Shelton G. Whitley migrated from Oldham County, Kentucky, to Macon County, Illinois in 1831, looking for “a suitable location for his kinsfolk”.  He married December 25, 1834, in Macon County, Catherine Wood, daughter of William and Elizabeth (Grave) Wood who also came from Oldham County, Kentucky, and before that North Carolina.  Catherine’s first cousin John Grove Speer, with whom Shelton migrated to Illinois, said that Shelton was a carpenter, “stout and robust” and “very fond of hunting” deer and turkey; that he made his own brick and build a house for himself and Catherine in Decatur, where lived until her death.  After which Shelton “built a mill down on the Sangamon” River.

Indeed, in 1843 Shelton for himself and his brother James, purchased 80 acres of land on the river, half of section 28 in Harristown Township, Macon County.  Brother James came to Illinois after Shelton, bringing with him a horse, a yoke of oxen, $40, and his wife Phoebe, of which the oxen helped pay for this land.  While they couldn’t have known yet, the Whitleys were moving into a historic neighborhood.  Land adjacent to their property was recently owned by Thomas Lincoln, with his son Abraham, so that just over the fence stood the Lincoln Cabin on land that “Abe Lincoln plowed for the first time in 1830”.  The Lincoln’s left Macon County about the time Shelton arrived, but Abe returned to try cases in the courthouse, made an important stump speech there and apparently knew the Whitley’s.

On their side of the fence, the brothers dammed the river and built a water mill, one of the first in the county and then set about grinding grain for settlers from miles around.  Fish were so abundant in the Sangamon then that they often clogged the mill wheel, and it was James’ son Richard’s job to clean them out. Shelton married again, 28 Feb. 1846 in Macon County, but his bride, Maria Dickerson, apparently died childless by 1850, where Shelton was listed in the census with two children of his first marriage but no wife in his household.  Later the Harristown land passed out of the family until 1924 when James T. Whitley, son of Richard who had once cleaned fish from the mill wheel, bought it back again.  Shelton died there 22 Jan 153, thus missing the turbulent events that were soon to overtake the country.  His brother James, who was a staunch “Lincoln Democrat” and once carried rail Abe Lincoln had split to a political convention in Decatur, lived to see Lincoln, “his friends and neighbor”, elected President and from a distance to witness his assassination.  James died in Macon County in 1872 and was buried in the Whitley Cemetery (Memorial No. 27165881).

Shelton and Catherine Whitley had three children- Rebecca, Jane, and James, born 1835-41one of whom apparently died young.  James and Phoebe, who died in 1888, had three sons, Richard and Washington Lafayette, who both lived to maturity, and Napoleon, who died at age 17 is buried with his father (same memorial).

Sources:

John Grove Speer, Reminisces of the Speer Family (Lexington Ky:1900) p.45

The Decatur Review, 23 Jan 1924. p.6

Macon County Marriage and Census Records

Thanks to Anna Hankes Viemp