Elisha Baker and his wife Polly sell their confirmed 640-acre Bellevue home tract, on Big River, Washington County, Missouri, to John Hutchings of Casey County, Kentucky, for $1,200. This is the last record of Baker holding land of his own in Missouri.
Source: Elisha Baker & Polly to John Hutchings, deed, 5 May 1816, Washington County, Missouri Territory.
Baker's likely route south follows the historic Southwest Trail, entering Arkansas by way of Ste. Genevieve and passing through Lawrence County — already home to fellow former Bellevue petition-signer Solomon Huitt (an early ferry operator on Spring River) and a John Janes (running the county's first gristmill from 1809). Other Bakers — Benjamin and Elijah among them — appear in Lawrence County tax records this same year; Elisha himself does not appear as a landowner there.
Source: Lawrence County, Arkansas tax index, 1816; Bellevue-Beautiful View and Lawrence County settlement histories.
Hempstead County, Arkansas is organized, encompassing the area where Baker's family was settling. A documented wave of Bellevue, Washington County, Missouri families relocated to Hempstead County's Mound Prairie community around 1817, led by Reverend John Henry — part of what one family historian called "a popular route of migration" for this exact community.
Elisha Baker sells an enslaved girl about thirteen years old, named Phillis, to Hewitt Burt for $500 (Bill of Sale, pp. 19–20). The transaction names Rowland Hewitt, Henry Brewer, and clerk James M. Stuart. Rowland Hewitt is independently documented as a resident of Hempstead County on the 1820 (reconstructed) census, and the Hewitt/Huitt/Hewett family is the same one whose patriarch, Solomon Huitt, had signed the 1806 Bellevue petition alongside Baker; Henry Brewer is likewise part of the extended Bellevue-to-Hempstead migration circle documented elsewhere in this family's history. Recorded 6 August 1821.
Source: Elisha Baker to Hewitt Burt, bill of sale, 22 March 1821 (recorded 6 August 1821), pp. 19–20.
Elisha Baker, of Hempstead County, Arkansas, deeds an enslaved woman named Violet to his son Thomas Baker, of Lawrence County, Arkansas, "for the love he bears his son" — a gift, not a sale. The deed is recorded in Thomas's home county, Lawrence County, on 6 June 1821. Together with the Phillis sale two weeks earlier, this places Baker actively closing out his remaining personal property in a short, deliberate window in the spring of 1821.
Source: Elisha Baker to Thomas Baker, deed of gift, 5 April 1821, recorded Lawrence County, Arkansas, 6 June 1821.
Thomas Baker, Beverly R. Baker, and Joseph Rickman — all likely sons or in-laws and fellow former Bellevue-community members — serve together as Lawrence County road commissioners, reporting to the circuit court at Davidsonville. Elisha himself does not appear in the record.
Source: Lawrence County, Arkansas Circuit Court minutes, 25 June 1826.
The federal patent for Baker's original Bellevue survey (No. 2150) is issued in Missouri to "Elisha Baker's representatives" — language already in use as early as 1826, when Recorder Theodore Hunt's office processed the claim referencing Certificate No. 1037 and a letter from the General Land Office. Taken together with the April 1821 deed, this places Baker's death in a window of roughly 1821–1826, most plausibly in Arkansas.
Source: Land office correspondence and patent record, Recorder of Land Titles, St. Louis, 1826 and 1829.