Phelps, Charles D.

Born: 1801-01-26 Madison County, Kentucky

Died: 1864-12-02 Coles County, Illinois

Flourished: Ashmore, Illinois

Charles D. Phelps was a farmer, landowner, and pioneer of Coles County, Illinois. Phelps married Mary A. Coons in February 1825 in Fayette County, Kentucky. The couple had nine children. Phelps and his family moved to Coles County in 1830 and Phelps took up farming near Ashmore in what would become Ashmore Township. Between 1830 and 1838, he purchased approximately 400 acres of public land near Ashmore. During the Black Hawk War, Phelps served as a private in Thomas B. Ross' company of the First Regiment, Second Brigade of the Illinois Volunteers. In 1860, he owned real property valued at $5,000 and had a personal estate of $1,000.

Kentucky, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1802-1850, 21 February 1825, Fayette County (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 1997); The History of Coles County, Illinois (Chicago: Wm. Le Baron, Jr., 1879), 602; Isaac H. Elliott, Record of the Services of Illinois Soldiers in the Black Hawk War, 1831-32, and in the Mexican War, 1846-8 (Springfield, IL: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 29; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Coles County, 291:46, 99, 199, 218, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Coles County, IL, 285; Gravestone, Ashmore Cemetery, Ashmore, IL.