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John Duff
Cave-in-rock IL
In the 1790s, John Duff and his criminal associate, Philip Alston, carried out their counterfeiting operation, in the relative seclusion of the wilderness, at Cave-in-Rock
Personal details
Born
John Michael McElduff

September 1759 - August 1760
Province of South Carolina, (British Royal Colony), British North America, British Empire, present-day South Carolina, US
Died June 4, 1799(1799-06-04) or 1805 (aged 40-46)
Battery Rock, Illinois Country, Northwest Territory, US, present-day Gallatin County, Illinois, Saline River Salt Springs, Illinois Country, Northwest Territory, US, present-day Gallatin County, Illinois, or Caseyville, Livingston County, Kentucky, present-day Crittenden County, Kentucky, US
Nationality American
Parents Thomas McElduff
Spouse Letticia "Letty" or "Seddy" Smith, Native American woman, name unknown
Children 1 child, name unknown, by Native American woman
Occupation frontiersman, hunter, horse thief, cattle thief, hog thief, soldier, salt maker, criminal gang leader, counterfeiter
Signature John Duff's signature
Military career
Allegiance Flag of Virginia Virginia, Flag of the United States United States
Service/branch Virginia State Forces
Years of service 1778–1780s
Rank private, sergeant
Unit Captain John Williams' Company (Kaskaskia) and Captain Richard McCarty's Company (Cahokia), Illinois Regiment
Battles/wars

American Revolutionary War

John Duff, born John McElduff, or John Michael McElduff, because early court records referred to him as John Michael Duff (September 1759 or August 1760 – June 4, 1799 or 1805), was a counterfeiter, criminal gang leader, horse thief, cattle thief, hog thief, salt maker, longhunter, scout, and soldier who assisted in George Rogers Clark's campaign to capture the Illinois country for the American rebel side during the Revolutionary War.

Early life and family history[]

John Michael McElduff was born sometime between September 1759 and August 1760 in South Carolina, according to his court testimony in August 1781, where he claimed to be 21 years old. John's father may have been the Thomas McElduff murdered by Philip McElduff, a brother, of Thomas, some time prior to November 1761. His mother later remarried, and his stepfather moved the family to the Natchez, Mississippi region of the colony of British West Florida, on the Mississippi River, prior to the start of the American Revolutionary War. McElduff is believed to be a grandson of a Thomas McElduff, Sr., who received two land grants for military service in the French and Indian War on the south side of the Tyger River, in Union County, South Carolina on February 7, 1754.

A plan of the several villages in the illinois country

Colonial French villages and forts in the Illinois Country, where John Duff lived, prior to, the arrival of, George Rogers Clark and the Virginia State Forces. From a 1778 map by Thomas Hutchins.

Revolutionary War service and life in the Illinois Country[]

Around 1778, Duff was living in the Illinois Country, later referred to as the "American Bottom." While leading a group of longhunters returning to Kaskaskia, John Duff, John Saunders, and the rest of the hunting party were intercepted by Colonel George Rogers Clark's soldiers and his Virginia frontiersmen soldiers, near the ruins of Fort Massac. Suspected of being British spies, they immediately took an American oath of allegiance, where Duff and his men joined Clark's Illinois Regiment, Virginia State Forces. Duff enlisted into Captain John Williams' Company in Cahokia and rose to the rank of sergeant in the Illinois Regiment.

March to Vincennes

Private John Duff served in the, ranks of, George Rogers Clark's Illinois Regiment, walking through chest-high, icy water, on the march to Vincennes, January 1779, in a painting, by Frederick Coffay Yohn

In 1780, while Duff was posted with the garrison in Cahokia, the British attacked St. Louis, which was under colonial Spanish rule, and American-held Cahokia in 1780, with a motley army of French-Canadians, fur traders, and their Indian allies. McElduff and other soldiers were on reconnaissance, for General Clark, observing the British movements, near the Mississippi River. The group was attacked by an Indian war party, barely escaping with their lives. The combined American, French, and Spanish forces successfully repelled the enemy assaults. In the George Rogers Clark Papers and Illinois court records, Duff was referred to both as "John McElduff" and "John McDuff."

In the mid-late 1780s, Duff was living in Kaskaskia, Illinois and was in business with two brothers of the captain of the Ohio County, Virginia Militia and Revolutionary War Patriot, Samuel Mason who later became the notorious river pirate. According to the French Kaskaskia records, the Duff name was recorded as, "Jean Michel Duff" and "John Michael Duff." In 1786, John, Daniel, and another son of Thomas McElduff sold land tracts for two different property deeds. There was a Daniel McElduff and McDuff who was also at Kaskaskia in the 1780s and was likely the brother of John Duff. When the McElduffs first arrived, the pre-American Revolution, British-controlled, French-speaking settlement of Kaskaskia was not recorded. Daniel McDuff owned slaves while residing in Kaskaskia, as was the custom of transplanted Southerners and the French creole population in the Illinois Country. After the departure of the bandit John Dodge, who lived in the area from 1784-1790, John McElduff was elected, in 1790, as one of six judges, to the Kaskaskia town court. According to the French records, on February 6, 1794, John McElduff and Seddy, his wife, sold a dwelling and grounds in Kaskaskia Village, to J.R. Jones for $200; this Jones may have been John Rice Jones, an Illinois Regiment veteran, noted politician, and the first lawyer in the Illinois Country.

File:Carlos III Coin.jpg

The Spanish silver peso was the, most common, currency found on the American frontier. Counterfeiters, John Duff and his associate, Philip Alston were "coining" this type of money, at Cave-In-Rock. The "Spanish milled dollar" was minted in México and considered legal tender, in the United States, until the Coinage Act of 1857.

Counterfeiting at Cave-In-Rock, Northwest Territory and in Kentucky[]

After 1790, John Duff was associated with the South Carolina counterfeiter, Philip Alston, the Virginia river pirate, Samuel Mason, and the North Carolina serial killers the Harpe brothers, at Cave-in-Rock, in the U.S. Northwest Territory, where he learned the illicit business of counterfeiting, known as "coining", where he could make a lot money in criminal pursuits. By this time, he had left the historical record and from this point on, he was referred to in folklore as, just Duff or "Duff the Counterfeiter." Even as a counterfeiter, John Duff was not a violent man by nature and he was never known to have killed anyone. Whether or not John McElduff and his wife left Kaskaskia permanently after 1794 is not known, but folklore mentioned John Duff, as owning a slave named Pompey and tales of his miraculously avoiding numerous attempts at capture and death from local regulator vigilantes and the U.S. Army.

Death[]

For nearly, a decade, Duff had become a scourge along the lower Ohio River region. On June 4, 1799, a group of three Shawnee Indians and a French courier du bois were hired by U.S. Army officer, Captain Zebulon Pike, Sr., father of the explorer Zebulon Pike, who was the commandant at the frontier outpost Fort Massac, now Metropolis, Illinois. This mercenary party was given orders to kill John Duff, which they did at his house, which was located either at Battery Rock, according to the newspaper account, on the Illinois side of the Ohio River or across the river at what would later become Caseyville, Kentucky as, recalled in the History of Union County, Kentucky. According to Revolutionary Soldiers Buried in Illinois, Duff was killed in 1805 on Ripple Island, on the Saline River, in Gallatin County, Illinois and buried near the local salt springs.

Fort Massac River Side

Fort Massac, down river, from Cave-in-Rock, where, in 1799, the U.S. Army commandant, Captain Zebulon Pike, Sr., father of the explorer, hired three Shawnee Indians and a French courier du bois, to hunt down and kill John Duff.

References[]

  • Alvord, Clarence Walworth. The Illinois Country, 1673-1818, Volume 1. Springfield, Ill.: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1920.
  • Alvord, Clarence Walworth, editor. Kaskaskia Records, 1778-1790, Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library, Illinois State Historical Library. Springfield, Ill.: Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Library, 1909.
  • Bateman, Newton and Paul Selby, editors. Biographical and Memorial Edition of the Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois, Volume 1. Munsell Publishing Company, 1915.
  • Reynolds, Governor John. The Pioneer History of Illinois: Containing the Discovery, in 1673, and the History of the Country to the Year 1818, when the State Government was Organized. Fergus Print Company, 1887.
  • Rothert, Otto A. The Outlaws of Cave-In-Rock. Cleveland: 1924; rpt. 1996 ISBN 0-8093-2034-7
  • Seineke, Kathrine Wagner Seineke. The George Rogers Clark adventure in the Illinois: and selected documents of the American Revolution at the frontier posts. New York: Polyanthos, 1981.
  • Underwood, Lt. Thomas T. "The journal, 1792-1800, of Thomas T. Underwood, lieutenant in the United States Army, life at Fort Massac (Illinois) under Zebulon M. Pike's command (1795-1798)," Draper Manuscripts: Frontier Wars Papers, 1754-1885 (Volume 16). Wisconsin Historical Society, Library-Archives Division.
  • Walker, Mrs. Harriett J. Revolutionary Soldiers Buried in Illinois. Standard Printing Company, 1918.
  • Wellman, Paul I. Spawn of evil: the invisible empire of soulless men which for a generation held the Nation in a spell of terror. New York: Doubleday, 1964.
  • Willson, Richard Eugene, Indexing, Donald E. Gradeless, Ph.D., Editor. 1998. Index to the George Rogers Clark Papers: The Illinois Regiment. Based on the Microfilmed George Rogers Clark Papers at the Virginia State Library and Archives. Chicago: Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Illinois.
  • Chester Co (South Carolina) Misc Record Book LL, reprieve granted Philip McElduff convicted of murder of Thomas McElduff till Wed the 2nd of Dec 1761, p.417
  • History of Union County, Kentucky. Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1886.
  • New Bern District (North Carolina) Court Records 1770-1774 http://files.usgwarchives.net/nc/craven/court/nbdcr2.txt
  • Papers of the U.S. War Department 1784-1800 http://wardepartmentpapers.org/about.php
  • Raymond H. Hammes Collection. English Summaries. Illinois State Archives. 81:2:27:1.
  • "Some Irish Protestant Immigrants to South Carolina 1753 and 1754," The South Carolina Magazine of Ancestral Research, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Winter 1989):25-29. FHL Book 975.7 B2sc v.

External links[]

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