Daniel Boone
1
Daniel Boone
Birth:
2 Nov 1734, Exeter Township, Berks Co., Pennsylvania
Death:
26 Sep 1820, Charette Village, St. Charles Co., Missouri
Burial:
28 Sep 1820, Cemetery Near Jemima's Farm, St. Charles Co., Missouri
Burial:
1845, Frankfort, Franklin Co., Kentucky, (Reinterred)
Occ:
Frontiersman / Explorer
Father:
Squire Boone (1696-1765)
Mother:
Sarah Jarman Morgan (~1699-1777)
Colonel Daniel Boone aka: Daniel Morgan Boone (Sr.)
b. , c. Nov. 2, 1734, Berks County, Pa.; d. , c. Sept. 26, 1820, St. Charles, Mo., U.S. (Encyclop¾dia
Britannica Online)
ÒI have shown you the family records, which
in my fatherÕs own handwriting show his birth to have been Oct.
22, 1734.
This date is according to the old calendar, or Old Style, as he and
my mother always expressed their disapproval of adopting the New Style calendar.Ó
Nathan Boone1
DIED.-On the 26th ult. [Sep.] at Charette Village
[which was on Femme , Osage Creek, in St. Charles County, Mo.], in the ninetieth
year of, his age, the celebrated Col. DANIEL BOONE, discoverer and first,
settler of the State of Kentucky.
another source says Died: 26 Sep 1820 Place: St. Charles Co., Mo At Age 85yrs, 11mos.,
And 4 Days
More than any other
man, Daniel Boone was responsible
for the exploration and settlement of Kentucky. His
grandfather came from England to America in 1717. His
father was a weaver and blacksmith, and he raised livestock in the country
near Reading, Pennsylvania. Daniel was born there on November 2, 1734.
If Daniel Boone was
destined to become a man of the wild, an explorer of unmapped spaces, his
boyhood was the perfect preparation. He came
to know the friendly Indians in the forests, and early he was marking the
habits of wild things and bringing them down with a crude whittled spear. When he was twelve his father gave him a rifle, and
his career as a huntsman began.
When he was fifteen,
the family moved to the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, a trek that took
over a year. At nineteen or twenty he left his
family home with a military expedition in the French and Indian War. There he met John Finley, a hunter who had seen some
of the western wilds, who told him stories that set him dreaming. But Boone was not quite ready to pursue the explorer's
life. Back home on his father's farm he began courting a neighbor's daughter,
Rebecca Bryan, and soon they were married.
In 1767 Boone traveled
into the edge of Kentucky and camped for the winter at Salt Spring near Prestonsburg. But the least explored parts were still farther west,
beyond the Cumberlands, and John Finley persuaded him to go on a great adventure.
On May 1, 1769, Boone,
Finley, and four other men started out. They
passed Cumberland Gap and on the 7th of June, they set up camp at Station
Camp creek. It was nearly two years before Boone
returned home, and during that time he explored Kentucky as far west as the
Falls of the Ohio, where Louisville is now. There
was another visit to Kentucky in 1773, and in 1774 he built a cabin at Harrodsburg. On this trip, Boone followed the Kentucky River to
its mouth.
Colonel Richard Henderson
of the Transylvania Company hired Boone as his agent, and in March 1775,
Boone came again to the "Great Meadow" with a party of thirty settlers. They began to clear the Wilderness Road and by April
they were establishing their settlement at Boonesborough.
Boone left the Bluegrass
in 1788 and moved into what is now West Virginia. Ten
years later he again heard the call of unknown country luring him, this time
to the Missouri region. As his dugout canoe passed Cincinnati, somebody asked
why he was leaving Kentucky. "Too crowded" was
his answer. He lived in Missouri the rest of his life, although he twice
revisited Kentucky before he died at the age of 85.
He was buried beside
his wife in Missouri. A quarter of a century
later they were brought back to the Bluegrass and laid to rest in Frankfort's
cemetery. There they rest, on a bluff above the
river and town, on a "high, far-seeing place" like the ones he always climbed
to see the land beyond. . . a monument to the new country in the wilderness
which they had helped to explore and settle.
Story
by Col. George M. Chinn, Director, Kentucky Historical Society
Note 1: Colonel Daniel
Boone spent the winter of 1769-70, in a cave, on the waters of Shawanee,
in Mercer county. A tree marked with his name
is yet standing near the head of the cave.
Note 2: In 1775, having
been engaged as the agent of a Carolina trading company (as mentioned above)
to establish a road by which colonists could reach Kentucky and settle there,
he built a stockade and fort on the site of Boonesboro.
The first group of settlers crossed the Cumberland Gap to Boonesboro
by the road established by Boone, later called the "Wilderness Road". During the American Revolution the community suffered
repeated attacks, and in 1778 Boone was taken captive by Indian raiders. The settlement, however, was eventually established
as a permanent village.
Hollywood-style movies
made on the subject:
"Daniel Boone", 1936. George O'Brien. Rating: **1/2
"Daniel Boone, The Trailblazer", 1956, color. Rating:
**1/2
" DANIEL BOONE "......................VINTAGE PRINT
(1920) OF THE FAMOUS PIONEER...........BOONE, Daniel (1734-1820). At a time when most Americans were content to live
along the Atlantic coast, Daniel Boone was one of the restless pioneers who
pushed westward through the wilderness. Often accompanied by their families,
these men and women explored, cut trails, and sometimes established new communities.
Daniel Boone was born near what is now the city of Reading, Pa., on Nov.
2, 1734. He was the sixth of 11 children in a
Quaker farming family. Daniel probably had no regular schooling, but he learned
about cattle, horses, wagons, blacksmithing, and weaving.
An aunt taught him to read and write. On his 12th birthday, when he
was already an expert hunter and trapper, his father gave him a new rifle. He spent long days in the woods, learning to shoot
and trap and developing great physical strength and agility. When Boone was about 16, his family sold their farm
and trekked south. In the Yadkin River valley
in North Carolina they staked out a farm and settled down.
In 1755 Boone joined Gen. Edward Braddock's expedition that attempted
to drive the French from Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh).
An ambush by French and Native American forces ended the Braddock
expedition, but Boone escaped . Returning home, Boone married his childhood
sweetheart, Rebeccah Bryan, who often traveled with him.
He visited the Kentucky wilderness in 1767 and returned in 1769 to
spend two years hunting and trapping. Once he
and a companion were surprised by Indians but escaped while their captors
slept. When Indian tribes went to war in Lord
Dunmore's War (1774), Boone helped defend frontier forts. Boonesborough.
In 1775 Col. Richard Henderson, a Carolina judge, hired Boone to take 30
men to cut a trail 300 miles (480 kilometers) through the wilderness of the
Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River. The trail
became the Wilderness Road from eastern Virginia into Kentucky. The group built log cabins and started a fort at
the end of the trail. They named the settlement
Boonesborough (now Boonesboro). When settlers
began to move into Kentucky, the local Shawnee became alarmed and attacked
Boonesborough and other settlements. On July
14, 1776, a Shawnee raiding party captured and carried off Boone's 14-year-old
daughter, Jemima, and two friends. Following
the raiders with some companions, Boone rescued the girls. During the American
Revolution Boone became a captain in the Virginia militia (1776). He was captured by the Shawnee (1778), but Boone escaped. He made his way on foot 160 miles (260 kilometers)
in four days, reaching Boonesborough in time to warn the settlers that the
Indians were about to attack. When the Kentucky
Territory became part of Virginia, Boone was elected to the Virginia legislature
(1781). Captured when British cavalry raided Charlottesville, where the legislature
was meeting, Boone was later freed. Back in Kentucky,
he joined in the pursuit of Indians who had attacked Bryan's Station. The Kentuckians rushed into an ambush, but Boone
again escaped. Later years. In 1784 John Filson,
an explorer and historian, published the book 'The Discovery, Settlement,
and Present State of Kentucky', a work containing an "autobiography" of Boone. The book spread Boone's fame as a frontiersman who
helped extend the new nation beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Boone, however,
was still a poor man. Because he had neglected
to file papers or pay taxes, he did not own any of the thousands of acres
of land he had claimed in Kentucky and had helped to open to settlement. Again he and his family moved, this time up the Ohio
River and into the Kanawha Valley in what is now West Virginia. At times Boone kept a store or tavern, guided settlers
over the mountains, or sold horses. In 1791 he
was elected to the Virginia legislature a second time.
In 1799 the Boones again moved west. In
the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River, Boone received a tract
of land from the Spanish governor and was appointed a magistrate. But he found himself landless again when the United
States bought the territory from France in 1803. In
about 1810 Boone returned to Kentucky and paid old debts and bills. He later
settled down in Missouri with his family. He died on Sept. 26, 1820. He was buried by his wife on a hilltop overlooking
the Missouri River. Years later his body was
taken back to Kentucky.
A legendary hero even at the time of his death,
his fame spread worldwide when in 1823 Lord Byron devoted seven stanzas to
him in "Don Juan."
The romantic legend leading to the marriage of
Daniel Boone and Rebecca Bryan has Daniel leveling his long-rife at Rebecca
as she was on her way to the spring to fetch some water.
Daniel, displaying his aptitude for tracking game, followed his "deer"
back to her fathers house where he met and "fell in love with Rebecca......so
the story goes.....".
2In the year
1900 there was founded, in the New York University, the Hall of Fame, wherein
it was planned to honor one hundred and fifty great Americans, thirty foreign
born Americans and sixty American women. The
persons whose duty it was to select the names of the persons to be thus honored
being empowered to vote every five years, completing the list in the year
2000. At a meeting held in the year 1915, of the electors whose ballot admits
to the Hall of Fame, the names of seven great Americans were added to the
list of those previously admitted, and among the seven was that of "DANIEL
BOONE, PIONEER," the subject of this sketch.
On July 9, 1921, Ray Baker, director of the mint,
announced the completion, at the Philadelphia mint, of the quarter of a million
dollars in special fifty cent pieces, authorized by congress in commemoration
of the one hundredth anniversary of Missouri statehood.
"The coin is the regulation half dollar size. The obverse shows the head of Daniel Boone with the
dates 1821 and 1921, on either side of the figure. On
the reverse are figures of an Indian and of a Missouri pioneer, with twenty-four
stars. At the top is the legend, 'Missouri Centennial'
and at the bottom, 'Sedalia,' where the Missouri celebration is to be held."
(K. C. Star, July 10, 1921.) Missouri being the twenty-fourth state to be
admitted into the Union.
We have followed Daniel Boone throughout the course
of his life, down to the most recent honor paid his memory, and will here
let him rest; confident are we in the belief that while the names of other
men who were endowed with more learning or who rose higher in the councils
of his day will have been forgotten, the fame of Daniel Boone will continue
and will be a source of pride to each of his descendants.
JESSE PROCTER CRUMP.
3. . . While
the men were held as captives, several were adopted by Shawnee families. While it may seem strange to us, this ritual was
very common during the Revolutionary War - and before.
Daniel Boone, who had become very fond of Chief Blackfish, was adopted
by Blackfish. Because Boone wore a heavy pack
and walked slowly, the Shawnee thought he resembled a turtle. Boone was given
the Shawnee name "Sheltowee"
which means "Big Turtle." . . .
4Boone, Daniel
- Mythologized early U. S. pioneer responsible for the exploration of Kentucky. Although his Masonic membership is unprovable, here
is what Nathan Boone had to say about his father's funeral: "Father's body
was conveyed to Flanders Callaway's home at Charette, and there the funeral
took place. There were no military or Masonic
honors, the latter of which he was a member, as there were then but very
few in that region of the country." (Hammon,
Neal O. (ed.) "My Father, Daniel Boone- The Draper Interviews with Nathan
Boone." Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press
of Kentucky, 1999. p. 139.)
"Many heroic exploits and chivalrous adventures
are related to me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties,
and yet I have been but a common man." . . .
Daniel Boone
He said: ÒI explored from the love of nature,
I've opened the way for others to make fortunes, but a fortune for myself
was not what I was after.Ó
"Many heroic exploits
and chivalrous adventures are related to me which exist only in the regions
of fancy.
With me the world has taken great liberties, and
yet I have been but a common man." ....Daniel Boone
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Saturday, 08 Mar 2003
Fort Boonesborough
Located on the banks of the Kentucky River
in present Madison County, Kentucky
At the unveiling of the bust of Colonel Daniel
Boone of Kentucky in the Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C., on May 12, 1926,
he was memorialized as "the founder of the First American democracy in 1775,
with the building of its capitol, Fort Boonesborough, on the site of Boone's
Kent
