WILLDEN FAMILY---The BALLEW Frontier Family

 In our last blog story, we learned about Revolutionary War Capt. William Moore and his wife Margaret Patton...and of the birth of a daughter Charity Moore at the closing moments of the American Revolution.  Charity Moore, born about 1780, was the in the first generation of children to grow up in the new nation, and she did so along Hominy Creek, in Burke County, North Carolina.  When she was about 17, she married a young man in his mid-20's, Jesse Ballew.  Jesse and his brother Thomas had been charged with trespassing in April, 1797, the Burke County Court case ended in a mistrial, and Jesse's father paid the Court costs....trespassing....unable to accept boundaries....that would define Jesse and Charity Ballew for years to come.  Three years later, the new family was listed in the 1800 Buncombe County Census with two young daughters.
In April, 1806, the new Haywood County boundary line was being drawn by the North Carolina legislature, and the description of the Haywood/Buncombe County border included "with said road to the top of Mt. Pisgah, thence a direct line to the mouth of the first branch emptying into Hominy Creek, on the side of Jesse Belieu's", and the County was to construct a road "from the North side of Swannanoa River and Hominy Creek from wherewith the Indian Path leaves the head of said creek to where the Indian Path strikes a creek that runs into the Pigeon River, at the head of the locust field to the last crossing of Hominy above JESSE BALLEW'S.  This "ford at the head of the locust field" is now the town of Canton, North Carolina. Jesse and Charity had bought this 130 acre tract of land for only five shillings the same month from Henry Cook.
 When the 1810 Buncombe County Census was taken, Jesse and Charity Ballew had seven daughters living at home, but the traditional comforts were about to change. Daniel Boone, a famous frontier man and former state legislator from Kentucky and Virginia, was living in retirement in Missouri, when he acquired a contract for mining and shipping ammunition needs such as nitre, saltpetre, and lead found along the Niangua River basin near Laclede County, Missouri. When asked by a newspaper reporter why he had left Kentucky, Daniel Boone replied, "Too crowded, too many people, I need some elbow room"....and so would Jesse Ballew.   Jesse , along with hundreds of other North Carolina settlers, went to work for Boone's company with the promise of free land.   Before leaving, Jesse settled his financial interest in a store/tavern he co-owned with two other men in Haywood County in 1812, and served several times as a juror in the local courts. There is some evidence that Jesse Ballew went to Tennessee for a year or so, then on to work in Missouri, before he brought his family from North Carolina. What we do know, is that in 1817 or 1818, working for Daniel Boone's company, Jesse Ballew led a wagon train of 300 settlers/employees and their families into the area of the Niangua River Basin and surrounding lands of Missouri.
Jesse and Chairty Ballew crossed the Gasconade River where the Indian Trail was, later known as Stark's Ford, and settled down on this land about 14 miles southwest of present-day Waynesville, Missouri, and about 5 miles southwest of a "nitre cave" mined nearby.  The Indian Route the Ballew wagon followed is today the famous Route 66 (I-44).  The Ballews built a log cabin here, near the junction of the Gasconade River and the Osage Fork just south of Hazelgreen, Mo, and according to the History of Laclede County, Missouri, became the first white settlers in Laclede County.  The history books also say that the first Court Session of Pulaski County was held in the log home of Jesse and Charity Ballew.

Daniel Boone portrait

Hominy Creek on Jesse Ballew property

Pulaski County first courthouse

Gasconade River and Route 66

When Daniel Boone died in 1820, his son continued the mining operations, but we do not know how long Jesse Ballew continued to work for the company. To protect the land they had been given to settle, the early Boone employees signed a Gasconade County Tax List in 1828, to prove their early claims....Jesse Ballew's name is on that list, with only 353 men in the entire County. Two years later, on the 1830 Crawford County, MO, Census, we can find Jesse  Ballew living there with children David M., Rachel , and Susan....his wife of over 30 years, Charity, had passed away. At this point, it appears Jesse made the decision to stay in Missouri, and began to sell his land on Hominy Creek back in North Carolina. In October of 1830, he sold his 120 acres on Hominy Creek for "one thousand twenty dollars"...apparently the same land he had paid "five shillings" for in 1806. In 1834, Jesse sold 220 acres on Hominy Creek to John Hays. The final evidence we have of Jesse Ballew's life comes from a legal document in the Buncombe Co, NC, deeds in October, 1838, when Jesse's son-in-law William Bird appointed an attorney, "to collect from David M. Ballew any legacy due Bird from the Estate of JESSE BALLEW, deceased, late of Pulaski County, Missouri". Jesse Ballew had died, and his only son David M. Ballew had inherited the holdings of his father.
And once again, a good story....one of early America, of moving West, of Cherokee Indians, of Daniel Boone, and of how the descendants of Jesse and Charity Ballew can be proud of their origins.  Jesse and Charity Ballew are the 4th great grandparents of Tonya Willden Martini, on her mother's side.