Tabitha D (Beall) Elledge (1797 - 1870)

Born 27 Aug 1797 in near Boone's Creek, Fayette County, Kentucky

Ancestors

Wife of William Elledge — married 1811 in Kentucky

Descendants

Died 27 Sep 1870 at age 73 in Pike County, Illinois, USA

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Biography

Tabitha Beall Elledge was a remarkable woman. Her "mark" adorns numerous yellowed documents in the basement of the Pike county court house. She could not write her own name; she never went to school. Her girlhood was devoted to the hard chores of the frontier; she worked in the field at picking, piling and burning brush, rolling logs, building rail or brush fences, cutting grain with a sickle or binding behind the cradle. In her system of household economy, she used locust thorns for pins. She rode a horse well, could yoke and handle a double team of oxen, was a good marksman with the ‘rifle gun," and could swing a two-bitted axe with telling effect. Shuilt traps and caught wild turkeys and snared prairie chickens by the hundreds. Once, wading into the waters of McGee Creek, in water waist-deep, with her bare hands she is said to have helped her dogs drag down a deer.

This widow of William Elledge appears to have been one of the outstanding business women of her time; the records tell the story of her numerous activities; she dealt in lands, buying and selling; she attended pioneer sales and did her own bidding; she loaned money and, unschooled though she was, negotiated notes and mortgages and executed documents with seemingly rare business acumen; when necessary, she went into the early Pike county courts and defended or maintained her rights, and, judging from the records of her various lawsuits, with almost unfailing success.

Tabitha Elledge died in Pike county September 27, 1870, and is buried in Hinman cemetery, where stood the early log chapel in which numerous of the pioneer Elledges worshiped. On the stone that marks her grave her given name is recorded as "Tobitha," a spelling that appears also in some of the official records of her activities. The inscription on her stone recites: "Tobitha D.- wife of Wm. Elledge - died Sept. 27, 1870 - age 73 yrs. 1 mon." Her grave is near the graves of Boone Elledge and his wife Rebecca. [1]

Sources

• Thompson, Jess. History of Pike County Illinois. Chapter 72 - Family Line of William and Tabitha Beall Elledge; Name Came From King Eldred [1]

• * "United States Census, 1850," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M85X-84S : 9 November 2014), Tabitha Ellidge, Pike county, part of, Pike, Illinois, United States; citing family 763, NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

• "United States Census, 1870," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M6HR-2V1 : 17 October 2014), Tabitha Ellidge in household of Samuel Herrington, Illinois, United States; citing p. 16, family 109, NARA microfilm publication M593 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 545,768.

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