DAVID LOWERY ELLEDGE, ninth child of Benjamin Franklin Elledge and Nancy Scott, pioneers whose story has been related
in preceding chapters, was born at Griggsville November 6, 1859. On October 13, 1886 he married Elizabeth E. Butler
of Valley City, a native of Chambersburg and a daughter of Levi Butler and Louisa Wilson. The Rev. George B. Wolfe
performed the ceremony at the bride's home, with Benjamin Elledge and Mary J. Lovejoy witnessing.
Mrs. Elledge was born March 14, 1860. She is a sister of Mrs. David McCarthy of Clayton, Mrs. Ed Gray of Griggsville
and Mrs. Joe Burns of Valley City. Her mother, Louisa Wilson Butler, was a daughter of Joseph Wilson, pioneer settler
on Section 12 in Griggsville township, where he located in 1831. He was born in Lincolnshire, England, in March,
1793, a son of Isaac Wilson. Coming to America in 1829, he stopped in New York state two years, coming thence to
Pike county, Illinois, where he endured the many hardships incident to life in a new country. In 1826 he married
Elizabeth Walker, and they had ten children. Martha Wilson, who married John C. Scott, son of pioneer John Scott
and brother of Nancy Scott who married Benjamin F. Elledge, was a sister of Mrs. David L. Elledge's mother.
Mr and Mrs. Elledge reside on the Pittsfield-Griggsville road, between Blue Creek hill and Walnut Grove school
house. Both are in their 78th year. They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in October, 1936. They have
always resided in Pike county, except for a short period in Missouri. They have three children, Helen, Murray and
Benjamin Levy Elledge.
Helen Elledge, born June 7, 1889, married Clyde Chapman, a son of Mahlon Chapman and Jennie Oliphant of Valley
City, and they had two children, Fay and Richard. The family resides in Griggsville. Murray Elledge, born September
10, 1893, married Grace Louisa Cawthon of Valley City, a daughter of Albert Cawthon and Cora Wells. They were married
at the bride's home April 2, 1916, with the Rev. G. L. Losh officiating and Mr. and Mrs. Chapman witnessing. They
have had three children: Robert C. Elledge, born February 10, 1918, died in infancy; Louise Jenette Elledge, born
March 9, 1919, is at home; Murray Elledge, Jr., born October 11, 1924, is also at home. The family resides south
of Detroit. Benjamin Levi Elledge, third child of David and Elizabeth, born October 10, 1897, is unmarried and
lives with his parents.
Arthur Harrison Elledge, tenth in the Benjamin F. Elledge family, was born October 17, 1861. He at one time was
located in St. Louis but left there after the great tornado in 1896 and went to California where he lived for a
time with his brother Terry, in Los Angeles. He was engaged in the livery business there. Since leaving his brother's
home in Los Angeles, he has not been heard of by relatives here. His brother David and sister, Julia Pierson, of
Griggsville, the only ones of the family of eleven children now living in Pike county, do not know whether this
brother is still living.
Margaret Maria Elledge, eleventh and last child of Benjamin F. and Nancy N. (Scott) Elledge, was born near Griggsville
January 17, 1863. On March 14, 1906 she married William Stumborg, a son of George Stumborg of the Exeter neighborhood
in Scott county. Mrs. Stumborg died at Griggsville October 29, 1936, aged 73 years, nine months and 12 days. She
and her sister, Julia Pierson, were very dear to each other; Mrs. Stumborg in her last sickness was tenderly nursed
by her sister, who is now caring for Mr. Stumborg, the invalid husband. Mrs. Stumborg had herself given unselfish
service to her aged mother who died in 1892 and later to her invalid husband. She is buried in Griggsville.
Nancy N. Scott, the mother of the eleven Elledge children whose histories have been recorded, was a daughter of
John Scott and Martha Murphy, who were married in Casey county, Kentucky, and came to what is now Scott county,
Illinois, early in 1820. She was a sister of John C. Scott, Flint township pioneer; also of Julia Scott Kenady
(her twin) and Catharine Scott, who was the wife of pioneer Uriah Elledge. Two of Nancy's sisters married Grattons,
one of them, Eleanor Scott, being the wife of Pike county John Gratton of early days and mother of Mary E. (Aunt
Easter) Gratton, who married Jesse Elledge Alcorn, son of Robin Alcorn and Mary Elledge and a grandson of Charity
Boone. Eleanor Scott was also the mother of Alice May Gratton, who married Andrew J. Windsor and became the mother
of Ben F. Windsor of Griggsville, who married Carrie Elledge, daughter of Uriah Douglas Elledge.
Benjamin Franklin Elledge died October 17, 1864, aged 45 years, nine months and 14 days. His wife, Nancy N. (Scott)
Elledge, survived until January 19, 1892, dying at the age of 71 years, nine months and 17 days. Both are buried
in Griggsville cemetery.
The Piersons (Pearsons), Windsors (Winsors), Bells (Bealls) and Grattons, who settled in very early times here
in the great valley, and who intermarried with the Elledge family, came of hardy pioneering stock. Amid the horrors
of savage warfare their early family friendships were cemented. The tomahawk and scalping knife gleamed often in
the light of their burning homes. Their blood spattered many scenes of savage encounter. Sharing their perilous
adventures at times were the pioneering forebears of other Pike county families, the families of Vertrees, Van
Meter, Hart, Haycraft, Chenoweth, Hobbs and Miller, all of whom had descendants who located in Pike in early times.
Between the Falls of the Ohio where now is Louisville and the Falls of Green River, in the wildly beautiful Severns
valley, lived some of these families in the early days of Kentucky, when the Boones and their friends were hewing
an empire out of the wilderness. Numerous deeds of valor are attributed by historians of the period to those sturdy
pioneers whose children were the early settlers of Pike county. The life-blood of some of them reddened the wilderness.
Dan Vertrees, kinsman of Captain John Vertrees, great grandfather of former Mayor Herbert H. Vertrees of Pittsfield,
was among those who died by savage hands in the Severns valley.
Dan Vertrees is described by the historian as a stalwart young man of daring. He, with Colonel Nicholas Miller,
kinsman of Adam Miller, companion of John Scott in the settlement of Scott county, and of Asher A. Miller who married
Pike county Abraham Scholl's daughter Serelda, was pursuing a band of Indians. Coming suddenly upon the Indians,
a desperate fight ensued. Vertrees fell at the first onset, his life-blood ebbing. An Indian warrior seized another
white man, wrested his gun from him and was about to cleave his head with an axe, when Miller, "tall, slenderly
built, as active as a cat and as fleet as a hind," with a celerity of action which few men could equal and
with a power that few possessed, "snatched the white man from the Indian as he would a chicken from a hawk,"
and, with an equally swift motion, killed the Indian. This turned the tide, and the remaining Indians fled, leaving
several dead upon the ground. - From Samuel Haycraft's "History of Elizabethtown, Kentucky," first published
in the Elizabethtown News in 1869.
The story of Miles Hart and his wife, Elizabeth Bell Hart (kinswoman of Rebecca Bell who married Boone Elledge),
reveals the hardihood of that stock from which sprang the Pike county pioneers. Miles Hart, in Kentucky, in 1780
(the year in which Edward Boone was killed and scalped), springing from side to side in the open door of his cabin,
loading and firing, protecting his wife and children against savage horror, held at bay a band of savages for a
considerable length of time, but finally was killed, and his wife and two children taken prisoners.
Elizabeth Bell Hart, the fallen man's widow, was regarded as an extremely delicate woman for those iron days. She
was about to become a mother. Burdened with camp kettles and other plunder, she was forced by her captors to hurry
along on foot to the Ohio river, where she was compelled to cross into the Indian fastnesses of the old Northwest
Territory.
After journeying a few days, at nightfall, she was compelled to kindle the Indian fires and then forced to go aside
and kindle a fire for herself. Raking up as best she could some rubbish from the snow, she kindled her fire, and
there alone, in the midst of winter, unattended by any of her kind, she was delivered of a son. In the morning
the squaws showed a glimmer of human kindness when they gave her to drink of a little water in which a turkey had
been boiled.
Then cutting a block from a tree, they wrapped a piece of blanket around the newborn infant, fastened it to the
block, then laid the block upon the mother's back, along with the camp kettles and other burdens, and pursued their
way deeper into wilderness, wading, in the course of the day, a river waist-deep.
The child died at six months as the result of such inhuman treatment but the mother, hardened by the hard life
of the border, endured and lived. For several years she lingered in captivity, in wretched slavery, until a trading
Frenchman at Detroit purchased her from the Indians and restored her to her relatives. She in later years again
married and raised a considerable family, the late Bailey T. Price being a grandchild.
Note: The tragic story of Miles Hart and his wife Elizabeth is from the narration of Samuel Haycraft, whose sister
Mary was the wife of Pike county Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth, and who had another sister, Nancy Haycraft, who was
the wife of Kentucky Captain John Vertrees and the mother of Jacob Sneed Vertrees of early Perry. The story is
recorded in Haycraft's History, owned by Herbert H. Vertrees.
Samuel Haycraft, author of the Vertrees book, whose family is well represented in Pike county history, was born
in a double round-log cabin in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, August 14, 1795, being a son of one of the four pioneer
settlers of that town. His father was Samuel Haycraft, Sr., a Revolutionary soldier; his mother was Margaret Van
Meter, a daughter of Jacob Van Meter, Sr., and a sister of Mary Van Meter Hinton who married Major William Chenoweth
and became the mother of Abraham, James Hackly and Jacob Van Meter Chenoweth, all Pike county pioneers. His wife,
Sarah Brown Helm, whom he married October 29, 1818, was a daughter of Judge John Helm of Breckinridge county, Kentucky,
and a sister of the late Judge John B. Helm, judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Hannibal, Missouri. Mrs. Haycraft
died August 14, 1878, Samuel Haycraft following in the same year, December 22, 1878, in his 84th year.
Forebears of the Bells, Windsors and Piersons are found in history on the wild trails of the old Northwest Territory,
following such leaders as Major Ballad and Colonel Crawford, names consecrated in the history of the period. John
Bell, kinsman of Rebecca bell, wife of Boone Elledge, and John Pierson, kinsman of the Pike county Piersons, were
with Ballard in a thrilling rescue in 1782, when the Lane family (father, mother, and five children) floating down
the Ohio river on a flatboat with a view to locating in west Tennessee, were attacked by 50 Indians and the entire
family massacred with the exception of one boy, Henry Lane, his sister Harriet and a relative, a young woman named
Lucy Smith, who were carried into captivity. Young Lane escaped from his captors' boat on the Ohio river, and swimming
underwater to the shore, concealed himself in a hollow sycamore log until the boats had passed. He was later picked
up by Ballard's spies in the lonely forest in the valley of the Miami.
John Bell and John Pearson were with the party that pursued the Indians into the wilds of the Northwest Territory.
Towards evening of the day young Lane was found, a heap of ashes was discovered by a river, indicating a camp not
24 hours before. Further on the party found the half of a broken tray which Lane recognized as one that his mother
used for kneading dough. Trailing the Indians northward that at length found a garter that had belonged to Miss
Lane. She was marking the trail, unknown to her captors.
Night came, and the pursuers, fearing ambush, went into camp. Next day the pursuit was renewed. Again night came
on and as the pursuers were preparing again to camp, a rifle shot was heard in the wilderness, warning of the nearness
of the Indian camp. A night attack was planned by the whites. The spies, advancing to reconnoiter, found the Indians
seated about a large fire holding council. The captive girls could be seen at the outskirts of the camp with their
hands bound together and their feet tied to a tree.
The whites crept to a favorable position and at the command of Ballard a volley was poured among the surprised
savages with such effect that 12 Indians fell dead and as many more were wounded. Some of the savages broke through
the lines and escaped in the darkness but when the battle was over 21 Indians lay dead around the campfire. With
tomahawk and knife the whites dispatched the wounded with as little compassion as the savages had shown in the
massacre of the family on the flatboat. Unfortunately among the slaughtered savages was found the body of a white
woman who had been observed by the spies when the attack was made. She had been captured by the Indians some time
before the massacre of the Lanes, but it was never known where or under what circumstances as she had never been
allowed to converse with the two girls. It was supposed that she was a French lady, made prisoner at the pillage
and massacre of Heckerwelder, a Moravian town near the Muskingum river, that was laid waste by the Pottawatomies
a month before.
The two girls, hysterical following their delivery, were threatened with complete loss of reason but were finally
restored. They were conveyed to old Fort Washington, where now stands Cincinnati, Ohio, and there turned over to
the care of Governor St. Clair and his wife. A happy sequel terminated the bloody adventure. Lucy Smith, one of
the captive girls, was very beautiful. She won the love of romantic Charles Wilson, one of the rescuing party.
He showed her every attention on the trip to Fort Washington and on their arrival at the post he made an offer
of marriage, which was accepted. Three weeks later the two were quietly married by Governor St. Clair, being the
first couple joined in matrimony within the limits of what is now Cincinnati. - (From the narrative of Colonel
William F. Cody.)
One of the Bells and one of the Windsors, related (the precise relationship is not quite clear) to the Pike county
families of those names, were with Colonel Crawford on his expedition against the Indians into the Northwest Territory
in 1882 and participated in the disastrous rout of the whites when Colonel Crawford was captured, tortured and
burned at the stake at a point 40 miles northeast of Columbus, Ohio, which was then a cluster of log cabins, in
one of which resided Michael Fisher, Sr., grandfather of Michael Fisher so well known in the early days of Bee
Creek in Pike county.
With the first Pierson emigrating from Kentucky to the present Scott county country, came also the pioneering Windsors
and Bells. These three families, who had neighbored in Kentucky, became closely associated and inter- related here
in the west. They first settled east of the river in what is now Scott county. Here in the Illinois country, the
families intermarried.
John Bell, pioneer Kentuckian, on April 26, 1835, married Mary Windsor in Pike county with Justice Andrew Philips
officiating. On October 11, 1838, Justice Philips married John Pierson and Susan Windsor.
John Bell and Mary Windsor had two daughters, Julia and Angeline Bell. John Bell died, and on August 12, 1850,
Andrew Pierson married his widow, Mary (Windsor) Bell; the Rev. Calvin Greenleaf, first regular Baptist pastor
at Griggsville, married them. Andrew Pierson and Mary (Windsor) Bell had two children, James H. and Rebecca Pierson.
Mrs. Pierson's daughter by her first husband also lived in the Pierson home. James H. Pierson married Julia Catherine
Elledge who is still living in Griggsville at the age of 80.
Andrew Pierson, in the exciting period of the Civil War, was the victim of one of the strangest tragedies in Pike
county history. On a wild November day in the second year of the war, he was murdered by hanging in a lonely spot
near his home in Flint township, and robbed of a considerable sum of money. He started from his house on Section
18 in Flint, on November 19, 1862, in search of some of his stock. Night came and he did not return. Suspicion
was aroused, inquiries and search were made, and finally William Hardin Elledge and a companion came upon the body
in a ravine about 200 yards from the house. The body bore evidence of having been hanging by a rope. On the bank
of the ravine stood the hanging tree, long shunned thereafter by the school children of Flint. The body had been
laid in the ditch or ravine near the foot of the tree, the face covered with a handkerchief and the body concealed
with leaves and brush.
Two hundred dollars in money had been taken from the murdered man's person. The robbers also went to the house,
and finding no one at home, entered it and took about $70 more, which they found in a bureau. They then took a
good horse and decamped.
Three youths from Missouri, who had been rebels in Porter's army, which subsequently disbanded, and who had been
working a few days for a neighbor, John Dimmitt, were suspected by Mr. Pierson's family. They had shown a disposition
to court his stepdaughters, the Misses Bell. They had been several times at the Pierson house, of evenings. They
were aware that Mr. Pierson had sold some livestock and that he carried considerable money on this person, and
that money was kept in the house. They were Thomas and Fielding Johnson and John Hopkins. Records show that they
were about 20 years of age and that they did not look like criminals; they were said to be respectably connected.
On information furnished by the family the three youths were arrested as they were returning to Missouri. They
were arraigned, charged with the only hanging murder in Pike county history. At the spring term of the Pike county
circuit court in 1863, they were indicted, along with several others who later were found guiltless and discharged
by the court of any connection with the atrocity. Of those indicted, some were charged directly with murder, others
were impleaded with them. Some obtained severances; some took a change of venue to Brown county. Finally the three
renegades were allowed to plead guilty to a manslaughter charge, and were found guilty thereof on April 27, 1863.
Thomas Johnson and John Hopkins were sentenced for life; Fielding Johnson got 20 years. Thus ended a dark chapter
of Civil War days in Pike county.
