John Duff (counterfeiter)

John Duff, born John McElduff (c. 1759 – June 4, 1799 or 1805), was a counterfeiter, hunter, 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 McElduff was born, sometime, between September 1759 and August 1760 in South Carolina, according to his court testimony in August 1781, when he was 21 years old. His father died and his mother remarried. John's father may have been the Thomas McElduff murdered by Philip McElduff, some time prior to November 1761. 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. Duff 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.

Revolutionary War service and life in the Illinois Country

Around 1778, Duff was living in the Illinois Country or later, referred to as, the "American Bottom." While leading a group of long hunters returning to Kaskaskia, John Duff and the hunting party were intercepted by George Rogers Clark's 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 forces. Duff enlisted into Captain John Williams' Company in Cahokia and rose to the rank of sergeant in the Illinois Regiment, Virginia State Forces. In the George Rogers Clark Papers, he was referred to 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 and 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 in 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, 1784-1790 dictatorship rule, of bandit, John Dodge, John McElduff was elected, in 1790, as one, of six judges, to the Kaskaskia town court. On February 6, 1794, John McElduff and Seddy, his wife, sold a dwelling and grounds, in Kaskaskia Village, to J.R. Jones (John Rice Jones, an Illinois Regiment veteran, politician, and first lawyer in the region) for $200.

Counterfeiting in Cave-In-Rock, Northwest Territory and Kentucky and death

After 1790, John Duff was associated with the counterfeiter, Philip Alston, the river pirate, Samuel Mason, and the serial killers, the Harpe brothers, at Cave-in-Rock, in the Northwest Territory, where he learned the illicit business of counterfeiting, known as "coining," and 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, while a criminal. If John McElduff and his wife, Seddy 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 vigilantes.

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 guide were hired by U.S. Army Captain Zebulon Pike, Sr., father of the explorer, who was the commandant at the frontier outpost, of 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, he was killed in 1805 on Ripple Island later, in Gallatin County, Illinois and buried near the local salt springs.

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