present Shelley school house. Alexander, who had married Amanda French in Indiana and who had come
with William in 1834, was at Robert Walker's in the benjamin Elledge settlement. The sons who came with Boone were
James H., Adam Douglas, Thomas P., Joel L. and Benjamin F., with their one sister, Maria Jane.
The 1830 census of Boone township in Harrison county, Indiana, shows that Boone Elledge was then the head of a
family comprising "9 males and 2 females" including himself and his wife. The children then at home were
eight sons and one daughter. The son Uriah since 1823 had been a resident of Illinois, and was therefore not included
in the Indiana census. The census appears to have been taken before the son Francis came to the Illinois country,
which was the same year Alexander also was still at home, unmarried.
Boone Elledge on October 13, 1835 had bought of his first wife's kinsmen, the McClains, 120 acres of land in the
northeast of Section 6, in the northwest corner of present Griggsville township. This land had been entered from
the government by Robert, John and Isaac McClain in 1833-34, each having entered a 40-acre tract. Robert later
sold his 40 to John, and John in 1835 transferred his 80 and Isaac his 40 to Elledge. In these transactions Elledge's
given name is recorded as "Boon," a spelling that was sometimes used by Daniel Boone himself.
Taking his family to this wild land, Boone Elledge erected thereon a log house and store, clearing a patch of ground
in the great woodland and using the logs to form the walls of a dwelling place. From the felled oaks he and his
sons, William and Alexander, split out and smoothed by hand many thousands of shingles for the early settlers.
Boone's early-day store is glimpsed in the following, set down in his account book under the heading, "A bill
in the stoar." It lists "calaco, bedintick, knives and forks, tobacco, salt, nails, coffey and cotten,
and lanterns."
Boone and his sons handled meats in the pioneer store, as shown by his accounts of credit. For instance, these
accounts with the settlers: "P. French 37 pieces of meat." ‘Received of Jesse Elledge (Boone's brother)
142 1/4 lbs. Of pork." "James Elledge (another brother) 204 lbs. Pork." Other meat accounts were
with Mr. Windsor and Lewis H. Baldwin (a son-in-law).
Boone's accounts show also that he and his sons did much work for neighbor settlers. In July, 1837, they made 2,600
shingles for George W. Hinman, who lived a short distance west. These shingles were for the early Hinman house,
one of the oldest in the county, still standing and occupied, a short distance north of Hinman cemetery. Boone
charged Hinman (whom he names as Mr. Henman in the account) $2.25 per thousand for making the shingles. Other accounts
show work done for Richard Bell (Beall), who married Jemima Elledge; Nathan Philips, Mr. Chenoweth (Jacob Van Meter
Chenoweth, grandson of the noted Kentucky pioneer, Jacob Van Meter), and Abraham School, for whom he worked on
a "chimbly." He charged Richard Beall $5.12 ½ for "5 ½ days work on chimbly."
Another account was with "Mr. Henman" for work on a "seller."
On August 16, 1836, Boone Elledge entered the remaining 40 acres in the northeast quarter of Section 6, which gave
him a farm of 160 acres. This quarter section, following Boone's death, passed to the ownership of his son, Thomas
P. Elledge, by quitclaim deeds of the various heirs transferring their interests. The tract later passed from Thomas
P. Elledge to his son, James S. Elledge, and on October 25, 1906, passed out of the Elledge name by a transfer
from James S. Elledge and his wife, Jennie Clark, to Samuel Curfman.
Nearest neighbors of the Boone Elledges in this pioneer settlement on Hinman Prairie were the Chenoweths and Hinmans,
Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth and his son, Samuel H., and George W. Hinman and his son, Asahel. These were all pioneer
Kentuckians who had coped with the mighty wilderness in the days when Daniel Boone was opening a new empire to
settlement. Boone Elledge's land occupied the whole of the northeast quarter of Section 6. Immediately west of
him, in the south half of the northwest quarter of Section 6, lay the land of Jacob and Samuel Chenoweth, entered
from the government in the name of Samuel H., in February, 1836. Just north of the Chenoweth land and west of Elledge's
was the early homestead of George W. Hinman, one of the three county commissioners at the time Pittsfield was laid
out as the Pike county seat of justice in 1833. Elledge's log home and store was three-quarters of a mile east
of the site of old Hinman Chapel.
These early Chenoweths on the prairies of Pike county were historic characters, descending from the noted Baltimores
of Maryland and the Van Meters of Kentucky, who were among the earliest settlers of Elizabethtown. Jacob Van Meter
Chenoweth was a son of Major William Chenoweth, who was a son of William Chennerworth (Chenoweth) and Ruth Calvert,
the latter a daughter of the House of the Baltimores. John Chinoweth (Chenoweth), great grandfather of Jacob Van
Meter Chenoweth, lived in early colonial times at Chenoweth Manor, on Gunpowder river, near Joppa, Maryland, later
settling in Frederick county, Virginia. His father, John Chinoweth, was born at St. Martin's in Meneage, Cornwall
county, Wales (now England) about 1682-3. This John Chinoweth married Mary Calvert, daughter of Charles Calvert,
the third Lord Baltimore, about 1705, at the time of great religious strife in England. John was a Protestant and
Mary a Catholic, and because of religious controversies in England the couple fled to America at about the time
of her father's death in 1715.
Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth was also a grandson of the elder Jacob Van Meter, who brought his family out to Daniel
Boone's new empire in a very early day, settling in the beautiful Severns Valley where now is Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
Here, on the site of Elizabethtown, four 160-acre farms cornered, and on the corner of each was a log house, fortified,
forming a sort of palisaded square for mutual protection against the Indians. In one of these houses dwelt Jacob
Van Meter and his large family; in another the family of Samuel Haycraft, in another the family of John Vertrees,
and in the fourth the family of Hinson Hobbs. Strangely enough, descendants of these four houses later settled
in the same neighborhood in Pike county, Illinois.
Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth married Mary Haycraft, a descendant of the house of Haycraft mentioned above, and they
settled in an early day on Hinman Prairie. John Vertrees was the father of Jacob Sneed Vertrees, who married Nancy
Hobbs, daughter of Hinson Hobbs, and they too came to Illinois and settled at Perry, where they died and are buried;
they were parents of the late John Eaton Vertrees (long a Pittsfield merchant) and the grandparents of former Mayor
Herbert H. Vertrees and Miss Lillia Vertrees of Pittsfield. Solomon Josiah and Nicholas Hobbs, sons of Hinson Hobbs
and brothers of Nancy Hobbs Vertrees, also came to Pike county and settled in the Perry neighborhood, their descendants
being now numerous in the county.
Old Jacob Van Meter, maker of pioneer history in Kentucky, was the father of Mary (Van Meter) Hinton, known in
the annals of Kentucky Indian warfare as the "Widow Hinton," her husband having perished by drowning
on the way out to Kentucky. She and her children were at Squire Boone's Station in Kentucky at the time of the
memorable Indian uprising heretofore recounted wherein Francis Elledge, husband of Charity Boone, was wounded.
She later married Major William Chenoweth and became the mother of the Pike county pioneers, Jacob Van Meter, Abraham
and James Hackly Chenoweth.
Major William Chenoweth, father of the early Pike county Chenoweths, and husband of the Widow Hinton, was in many
a bloody Indian affray on the dark and bloody ground of Kentucky. Born in Virginia June 10, 1760, he served in
the Revolutionary War and appeared on Pottenger's Creek in Kentucky, in August or September, 1779. He entered land
in Nelson county, Kentucky, under a grant for services in the Revolution, issued by Patrick Henry, governor of
Virginia, by virtue of a land office treasury warrant, No. 5080, issued May 22, 1780. On March 5, 1781, in Jefferson
county, Kentucky, he was appointed administrator of the estate of John Hinton, whose widow he married. She was
born February 11, 1757, and died June 29, 1832. He died April 16, 1828, at his home (which is still standing) in
Nelson county, Kentucky, near Dateville, and about ten miles from Bardstown, the county seat of Nelson county and
the setting of Stephen Collins Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home." He is buried at Wilson Creek Baptist
church, organized in 1801 and built on land he gave to the church. The graves of Major William and his wife Mary
are well preserved and marked with stones. Their home, a large stone house in which the Pike county pioneer Chenoweths
were born, is still standing and the spring where they kept their milk is arched over with stones and in good condition.
The old Hinman house, standing just north of Hinman cemetery, in the northwest corner of Griggsville township,
is today one of the few houses yet standing in the county that date back more than a century. It was built of native
logs in 1833, the year that Pittsfield was founded. In later years the logs were covered with weatherboarding.
Originally covered with clapboards, the building in 1837 was roofed with handmade shingles rived from native oaks,
the shingles being made by Boone Elledge and his sons. It was in this house, the home of the Hinmans, that the
first church services were held in that part of pike county.
A Methodist congregation, meeting in Hinman's home in the middle 1830s, decided to erect a church edifice. Mr.
Hinman gave the ground for a church and cemetery, which were named Hinman Chapel and cemetery. Among those who
worked on the church building were Boone Elledge and his sons, and Gideon Olin Ball, whose story has been told
in another chapter. The chapter was built of native hewn logs, and without the use of nails. The timbers were all
seasoned by fire before being assembled, Mr. Hinman himself performing this task. Mr. Hinman's great grandson,
Hinman Strother of Pittsfield, has records showing that his great grandfather, while engaged in this task, got
up of nights to turn the logs and replenish the fire.
When services were first held in the Hinman home, a Methodist circuit rider, William Medford, riding a wide circuit
in Illinois, conducted services at stated intervals, and this kind of service continued for some time after the
chapel was built.
On April 5, 1847, George W. Hinman and his wife (who was Nancy Stewart of Kentucky) deeded the land on which were
chapel and cemetery to the then church trustees, namely, George W. Hinman, William McLaughlin, John Darrah, George
Yates and Amos L. Moore. The plot thus deeded measured 21 rods by 7 rods, the deed providing that it should be
"for the use of the M. E. Church of the United States of America," and that the trustees should permit
all ministers and preachers belonging to said church to "preach and expound God's holy word therein."
The deed provides also that "in the above lot of land there is set apart 84 rods of the west part of said
lot for the purpose of a graveyard."
For many years, Hinman Chapel was a leading community center. Then a rival church about two miles away, known as
the Asbury church, was organized and a church built. Changes then came rapidly and both churches began to waver,
then failed entirely. The Asbury church was finally sold to Mt. Sterling parties and torn down. Hinman Chapel rotted
and decayed, and in 1936 the trustees of the cemetery had it completely dismantled and cleared away. So passed
the earliest church building erected in that section of Pike county.