Col. Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone:
The claimed descent of Daniel Boone, born 1734, pioneer explorer of the American West, through Morgan from Lady Frances Somerset and hence from Edward III is disproved in: "The Family of Edward Morgan of Pennsylvania: Daniel Boone's Maternal Kin" [part 1], Stewart Baldwin, The Genealogist, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring 2001): 104-28, and "The Family of Edward Morgan of Pennsylvania: Daniel Boone's Maternal Kin" [part 2], Stewart Baldwin, The Genealogist, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Fall 2001): 172-95.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Boone Wikipedia:

Daniel Boone (October 22 [November 2 new style], 1734 – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky (Kentucky), which was then beyond the western borders of the settled part of Thirteen Colonies (This region legally belonged to both the Commonwealth of Virginia and to the American Indian Tribes.) Despite some resistance from American Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1778 Boone blazed his Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains - from North Carolina and Tennessee into Kentucky. There he founded the village of Boonesborough, Kentucky, one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachians. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 European people migrated to Kentucky/Virginia by following the route marked by Boone.

Boone was a militia officer during the Revolutionary War (1775 – 82), which in Kentucky was fought primarily between the European settlers and the British-aided Native Americans. Boone was captured by Shawnee Indians in 1778, who after a while adopted him into their tribe, but he later left the Indians and returned to Boonesborough in order to help defend the European settlements in Kentucky/Virginia.

Boone was elected to the first of his three terms in the Virginia General Assembly during the Revolutionary War, and fought in the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782, which was one of the final battles of the American Revolution. (Lord Cornwallis and all of his army of British troops had surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, Virginia, in mid-October 1781.)

Following the war, Boone worked as a surveyor and merchant, but he then went deeply into debt as a land speculator in Kentucky. Frustrated with all the legal problems resulting from his land claims, in 1799 Boone emigrated to eastern Missouri, where he spent most of the last two decades of his life (1800–20). When Boone and his family settled near Defiance, Missouri, that land west of the Mississippi River belonged to the French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, and not to the United States. That huge area of land was bought from the French by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Boone remains an iconic figure in American history. He was a legend in his own lifetime, especially after an account of his adventures was published in 1784, making him famous in America and Europe. After his death, he was frequently the subject of heroic tall tales and works of fiction. His adventures—real and legendary—were influential in creating the archetypal Western hero of American folklore. In American popular culture, he is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen. The epic Daniel Boone mythology often overshadows the historical details of his life.

Youth - Daniel Boone was born on October 22, 1734. He was of English and Welsh descent. Because the Gregorian calendar was adopted during Boone's lifetime, his birth date is sometimes given as November 2, 1734, (the "New Style" date), although Boone continued to use the October date.[4] He was the sixth of eleven children in a family of Quakers. His father, Squire Boone, Sr. (1696–1765), had immigrated to Pennsylvania from the small town of Bradninch, Devon, England in 1713. Squire Boone's parents George and Mary Boone followed their son to Pennsylvania in 1717. In 1720, Squire, who worked primarily as a weaver and a blacksmith, married Sarah Morgan (1700 – 77), whose family members were Quakers from Wales, and settled in Towamencin Township, Pennsylvania in 1708. In 1731, the Boones built a log cabin in the Oley Valley, now the Daniel Boone Homestead in Berks County, Pennsylvania, where Daniel was born.[citation needed] His other siblings were Edward, Elizabeth, George, Hannah, Israel, Johnathan, Samuel, and Sarah Boone.

Daniel Boone spent his early years on what was then the western edge of the Pennsylvania frontier. There were a number of American Indian villages nearby. The pacifist Pennsylvania Quakers generally had good relations with the Indians, but the steady growth of the white population compelled many Indians to relocate further west. Boone received his first rifle at the age of 12, and he learned his hunting skills from both local Europeans and American Indians, beginning his lifelong love of hunting. Folk tales often emphasized Boone's skills as a hunter. In one story, the young Boone was hunting in the woods with some other boys, when the howl of a panther scattered the boys, except for Boone. He calmly cocked his rifle and shot that predator through the heart just as it leaped at him. As with so many tales about Boone, the story may or may not be true, but it was told so often that it became part of the popular image of the man.

In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community that existed in what is now present day Lower Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child, Sarah, married John Willcockson, a "worldling" (non-Quaker). Squire Boone's apology was warranted in larger part because the couple had "kept company", and thus were considered "married without benefit of clergy". When Boone's oldest brother Israel also married a "worldling" in 1747, Squire Boone stood by his son and was therefore expelled from the Quakers, although his wife continued to attend monthly meetings with her children. Perhaps as a result of this controversy, in 1750 Squire sold his land and moved the family to North Carolina. Daniel Boone did not attend church again, although he considered himself to be a Christian, and he had all of his children baptized. The Boones eventually settled on the Yadkin River, in what is now Davie County, North Carolina[6], about two miles (3 km) west of Mocksville.

Because he spent so much time hunting in his youth, Boone received little formal education. According to one family tradition, a schoolteacher once expressed concern over Boone's education, but Boone's father was unconcerned, saying "let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting…." Boone received some tutoring from family members, though his spelling remained unorthodox. Historian John Mack Faragher cautions that the folk image of Boone as semiliterate is misleading, however, arguing that Boone "acquired a level of literacy that was the equal of most men of his times." Boone regularly took reading material with him on his hunting expeditions — the Bible and Gulliver's Travels were favorites — and he was often the only literate person in groups of frontiersmen. Boone would sometimes entertain his hunting companions by reading to them around the evening campfire.

Hunter, husband, and soldier - As a young man, Boone served with the British military during the French and Indian War (1754–1763), a struggle for control of the land beyond the Appalachian Mountains. In 1755, he was a wagon driver in General Edward Braddock's attempt to drive the French out of the Ohio Country, which ended in disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela. Boone returned home after the defeat, and on August 14, 1756, he married Rebecca Bryan, a neighbor in the Yadkin Valley. The couple initially lived in a cabin on his father's farm. They eventually had ten children.[

In 1759, a conflict erupted between European colonists and the Cherokee Indians, their former allies in the French and Indian War. After the Yadkin Valley was raided by Cherokees, many families, including the Boones, fled to Culpeper County, Virginia. Boone served in the North Carolina militia during this "Cherokee Uprising", and his hunting expeditions deep into Cherokee territory beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains separated him from his wife for about two years.

I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days. - famous quote by Daniel Boone.

Boone's chosen profession also made for long absences from home. He supported his growing family in these years as a market hunter. Almost every autumn, Boone would go on "long hunts", which were extended expeditions into the wilderness, lasting weeks or months. Boone would go on long hunts alone or with a small group of men, accumulating hundreds of deer skins in the autumn, and then trapping beaver and otter over the winter. The hunt followed along a network of bison migration trails, known as the Medicine Trails. The long hunters would return in the spring and sell their take to commercial fur traders.

Frontiersmen often carved messages on trees or wrote their names on cave walls, and Boone's name or initials have been found in many places. One of the best-known inscriptions was carved into a tree in present Washington County, Tennessee which reads "D. Boon Cilled a. Bar [killed a bear] on [this] tree in the year 1760". A similar carving is preserved in the museum of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, which reads "D. Boon Kilt a Bar, 1803." However, because Boone spelled his name with the final "e", and the inconsistency of an 1803 date east of the Mississippi after Boone moved to Missouri in 1799, these particular inscriptions may be forgeries, part of a long tradition of phony Boone relics.

In 1762 Boone and his wife and four children moved back to the Yadkin Valley from Culpeper. By mid-1760s, with peace made with the Cherokees, immigration into the area increased, and Boone began to look for a new place to settle, as competition decreased the amount of game available for hunting. This meant that Boone had difficulty making ends meet; he was often taken to court for nonpayment of debts, and he sold what land he owned to pay off creditors. After his father's death in 1765, Boone traveled with his brother Squire and a group of men to Florida, which had become British territory after the end of the war, to look into the possibility of settling there. According to a family story, Boone purchased land near Pensacola, but Rebecca refused to move so far away from her friends and family. The Boones instead moved to a more remote area of the Yadkin Valley, and Boone began to hunt westward into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Kentucky - Boone first reached Kentucky in the fall of 1767 while on a long hunt with his brother Squire Boone, Jr. While on the Braddock expedition years earlier, Boone had heard about the fertile land and abundant game of Kentucky from fellow wagoner John Finley, who had visited Kentucky to trade with American Indians. Boone and Finley happened to meet again, and Finley encouraged Boone with more tales of Kentucky. At the same time, news had arrived about the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in which the Iroquois had ceded their claim to Kentucky to the British. This, as well as the unrest in North Carolina due to the Regulator movement, likely prompted Boone to extend his exploration.

On May 1, 1769, Boone began a two-year hunting expedition in Kentucky. On December 22, 1769, he and a fellow hunter were captured by a party of Shawnees, who confiscated all of their skins and told them to leave and never return. The Shawnees had not signed the Stanwix treaty, and since they regarded Kentucky as their hunting ground, they considered white hunters there to be poachers. Boone, however, continued hunting and exploring Kentucky until his return to North Carolina in 1771, and returned to hunt there again in the autumn of 1772.

On September 25, 1773, Boone packed up his family and, with a group of about 50 emigrants, began the first attempt by British colonists to establish a settlement in Kentucky. Boone was still an obscure hunter and trapper at the time; the most prominent member of the expedition was William Russell, a well-known Virginian and future brother-in-law of Patrick Henry. On October 9, Boone's eldest son James and a small group of men and boys who had left the main party to retrieve supplies were attacked by a band of Delawares, Shawnees, and Cherokees. Following the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, American Indians in the region had been debating what to do about the influx of settlers. This group had decided, in the words of historian John Mack Faragher, "to send a message of their opposition to settlement…." James Boone and William Russell's son Henry were captured and gruesomely tortured to death. The brutality of the killings sent shock waves along the frontier, and Boone's party abandoned its expedition.

The massacre was one of the first events in what became known as Dunmore's War, a struggle between Virginia and, primarily, Shawnees of the Ohio Country for control of what is now West Virginia and Kentucky. In the summer of 1774, Boone volunteered to travel with a companion to Kentucky to notify surveyors there about the outbreak of war. The two men journeyed more than 800 miles (1,300 km) in two months in order to warn those who had not already fled the region. Upon his return to Virginia, Boone helped defend colonial settlements along the Clinch River, earning a promotion to captain in the militia as well as acclaim from fellow citizens. After the brief war, which ended soon after Virginia's victory in the Battle of Point Pleasant in October 1774, Shawnees relinquished their claims to Kentucky.

Following Dunmore's War, Richard Henderson, a prominent judge from North Carolina, hired Boone to travel to the Cherokee towns in present North Carolina and Tennessee and inform them of an upcoming meeting. In the 1775 treaty, Henderson purchased the Cherokee claim to Kentucky in order to establish a colony called Transylvania. Afterwards, Henderson hired Boone to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road, which went through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. Along with a party of about thirty workers, Boone marked a path to the Kentucky River, where he founded Boonesborough. Other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were also established at this time. Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone returned to the Clinch Valley and brought his family and other settlers to Boonesborough on September 8, 1775.

American Revolution - Violence in Kentucky increased with the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (1775 – 82). Native Americans who were unhappy about the loss of Kentucky in treaties saw the war as a chance to drive out the colonists. Isolated settlers and hunters became the frequent target of attacks, convincing many to abandon Kentucky. By late spring of 1776, fewer than 200 colonists remained in Kentucky, primarily at the fortified settlements of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Logan's Station.

This 1877 illustration, entitled The rescue of Jemima Boone and Betsey and Fanny Callaway, kidnapped by Indians in July 1776, is one of many depictions of the famous event.

On July 14, 1776, Boone's daughter Jemima and two other teenage girls were captured outside Boonesborough by an Indian war party, who carried the girls north towards the Shawnee towns in the Ohio country. Boone and a group of men from Boonesborough followed in pursuit, finally catching up with them two days later. Boone and his men ambushed the Indians while they were stopped for a meal, rescuing the girls and driving off their captors. The incident became the most celebrated event of Boone's life. James Fenimore Cooper created a fictionalized version of the episode in his classic book The Last of the Mohicans (1826).

In 1777, Henry Hamilton, the British Lieutenant Governor of Canada, began to recruit American Indian war parties to raid the settlements in Kentucky. On April 24, Shawnee Indians led by Chief Blackfish attacked Boonesborough. A bullet struck Boone's leg, shattering his kneecap, but he was carried back inside the fort amid a flurry of bullets by Simon Kenton, a recent arrival at Boonesborough. Kenton became Boone's close friend as well as a legendary frontiersman in his own right. While Boone recovered, the Shawnees kept up their attacks outside Boonesborough, destroying the surrounding cattle and crops. With the food supply running low, the settlers needed salt to preserve what meat they had, and so in January 1778 Boone led a party of thirty men to the salt springs on the Licking River. On February 7, 1778, when Boone was hunting meat for the expedition, he was surprised and captured by warriors led by Chief Blackfish of the Chilicothe Shawnee. Because Boone's party was greatly outnumbered, he persuaded his men to surrender rather than put up a fight.

Blackfish wanted to continue to Boonesborough and capture it, since it was now poorly defended, but Boone convinced him that the women and children were not hardy enough to survive a winter trek. Instead, Boone promised that Boonesborough would surrender willingly to the Shawnees the following spring. Boone did not have an opportunity to tell his men that he was bluffing in order to prevent an immediate attack on Boonesborough, however. Boone pursued this strategy so convincingly that many of his men concluded that he had switched his loyalty to the British.

Boone and his men were taken to Blackfish's town of Chillicothe where they were made to run the gauntlet. As was their custom, the Shawnees adopted some of the prisoners into the tribe to replace fallen warriors; the remainder were taken to Hamilton in Detroit. Boone was adopted into a Shawnee family at Chillicothe, perhaps into the family of Chief Blackfish himself, and given the name Sheltowee ("Big Turtle"). On June 16, 1778, when he learned that Blackfish was about to return to Boonesborough with a large force, Boone eluded his captors and raced home, covering the 160 miles (260 km) to Boonesborough in five days on horseback and, after his horse gave out, on foot.

During Boone's absence, his wife and children (except for Jemima) had returned to North Carolina, assuming that he was dead. Upon his return to Boonesborough, some of the men expressed doubts about Boone's loyalty, since after surrendering the salt making party he had apparently lived quite happily among the Shawnees for months. Boone responded by leading a preemptive raid against the Shawnees across the Ohio River, and then by helping to successfully defend Boonesborough against a ten-day siege led by Blackfish, which began on September 7, 1778.

After the siege, Captain Benjamin Logan and Colonel Richard Callaway—both of whom had nephews who were still captives surrendered by Boone—brought charges against Boone for his recent activities. In the court-martial that followed, Boone was found "not guilty" and was even promoted after the court heard his testimony. Despite this vindication, Boone was humiliated by the court-martial, and he rarely spoke of it.

After the trial, Boone returned to North Carolina in order to bring his family back to Kentucky. In the autumn of 1779, a large party of emigrants came with him, including (according to tradition) the family of Abraham Lincoln's grandfather.[21] Rather than remain in Boonesborough, Boone founded the nearby settlement of Boone's Station. Boone began earning money at this time by locating good land for other settlers. Transylvania land claims had been invalidated after Virginia created Kentucky County, and so settlers needed to file new land claims with Virginia. In 1780, Boone collected about $20,000 in cash from various settlers and traveled to Williamsburg to purchase their land warrants. While he was sleeping in a tavern during the trip, the cash was stolen from his room. Some of the settlers forgave Boone the loss; others insisted that he repay the stolen money, which took him several years to do.

A popular image of Boone which emerged in later years is that of the backwoodsman who had little affinity for "civilized" society, moving away from places like Boonesborough when they became "too crowded". In reality, however, Boone was a leading citizen of Kentucky at this time. When Kentucky was divided into three Virginia counties in November 1780, Boone was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Fayette County militia. In April 1781, Boone was elected as a representative to the Virginia General Assembly, which was held in Richmond. In 1782, he was elected sheriff of Fayette County.

Meanwhile, the American Revolutionary War continued. Boone joined General George Rogers Clark's invasion of the Ohio country in 1780, fighting in the Battle of Piqua on August 7. In October, when Boone was hunting with his brother Ned, Shawnees shot and killed Ned. Apparently thinking that they had killed Daniel Boone, the Shawnees beheaded Ned and took the head home as a trophy. In 1781, Boone traveled to Richmond to take his seat in the legislature, but British dragoons under Banastre Tarleton captured Boone and several other legislators near Charlottesville. The British released Boone on parole several days later. During Boone's term, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781, but the fighting continued in Kentucky unabated. Boone returned to Kentucky and in August 1782 fought in the Battle of Blue Licks, in which his son Israel was killed. In November 1782, Boone took part in another Clark expedition into Ohio, the last major campaign of the war.

Businessman on the Ohio - After the Revolution, Boone resettled in Limestone (renamed Maysville, Kentucky in 1786), then a booming Ohio River port. In 1787, he was elected to the Virginia state assembly as a representative from Bourbon County. In Maysville, he kept a tavern and worked as a surveyor, horse trader, and land speculator. He was initially prosperous, owning seven slaves by 1787, a relatively large number for Kentucky at the time, which was dominated by small farms rather than large plantations. Boone became something of a celebrity while living in Maysville: in 1784, on Boone's 50th birthday, historian John Filson published The Discovery, Settlement And present State of Kentucke, a book which included a chronicle of Boone's adventures.

Although the Revolutionary War had ended, the border war with American Indians north of the Ohio River soon resumed. In September 1786, Boone took part in a military expedition into the Ohio Country led by Benjamin Logan. Back in Limestone, Boone housed and fed Shawnees who were captured during the raid and helped to negotiate a truce and prisoner exchange. Although the Northwest Indian War escalated and would not end until the American victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, the 1786 expedition was the last time Boone saw military action.

Boone began to have financial troubles while living in Maysville. According to the later folk image, Boone the trailblazer was too unsophisticated for the civilization which followed him and which eventually defrauded him of his land. Boone was not the simple frontiersman of legend, however: he engaged in land speculation on a large scale, buying and selling claims to tens of thousands of acres. The land market in frontier Kentucky was chaotic, and Boone's ventures ultimately failed because his investment strategy was faulty and because his sense of honor made him reluctant to profit at someone else's expense. According to Faragher, "Boone lacked the ruthless instincts that speculation demanded."

Frustrated with the legal hassles that went with land speculation, in 1788 Boone moved upriver to Point Pleasant, Virginia (now West Virginia). There he operated a trading post and occasionally worked as a surveyor's assistant. When Virginia created Kanawha County in 1789, Boone was appointed lieutenant colonel of the county militia. In 1791, he was elected to the Virginia legislature for the third time. He contracted to provide supplies for the Kanawha militia, but his debts prevented him from buying goods on credit, and so he closed his store and returned to hunting and trapping.

In 1795, he and Rebecca moved back to Kentucky, living in present Nicholas County on land owned by their son Daniel Morgan Boone. The next year, Boone applied to Isaac Shelby, the first governor of the new state of Kentucky, for a contract to widen the Wilderness Road into a wagon route, but the governor did not respond, and the contract was awarded to someone else. Meanwhile, lawsuits over conflicting land claims continued to make their way through the Kentucky courts. Boone's remaining land claims were sold off to pay legal fees and taxes, but he no longer paid attention to the process. In 1798, a warrant was issued for Boone's arrest after he ignored a summons to testify in a court case, although the sheriff never found him. That same year Kentucky named Boone County in his honor.

Missouri -- In 1799, Boone moved out of the United States to Missouri, which was then part of Spanish Louisiana. The Spanish, eager to promote settlement in the sparsely populated region, did not enforce the legal requirement that all immigrants had to be Catholics. Boone, looking to make a fresh start, emigrated with much of his extended family to what is now St. Charles County. The Spanish governor appointed Boone "syndic" (judge and jury) and commandant (military leader) of the Femme Osage district. The many anecdotes of Boone's tenure as syndic suggest that he sought to render fair judgments rather than to strictly observe the letter of the law.

Boone served as syndic and commandant until 1804, when Missouri became part of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase. Because Boone's land grants from the Spanish government had been largely based on verbal agreements, he once again lost his land claims. In 1809, he petitioned Congress to restore his Spanish land claims, which was finally done in 1814. Boone sold most of this land to repay old Kentucky debts. When the War of 1812 came to Missouri, Boone's sons Daniel Morgan Boone and Nathan Boone took part, but by that time Boone was too old for militia duty.

Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren. He hunted and trapped as often as his failing health allowed. According to one story, in 1810 or later Boone went with a group on a long hunt as far west as the Yellowstone River, a remarkable journey at his age, if true. His obituary, printed in the Missouri Gazette, October 3, 1820, says, "At the age of eighty, in company with one white man and a black man, whom he laid under strict injunction to return him to his family dead or alive, he made a hunting trip to the head waters of the Great Osage, where he was successful in trapping of beaver, and in taking other game." Other stories of Boone around this time have him making one last visit to Kentucky in order to pay off his creditors, although some or all of these tales may be folklore. American painter John James Audubon claimed to have gone hunting with Boone in the woods of Kentucky around 1810. Years later, Audubon painted a portrait of Boone, supposedly from memory, although skeptics have noted the similarity of this painting to the well-known portraits by Chester Harding. Boone's family insisted that he never returned to Kentucky after 1799, although some historians believe that Boone visited his brother Squire near Kentucky in 1810 and have therefore reported Audubon's story as factual.

Boone died on September 26, 1820, at Nathan Boone's home on Femme Osage Creek. His last words were, "I'm going now. My time has come." He was buried next to Rebecca, who had died on March 18, 1813. The graves, which were unmarked until the mid-1830s, were near Jemima (Boone) Callaway's home on Tuque Creek, about two miles (3 km) from the present-day Marthasville, Missouri. In 1845, the Boones' remains were supposedly disinterred and reburied in a new cemetery in Frankfort, Kentucky. Resentment in Missouri about the disinterment grew over the years, and a legend arose that Boone's remains never left Missouri. According to this story, Boone's tombstone in Missouri had been inadvertently placed over the wrong grave, but no one had ever corrected the error. Boone's relatives in Missouri, displeased with the Kentuckians who came to exhume Boone, kept quiet about the mistake, and they allowed the Kentuckians to dig up the wrong remains. There is no contemporary evidence that this actually happened, but in 1983, a forensic anthropologist examined a crude plaster cast of Boone's skull made before the Kentucky reburial and announced that it might be the skull of an African American. Negro slaves had also been buried at Tuque Creek, so it is possible that the wrong remains were mistakenly removed from the crowded graveyard. Both the Frankfort Cemetery in Kentucky and the Old Bryan Farm graveyard in Missouri claim to have Boone's remains.[27] According to "The Boone Family" book by Hazel Atterbury Spraker (1982), "[Daniel] was buried near the body of his wife, in a cemetery established in 1803 by David Bryan, upon the bank of a small stream called Teuque Creek about one and one-half miles southeast of the present site of the town of Marthasville in Warren County, Missouri, it being at that time the only Protestant cemetery North of the Missouri River." {page 578}

Cultural legacy - Many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of 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

Daniel Boone remains an iconic figure in American history, although his status as an early American folk hero and later as a subject of fiction has tended to obscure the actual details of his life. The general public remembers him as a hunter, pioneer, and "Indian-fighter", even if they are uncertain when he lived or exactly what he did. Many places in the United States are named for him, including the Daniel Boone National Forest, the Sheltowee Trace Trail, the town of Boone, North Carolina, and six counties: Boone County,Ill., Boone County, Ind., Boone County, Neb., Boone County, W.Va., Boone County, Mo., and Boone County, Ky. Today, there are schools named for Daniel Boone in many different places, including Birdsboro, Pa., Douglassville, Penn., Gray, Tenn., and Chicago.

The U.S. Navy's George Washington-class Polaris submarine, USS Daniel Boone, was named for Boone. This nuclear submarine was decommissioned in 1994, and she has been scrapped. She was a member of a class of 41 submarines, all of which were named for Great Americans from history, including the USS Lewis and Clark, to mention two other frontiersmen of the Great West.

Boone's name has long been synonymous with the American outdoors. For example, the Boone and Crockett Club was a conservationist organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887, and the Sons of Daniel Boone was the precursor of the Boy Scouts of America.

Emergence as a legend -

Boone emerged as a legend in large part because of John Filson's "The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon", part of his book The Discovery, Settlement And present State of Kentucke. First published in 1784, Filson's book was soon translated into French and German, and made Boone famous in America and Europe. Based on interviews with Boone, Filson's book contained a mostly factual account of Boone's adventures from the exploration of Kentucky through the American Revolution. However, because the real Boone was a man of few words, Filson invented florid, philosophical dialogue for this "autobiography". Subsequent editors cut some of these passages and replaced them with more plausible—but still spurious—ones. Often reprinted, Filson's book established Boone as one of the first popular heroes of the United States.

Like John Filson, Timothy Flint also interviewed Boone, and his Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky (1833) became one of the bestselling biographies of the 19th century. Flint greatly embellished Boone's adventures, doing for Boone what Parson Weems did for George Washington. In Flint's book, Boone fought hand-to-hand with a bear, escaped from Indians by swinging on vines (as Tarzan would later do), and so on. Although Boone's family thought that the book was absurd, Flint greatly influenced the popular conception of Boone, since these tall tales were recycled in countless dime novels and books aimed at young boys.

Much of Daniel Boone's life was covered by William Henry Bogart in his book Daniel Boone and the hunters of Kentucky.

At least three well-known American entertainers have claimed kinship with Daniel Boone: the actor and singer Pat Boone; Richard Boone (1917 – 81) of the TV series, Have Gun, Will Travel; and Randy Boone, one of the actors in the Western series, The Virginian.

Symbol and stereotype - Thanks to Filson's book, in Europe, Boone became a symbol of the "natural man" who lives a virtuous, uncomplicated existence in the wilderness. This was most famously expressed in Lord Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1822), which devoted a number of stanzas to Boone, including this one:

  '' Of the great names which in our faces stare,

The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals any where;
For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoyed the lonely vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.
Byron's poem celebrated Boone as someone who found happiness by turning his back on civilization. In a similar vein, many folk tales depicted Boone as a man who migrated to more remote areas whenever civilization crowded in on him. In a typical anecdote, when asked why he was moving to Missouri, Boone supposedly replied, "I want more elbow room!" Boone rejected such an interpretation of his life, however. "Nothing embitters my old age," he said late in life, like "the circulation of absurd stories that I retire as civilization advances…."

Existing simultaneously with the image of Boone as a refugee from society was, paradoxically, the popular portrayal of him as civilization's trailblazer. Boone was celebrated as an agent of Manifest Destiny, a pathfinder who tamed the wilderness, paving the way for the extension of American civilization. In 1852, critic Henry Tuckerman dubbed Boone "the Columbus of the woods", comparing Boone's passage through the Cumberland Gap to Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World. In popular mythology, Boone became the first to explore and settle Kentucky, opening the way for countless others to follow. In fact, other Americans had explored and settled Kentucky before Boone, as debunkers in the 20th century often pointed out, but Boone came to symbolize them all, making him what historian Michael Lofaro called "the founding father of westward expansion".

In the 19th century, when Native Americans were being displaced from their lands and confined on reservations, Boone's image was often reshaped into the stereotype of the belligerent, Indian-hating frontiersman which was then popular. In John A. McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure (1832), for example, Boone was portrayed as longing for the "thrilling excitement of savage warfare." Boone was transformed in the popular imagination into someone who regarded Indians with contempt and had killed scores of the "savages". The real Boone disliked bloodshed, however. According to historian John Bakeless, there is no record that Boone ever scalped Indians, unlike other frontiersmen of the era. Boone once told his son Nathan that he was certain of having killed only one Indian, during the battle at Blue Licks, although he believed that others may have died from his bullets in other battles. Even though Boone had lost two sons in wars with Indians, he respected Indians and was respected by them. In Missouri, Boone often went hunting with the very Shawnees who had captured and adopted him decades earlier. Some 19th-century writers regarded Boone's sympathy for Indians as a character flaw and therefore altered his words to conform to contemporary attitudes.

Fiction and Film - Boone's adventures, real and mythical, formed the basis of the archetypal hero of the American West, popular in 19th-century novels and 20th century films. The main character of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, the first of which was published in 1823, bore striking similarities to Boone; even his name, Nathaniel Bumppo, echoed Daniel Boone's name. As mentioned above, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Cooper's second Leatherstocking novel, featured a fictionalized version of Boone's rescue of his daughter. After Cooper, other writers developed the Western hero, an iconic figure which began as a variation of Daniel Boone.

In the 20th century, Boone was featured in numerous comic strips, radio programs, and films, where the emphasis was usually on action and melodrama rather than historical accuracy. These are little remembered today; probably the most noteworthy is the 1936 film Daniel Boone, with George O'Brien playing the title role.

Television - Audiences of the "baby boomer" generation are more familiar with the Daniel Boone television series, which ran from 1964 to 1970. In the popular theme song for the series, Boone was described as a "big man" in a "coonskin cap", and the "rippin'est, roarin'est, fightin'est man the frontier ever knew!"[36] This did not describe the real Daniel Boone, who was not a big man and did not wear a coonskin cap. Boone was portrayed this way because Fess Parker, the tall actor who played Boone, was essentially reprising his role as Davy Crockett from an earlier TV series. That Boone could be portrayed as a Crockett, another American frontiersman with a very different persona, was another example of how Boone's image could be reshaped to suit popular tastes.

http://www.shadduck.net/pedigreeshadduck2.htm

United States Pioneer & Indian Fighter

His father Squire Boone was son of George Boone III and Mary Maugridge

The Lineage:

8th. George Boone III (1666-1744) m. Mary Maugridge (1669-1740/41)

....Squire Boone (1696-) m. Sarah Morgan (1700-1777)

........Daniel Boone (1734-1820) m. Rebecca Bryan

7th. John Webb (1694-1774) m. Mary Boone (1699-1774)

Daniel Boone born October 22, 1734 was a United States pioneer and Indian fighter and instrumental in the Western Expansion. His courage in settling frontier country and his skill with the rifle have made him a legendary figure in American History. Although accounts of many of his feats may contain more legend than fact, Boone was nevertheless a skilled frontiersman who showed courage and strength. His followers found him honest, even-tempered, and modest.

Boone was born near Reading, Pennsylvania, one of 11 children. He had no regular schooling, but he did learn to read and write. By the age of 12, he was an expert hunter and tracker. His family moved to the Shenandoah Valley in 1750 and the next year settled in North Carolina. Boone worked there as a teamster and a blacksmith. In 1755, during the French and Indian War, he served under General Braddock in the disastrous attempt to capture Fort Duquesne from the French. He returned to North Carolina and on August 14,1756 he married Rebecca Bryan (born January 9, 1738/39). They had 10 children: James, Israel, Susannah, Jemima, Levina, Rebecca, Daniel Morgan, Jesse Bryan, William, and Nathan.

Boone In Kentucky - Boone visited Florida, then made two extensive trips to Kentucky (1767-68 and 1769-71) with small groups of friends. With a group of settlers Boone set out for Kentucky in 1773, but the expedition was given up after an Indian attack near the Cumberland Mountains. In 1775 Boone was commissioned by Colonel Richard Henderson of the Transylvania Company to establish a colony in Kentucky. Boone's party blazed a trail--the Wilderness Road, or Boone's Trace-- through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky where they built a fort on the Kentucky River. This fort, Boonesborough, was among the first settlements in Kentucky.

The Indians tried repeatedly to destroy the settlement, and many of the original settlers were killed. During the Revolutionary War the stockade withstood seiges in which the Indians were assisted by Canadians. Boone was a stirring figure in the defense of the settlement, and his fame as a woodsman and rifleman spread. During these battles on Kentucky's "dark and bloody ground," Boone and his followers lived on wild turkey, deer, and bear. They wore buckskin and slept between robes made from buffalo and deer hides.

When Kentucky became a county of Virginia in 1776, Boone was made a captain in the militia. He later became a major. He was captured by Shawnees in 1778, but escaped to help defend Boonesborough. He was made a lieutenant colonel and was chosen as a delegate to the legislature in 1780, and became Fayette County sheriff and deputy surveyor in 1782. Boone fought against Indians in the bloody Battle of Blue Licks (1783), sometimes called "the last battle of the Revolution."

Boone in Missouri - Even before Kentucky was admitted as a state in 1792, its lands had become valuable. Boone laid claim to a number of tracks in Kentucky; his claims were never properly registered, however, and he eventually lost all the land he thought was his. In 1788 he and his family settled in what is now West Virginia. They moved to Missouri (then a Spanish territory) in 1799, settling on a Spanish land grant near St. Louis.

Boone was appointed magistrate of his district in 1800, and served until the territory was ceded to the United States in 1803. Again he lost his titles to his land. He continued to work hard, however, and in 1810 was able to return to Kentucky to pay off some old debts that had troubled him. This left him almost penniless.

His wife died March 18, 1813 in Saint Charles County, Missouri. In 1814 Congress restored his holdings to him in recognition of his services to the country. Daniel Boone died on September 26, 1820 in Saint Charles County, Missouri. Boone and his wife are buried in the state cemetery at Frankfort, Kentucky.

Boone is named as author of "The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky" (1784), but the book was written by John Filson, a schoolteacher. There is probably no basis for the story that a tree still stands bearing the inscription "D. Boon cilled a bar on this tree."

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rice/master2-o/p5...

Daniel Boone (1734-1820), American pioneer, who played a major part in the exploration and settlement of Kentucky. Boone was born on November 2, 1734, near Reading, Pennsylvania. In 1753 his family settled on the Yadkin River in what is now North Carolina. In this primitive settlement Boone received some schooling and became a skillful hunter and trapper. He served with the forces led by the British general Edward Braddock in the campaign in 1755 against Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War. Subsequently Boone set out to explore and settle the wilderness around the Kentucky River, making the first of many trips into the region in 1767. Between 1769 and 1771, on his most important expedition, he explored eastern Kentucky, following a trail through the Cumberland Gap with five companions. In 1775, having been engaged as the agent of a Carolina trading company 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 by Native Americans, and in 1778 Boone was taken captive by Native American raiders. The settlement, however, was eventually established as a permanent village. During the early 1780s Boone was forced to abandon his claims to the land around Boonesboro because of invalid titles, and he moved to Boone's Station, Kentucky. He later left Kentucky and from 1788 to 1798 lived near Point Pleasant, Virginia (now West Virginia). About 1799 he settled near Saint Louis, in present-day Missouri, where he remained until his death. The region was then under the authority of Spain; in 1803 it became United States territory as part of the Louisiana Purchase, and in 1814 Boone's claim to the land he occupied was confirmed by the U.S. Congress. He died on September 26, 1820. 'Boone, Daniel,' Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation. He was born on 22 October 1734 at Berks County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Squire Boone , Sr and Sarah Morgan. Daniel Boone married Rebecca Bryan, daughter of Joseph Bryan and Aylee Linville. Daniel Boone died on 26 September 1820 at Missouri at age 85.

Child of Daniel Boone and Rebecca Bryan

Jemima Boone+ b. 1762

Daniel Boone Birth: 22 OCT 1734 in Exeter Township, Berks Co., Pennsylvania *Note: new calendar b. 2 Nov 1734 Berks Co., PA, Death: 26 SEP 1820 Charette Village, St. Charles Co., Missouri. *Note: Died at Nathan Boone's home Burial: 28 SEP 1820 Cemetery Near Jemima's Farm, St. Charles Co., Missouri. Reinterred: 1845 Frankfort, Franklin Co., KY.

• Occupation: Frontiersman/Explorer.

Colonel Daniel Boone aka: Daniel Morgan Boone (Sr.)

(Encyclopædia Britannica Online)

  '' "I have shown you the family records, which in my father's 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 th e New Style calendar."'' Nathan Boone; Daniel Boone always insisted on using this birthdate.

DIED.-On the 26th ult. [Sep.] at Charette Village [which was on Femme , Osage Creek, in St. Charles County, Mo.], in the ninetieth [actually 85th] 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 Readi ng, 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 bringin g 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 hunte r 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 the y 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 Kentuc ky 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 establishin g 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 l eaving 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 th e 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 g roup 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 India n 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 p ushed 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. H e 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 wa s 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 trek ked 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 an d 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 sp end 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 177 5 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 K entucky. 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 an d 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 Bo one 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 Indian s 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. Ba ck 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. Be cause 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 Kana wha 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 L ouisiana 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 ab out 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 take n 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 "d eer" back to her fathers house where he met and "fell in love with Rebecca......so the story goes.....".
In 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 sele ct 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 Am ericans 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 Mis souri 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 t he 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 wh o 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.
. . . 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 Blackfis h, 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." . . .
Boone, 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 Flander s 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, Da niel 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: "I 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."

Daniel Boone was born November 2, 1734 in a log cabin in Berks County, near present-day Reading, Pennsylvania. Boone is one of the most famous pioneers in United States history. He spent most of his life exploring and settling the American frontier.

Boone had little formal education, but he did learn the skills of a woodsmen early in life. By age 12 his sharp hunter's eye and skill with a rifle helped keep his family well provided with wild game. In 1756 Boone married Rebecca Bryan, a pioneer woman with great courage and patience. He spent most of the next ten years hunting and farming to feed his family. In 1769 a trader and old friend, John Findley, visited Boone's cabin. Findley was looking for an overland route to Kentucky and needed a skilled woodsman to guide him. In 1769 Boone, Findley and five men traveled along wilderness trails and through the Cumberland gap in the Appalachian mountains into Kentucky. They found a "hunter's paradise" filled with buffalo, deer, wild turkey and meadows ideal for farming. Boone vowed to return with his family one day.

In 1775 Boone and 30 other woodsmen were hired to improve the trails between the Carolinas and the west. The resulting route reached into the heart of Kentucky and became known as the "Wilderness Road." That same year Boone built a fort and village called Boonesborough in Kentucky, and moved his family over the Wilderness Trail to their new home.

Boone had numerous encounters with the native people of Kentucky during the Revolutionary War. In 1776, Shawnee warriors kidnapped his daughter and two other girls. Two days later Boone caught up with the Indians and through surprise attack rescued the girls. In 1778, he was captured by another band of Shawnee. Boone learned that the tribe was planning an attack on Boonesborough. He negotiated a settlement with Chief Blackfish of the Shawnee, preventing the attack. The Indians admired their captive for his skill as a hunter and woodsman and adopted him into their tribe as a son of Blackfish. He escaped when he learned the Shawnee, at the instigation of the British, were planning another attach on Boonesborough. The settlement was reinforced and provisioned in preparation for the assault. When British soldiers and the Indians attacked, Boonesborough withstood a ten-day siege and Chief Blackfish and the British finally withdrew.

After the Revolutionary War, Boone worked as a surveyor along the Ohio River and settled for a time in Kanawha County, Virginia (now West Virginia). In 1792, Kentucky was admitted into the Union as the 15th state. Litigation arose that questioned many settlers' title to their lands. Boone lost all his property due to lack of clear title. In 1799, he followed his son, Daniel Morgan Boone, to Missouri which was then under the dominion of Spain. Traveling by canoe, he and his family paddled down the Ohio River to St. Louis.

In 1800, Boone was appointed magistrate of the Femme Osage District in St. Charles County, Missouri. He received a large tract of land for his services. When Missouri was transferred to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase, Boone once again lost all his land, most of which was sold to satisfy creditors in Kentucky. Boone's wife Rebecca died on March 18, 1813. He spent his remaining years living in his son Nathan's home in the St. Charles area. He went on his final hunting trip at the age of 83.

Daniel Boone died on September 26, 1820 at the age of 85. In 1845 the remains of Boone and his wife were moved to Kentucky to rest in the great pioneer's "hunter's paradise." There is some controversy surrounding the final disposition of Boone's remains. Some say that Daniel and Rebecca are still in Missouri, and that the wrong remains were removed and re-buried. Others have demanded the return of the bodies to Missouri.

Daniel Boone the well known frontiersman and scout. Daniel was born in Bucks County, Exeter Twp in Pennsylvania. He married Rebecca Bryan. Both he and his wife passed away in St. Charles County, Missouri. They were both buried there, but later both bodies were moved to Frankfort, Kentucky.

Daniel Boone was born November 2, 1734 in a log cabin in Berks County, near present-day Reading, Pennsylvania. Boone is one of the most famous pioneers in United States history. He spent most of his life exploring and settling the American frontier.

Boone had little formal education, but he did learn the skills of a woodsman early in life. By age 12 his sharp hunter's eye and skill with a rifle helped keep his family well provided with wild game. In 1756 Boone married Rebecca Bryan, a pioneer woman with great courage and patience. He spent most of the next ten years hunting and farming to feed his family. In 1769 a trader and old friend, John Findley, visited Boone's cabin. Findley was looking for an overland route to Kentucky and needed a skilled woodsman to guide him. In 1769 Boone, Findley and five men traveled along wilderness trails and through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky. They found a "hunter's paradise" filled with buffalo, deer, wild turkey and meadows ideal for farming. Boone vowed to return with his family one day.

In 1775 Boone and 30 other woodsmen were hired to improve the trails between the Carolinas and the west. The resulting route reached into the heart of Kentucky and became known as the "Wilderness Road." That same year Boone built a fort and village called Boonesborough in Kentucky, and moved his family over the Wilderness Trail to their new home.

Boone had numerous encounters with the native people of Kentucky during the Revolutionary War. In 1776, Shawnee warriors kidnapped his daughter and two other girls. Two days later Boone caught up with the Indians and through surprise attack rescued the girls. In 1778, he was captured by another band of Shawnee. Boone learned that the tribe was planning an attack on Boonesborough. He negotiated a settlement with Chief Blackfish of the Shawnee, preventing the attack. The Indians admired their captive for his skill as a hunter and woodsman and adopted him into their tribe as a son of Blackfish. He escaped when he learned the Shawnee, at the instigation of the British, were planning another attach on Boonesborough. The settlement was reinforced and provisioned in preparation for the assault. When British soldiers and the Indians attacked, Boonesborough withstood a ten-day siege and Chief Blackfish and the British finally withdrew.

After the Revolutionary War, Boone worked as a surveyor along the Ohio River and settled for a time in Kanawha County, Virginia (now West Virginia). In 1792, Kentucky was admitted into the Union as the 15th state. Litigation arose that questioned many settlers' title to their lands. Boone lost all his property due to lack of clear title. In 1799, he followed his son, Daniel Morgan Boone, to Missouri, which was, then under the dominion of Spain. Traveling by canoe, he and his family paddled down the Ohio River to St. Louis.

In 1800, Boone was appointed magistrate of the Femme Osage District in St. Charles County, Missouri. He received a large tract of land for his services. When Missouri was transferred to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase, Boone once again lost all his land, most of which was sold to satisfy creditors in Kentucky. Boone's wife Rebecca died on March 18, 1813. He spent his remaining years living in his son Nathan's home in the St. Charles area. He went on his final hunting trip at the age of 83.

Daniel Boone died on September 26, 1820 at the age of 85. In 1845 the remains of Boone and his wife were moved to Kentucky to rest in the great pioneer's "hunter's paradise."

The following is directly quoted from the History of Boone County, Missouri originally published in 1882. It is purported to be "written and compiled from the most authentic official and private sources". Please note that some sections of the text uses the "unique spelling of the period" and is as originally published.

It is certainly not inappropriate, but quite the contrary that, as this county was called in honor of Daniel Boone, and for this reason will forever remain a perpetual memory of his life, a short biographical sketch of him should accompany its history.

In regard to his birth, name and death, controversies have arisen among historians and biographers. It is, perhaps, not a remarkable circumstance that doubts and differences exist in regard to the time of Daniel Boone's birth, and as to the orthography of his name, but that there should be any contrariety of statement touching so recent an event as his death, is a little singular.

1. His Birth: He was born in Exeter township, Bucks county, PA, according to Bogant, February 11, 1735; Hartley, same date; Peck, February, 1735; the family record in the handwriting of his Uncle James, July 14, 1732; Flint (who wrote in 1840), 1746; Bogart (who wrote in 1881), August 22, 1734; Switzler (who wrote in 1877), adopts, in his "History of Missouri", the date of James Boone's family record - July 14, 1732.

2. His Name: Was it Boone or Boon? Many of his descendants who, fifty years and more ago, lived in Missouri, for examples, William, Hampton L., Nestor and William C. Boon, and some of them who yet reside in the State, among whom is William C. Boon, of Jefferson City, omit the final "e". In consequence of this fact, perhaps, the early records of this county, as well as our first county seal, spelled it "Boon". And "Boon's Lick", as applied to the extensive region in Central Missouri known by that name, and in the name of the first newspaper ever published west of the Missouri river, at Franklin, in 1819, the "Missouri Intelligencer and Boon's Lick Advertiser", it is spelled without the "e". Nevertheless, the act of the Legislature organizing Boone county, November 16, 1820; the Franklin, Mo., Intelligencer of 1819, and Lewis C. Beck's Gazetteer of Missouri, 1823, when speaking of the county add the final "e". Yet there is higher authority than either of these for the "e", viz.: Daniel Boone himself, for he thus spelled his name. We have before us now, through the courtesy of Col. Thomas E. Tutt, of St. Louis, a lithographic copy of a letter from Boone addressed to Col. William Christian, of Kentucky, - called "Cristen" in the letter - dated August 23, 1785, and concluding, "you will oblyge your omble sarvent", to which he signs his name as "Daniel Boone". The original letter is now in the possession of Thomas W. Bullet, of Louisville, Ky., who is a grandson of Col. Christian. In the museum of the Louisville, Ky., Public Library there is a genuine autograph letter of Boone dated "Grate Conhoway July the 30th 1789", and addressed to "Col. Hartt & Rochester", which is subscribed as follows: "I am Sir With Respect your very omble Sarvent Daniel Boone". (See letter of Prof. P.A. Towne in the Courier-Journal, 1876). In a letter J.E. Paton, Circuit Clerk of Bourbon county, Ky., written at Paris Ky., December 20, 1876, to the Cincinnati Enquirer, he says there are in his office a number of the genuine signatures of Boone with the final "e". In Collins' "History of Kentucky", Vol. II, page 61, there is a fac simile of a letter of Boone, which, in 1846, was in possession of Joseph B. Boyd, of Maysville, and addressed to "Judge John Cobren, Sant Lewis", dated October 5, 1809, that concludes, "I am Deer Sir youres Daniel Boone". These authorities settle the question beyond cavil.

3. His Life: His father, Squire Boone, came from England, and took up his residence in a frontier settlement in Pennsylvania, where Daniel received the merest rudiments of education, but became thoroughly familiar with the arts and hardships of pioneer life. When he was 18 years old the family moved to the banks of the river Yadkin, in North Carolina, where he married Rebecca Bryan, and passed some years as a farmer. He made several hunting excursions into the wilderness, and finally, in 1769, set out with five others to explore the border region of Kentucky. They halted on Red river, a branch of the Kentucky, where they hunted for several months. In December, 1769, Boone and a companion named Stewart were captured by the Indians, but escaped, and Boone was soon after joined by his brother. They were captured again, and Stewart was killed; but Boone escaped, and his brother going shortly after to North Carolina, he was left alone for several weeks in the wilderness, with only his rifle for means of support.

He was rejoined by his brother, and they continued their explorations till March, 1771, when they returned home with the spoils which they had collected. In 1773 he sold his farm and set out with his family and two brothers, and five other families, to make his home in Kentucky. They were intercepted by Indians and forced to retreat to Clinch river, near the border of Virginia, where they remained for some time, Boone in the meanwhile conducting a party of surveyors into Kentucky for Patrick Henry, the Governor of Virginia. He was afterward appointed, with the commission of a captain, to command three garrisons on the Ohio, to keep back the hostile Indians, and in 1775 was employed to lay out lands in Kentucky for the Pennsylvania Company. He erected a stockade fort on the Kentucky river, which he called Boonsborough, which is now in Madison county, and removed his family to the new settlement, where he was again employed in command of a force to repel the Indians.

In 1778 he went to Blue Licks to obtain salt for the settlement, and was captured and taken to Detroit. His knowledge of the Indian character enabled him to gain favor with his captors, and he was adopted into one of their families. Discovering a plan laid by the British for an Indian attack upon Boonsborough, he contrived to escape, and set out for the Kentucky settlement, which he reached in less than five days. His family, supposing that he was dead, had returned to North Carolina; but he at once put the garrison in order and successfully repelled the attack, which was soon made. He was court-martialed for surrendering his party at the Licks, and for endeavoring to make a treaty with the Indians before the attack on the fort; but, conducting his own defence, he was acquitted and promoted to the rank of major.

In 1780 he brought his family back to Boonsborough, and continued to live there till 1792. At that time Kentucky was admitted into the Union as a State, and much litigation arose about the titles of settlers to their lands. Boone, losing all his possessions for want of a clear title, retired in 1795 in disgust into the wilderness of Missouri, settling on the Femme Osage Creek, in St. Charles County. This region was then under the dominion of Spain, and he was appointed commander of the Femme Osage district, and received a large tract of land for his services, which he also lost subsequently because he failed to make his title good. His claim to another tract of land was confirmed by Congress in 1812, in consideration of his eminent public services.

The latter years of his life he spent in Missouri, with his son, Nathan Boone, near Marthasville, where he died September 26, 1820, aged eighty-six. The only original portrait of Boone in existence was painted by Mr. Chester Harding in 1820, and now hangs in the State-house at Frankfort, Kentucky. His remains were interred by the side of his wife's, who died March 18, 1813, near the village named, where they continued to repose until August, 1845, when they were removed for interment in the public cemetery at Frankfort.

The consent of the surviving relations of the deceased having been obtained, a commission was appointed under whose superintendence the removal was effected; and the 13th of September, 1845, was fixed upon as the time when the ashes of the venerable dead would be committed with fitting ceremonies to the place of their final repose. It was a day which will be long remembered in the history of Franklin County, Kentucky. The deep feeling excited by the occasion was evinced by the assembling of an immense concourse of citizens from all parts of the State; and the ceremonies were most imposing and impressive. A procession extending more than a mile in length accompanied the coffin to the grave. The hearse, decorated with evergreens and flowers, and drawn by four white horses, was placed in its assigned position in the line, accompanied, as pall-bearers, by the following distinguished pioneers, viz.: Col. Richard M. Johnson, of Scott; Gen. James Taylor, of Campbell; Capt. James Ward, of Mason; Gen. Robert B. McAfee and Peter Jordan, of Mercer; Walter Bullock, Esq., of Fayette; Capt. Thomas Joyes, of Louisville; Mr. London Sneed, of Franklin; Col. John Johnson, of the State of Ohio; Maj. E.E. Williams, of Kenton, and Col. William Boone, of Shelby. The procession was accompanied by several military companies and the members of the Masonic Fraternity and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in rich regalia. Arrived at the grave, the company was brought together in a beautiful hollow near the grove, ascending from the centre on every side. Here the funeral services were performed. The hymn was given out by Rev. Mr. Godell, of the Baptist Church; prayer by Bishop Soule, of the Methodist Episcopal Church; oration by the Hon. John J. Crittenden; closing prayer by the Rev. J.J. Bullock, of the Presbyterian Church, and benediction of the Eld. P.S. Fall, of the Christian Church. The coffins were then lowered into the graves. The spot where the graves are situated is as beautiful as nature and art combined can make it. It is designed to erect a monument on the place.

4. His Death: Timothy Flint, in his biography (1840), states that it occurred "in the year 1818, and in the eighty-fourth year of his age;" Hartley, on September 26, 1820, in his eighty-sixth year; Bogart, the same; Switzler, the same, except that his age was eighty-eight; and Chester Harding, who painted from life the celebrated portrait of him in June, 1820, and who fixes his age at ninety, also fixes his death as occuring in 1820. (See Harding's "Egotistigraphy", for a copy of which we are indebted to his son, Gen. James Harding, one of the Board of Railroad Commissioners for Missouri).

We have, however, recently met with higher authority than either of the above writers, and one that conclusively settles the date of his death. In the Franklin (Mo.) Intelligencer of Oct. 14, 1820, there is copied from the St. Louis Enquirer an obituary notice of Daniel Boone, the first paragraph of which is as follows:

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. This disposes of the question conclusively.

He died at the residence of his son, Maj. Nathan Boone, which was an old-style two-story house, the first of the kind erected west of the Missouri river, and it is yet standing. A good wood cut of it can be found in "Switzler's History of Missouri", page 180.

The obituary in the Enquirer also says that on the 28th September, Mr. Emmons, Senator from Saint Charles County, communicated the intelligence of his death to the Legislature, then in session in St. Charles, and that "both branches of that body, through respect to his memory, adjourned for the day, and passed a resolution to wear crape on the left arm for twenty days".

One of his sons, Jesse B. Boone, was at the time a member of the Legislature from the county of Montgomery.

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 dug-out 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.

Daniel married Rebecca BRYAN on 14 Aug 1756. (Rebecca BRYAN was born on 9 Jan 1739 in Winchester, Frederick Co., VA and died on 18 Mar 1813 in Hunting Creek, Rowan Co., NC.)

This 1820 painting by Chester Harding is the only portrait of Daniel Boone made from life. Boone, 85 years old and just months away from death, had to be steadied by a friend while the artist worked.

Daniel Boone Homestead, Oley Valley, Berks County, Pennsylvania

Nathan Boone's home, Femme Osage Creek, Missouri, United States

Resting place - Old Bryan Farm graveyard, Missouri according to 'The Boone Family' book by Hazel Atterbury Spraker

Daniel Boone was an American pioneer and hunter whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the U.S. state of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the Thirteen Colonies. Despite resistance from American Indians, for whom Kentucky was a traditional hunting ground, in 1778 Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky. There he founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone.

Boone was a Militia officer during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), which in Kentucky was fought primarily between settlers and British-allied American Indians. Boone was captured by Shawnees in 1778 and adopted into the tribe, but he escaped and continued to help defend the Kentucky settlements. He was elected to the first of his three terms in the Virginia General Assembly during the war, and fought in the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782, one of the last battles of the American Revolution. Boone worked as a surveyor and merchant after the war, but he went deep into debt as a Kentucky land speculator. Frustrated with legal problems resulting from his land claims, in 1799 Boone resettled in Missouri, where he spent his final years.

Boone remains an iconic, if imperfectly remembered, figure in American history. He was a legend in his own lifetime, especially after an account of his adventures was published in 1784, making him famous in America and Europe. After his death, he was frequently the subject of tall tales and works of fiction. His adventures—real and legendary—were influential in creating the archetypal Western hero of American folklore. In American popular culture, he is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen, even though the mythology often overshadows the historical details of his life.

The Daniel Boone half dollar was a U.S. commemorative coin issued from 1934 to 1938 in honor of the bicentennial of Boone's birth.

Daniel Boone was born on October 22, 1734. Because the Gregorian calendar was adopted during Boone's lifetime, his birth date is sometimes given as November 2, 1734 (the "New Style" date), although Boone used the October date.[4] He was the sixth of eleven children in a family of Quakers. His father, Squire Boone, Sr. (1696–1765), had immigrated to Pennsylvania from the small town of Bradninch, Devon, England in 1713. Squire Boone's parents George and Mary Boone followed their son to Pennsylvania in 1717. In 1720, Squire, who worked primarily as a weaver and a blacksmith, married Sarah Morgan (1700–1777), whose family members were Quakers from Wales, and settled in Towamencin Township, Pennsylvania in 1708. In 1731, the Boones built a log cabin in the Oley Valley, now the Daniel Boone Homestead in Berks County, Pennsylvania, where Daniel was born.[citation needed] His other siblings were Edward, Elizabeth, George, Hannah, Israel, Johnathan, Samuel, and Sarah Boone.

Daniel Boone spent his early years on what was then the western edge of the Pennsylvania frontier. There were a number of American Indian villages nearby. The pacifist Pennsylvania Quakers generally had good relations with the Indians, but the steady growth of the white population compelled many Indians to relocate further west. Boone received his first rifle at age 12 and picked up hunting skills from local whites and Indians, beginning his lifelong love of hunting. Folk tales often emphasized Boone's skills as a hunter. In one story, the young Boone was hunting in the woods with some other boys, when the scream of a panther scattered the boys, except for Boone. He calmly cocked his squirrel gun and shot the animal through the heart just as it leaped at him. As with so many tales about Boone, the story may or may not be true, but it was told so often that it became part of the popular image of the man.

In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community that existed in what is now present day Lower Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child Sarah married John Wilcoxson, a "worldling" (non-Quaker). When Boone's oldest brother Israel also married a "worldling" in 1747, Squire Boone stood by his son and was therefore expelled from the Quakers, although his wife continued to attend monthly meetings with her children. Perhaps as a result of this controversy, in 1750 Squire sold his land and moved the family to North Carolina. Daniel Boone did not attend church again, although he considered himself a Christian and had all of his children baptized. The Boones eventually settled on the Yadkin River, in what is now Davie County, North Carolina, about two miles (3 km) west of Mocksville.

Because he spent so much time hunting in his youth, Boone received little formal education. According to one family tradition, a schoolteacher once expressed concern over Boone's education, but Boone's father was unconcerned, saying "let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting…." Boone received some tutoring from family members, though his spelling remained unorthodox. Historian John Mack Faragher cautions that the folk image of Boone as semiliterate is misleading, however, arguing that Boone "acquired a level of literacy that was the equal of most men of his times." Boone regularly took reading material with him on his hunting expeditions—the Bible and Gulliver's Travels were favorites—and he was often the only literate person in groups of frontiersmen. Boone would sometimes entertain his hunting companions by reading to them around the evening campfire.

Hunter, husband, and soldier - As a young man, Boone served with the British military during the French and Indian War (1754–1763), a struggle for control of the land beyond the Appalachian Mountains. In 1755, he was a wagon driver in General Edward Braddock's attempt to drive the French out of the Ohio Country, which ended in disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela. Boone returned home after the defeat, and on August 14, 1756, he married Rebecca Bryan, a neighbor in the Yadkin Valley. The couple initially lived in a cabin on his father's farm. They eventually had ten children.

In 1759, a conflict erupted between British colonists and Cherokee Indians, their former allies in the French and Indian War. After the Yadkin Valley was raided by Cherokees, many families, including the Boones, fled to Culpeper County, Virginia. Boone served in the North Carolina militia during this "Cherokee Uprising", and his hunting expeditions deep into Cherokee territory beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains separated him from his wife for about two years. According to one story, Boone was gone for so long that Rebecca assumed he was dead, and began a relationship with his brother Edward ("Ned"), giving birth to daughter Jemima in 1762. Upon his return, the story goes, his wife reproved him saying, "You'd had better have stayed home and got it yourself." Boone was understanding and did not blame Rebecca. Whatever the truth of the tale, Boone raised Jemima as his own and favorite child. Boone's early biographers knew this story, but did not publish it.

Boone's chosen profession also made for long absences from home. He supported his growing family in these years as a market hunter. Almost every autumn, Boone would go on "long hunts", which were extended expeditions into the wilderness, lasting weeks or months. Boone would go on long hunts alone or with a small group of men, accumulating hundreds of deer skins in the autumn, and then trapping beaver and otter over the winter. The hunt followed along a network of bison migration trails, known as the Medicine Trails. The long hunters would return in the spring and sell their take to commercial fur traders. In this business, buckskins came to be known as "bucks", which is the origin of the American slang term for "dollar."

Frontiersmen often carved messages on trees or wrote their names on cave walls, and Boone's name or initials have been found in many places. One of the best-known inscriptions was carved into a tree in present Washington County, Tennessee which reads "D. Boon Cilled a. Bar [killed a bear] on [this] tree in the year 1760". A similar carving is preserved in the museum of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, which reads "D. Boon Kilt a Bar, 1803." However, because Boone spelled his name with the final "e", and the inconsistency of an 1803 date east of the Mississippi after Boone moved to Missouri in 1799, these particular inscriptions may be forgeries, part of a long tradition of phony Boone relics.

In 1762 Boone and his wife and four children moved back to the Yadkin Valley from Culpeper. By mid-1760s, with peace made with the Cherokees, immigration into the area increased, and Boone began to look for a new place to settle, as competition decreased the amount of game available for hunting. This meant that Boone had difficulty making ends meet; he was often taken to court for nonpayment of debts, and he sold what land he owned to pay off creditors. After his father's death in 1765, Boone traveled with his brother Squire and a group of men to Florida, which had become British territory after the end of the war, to look into the possibility of settling there. According to a family story, Boone purchased land in Pensacola, but Rebecca refused to move so far away from friends and family. The Boones instead moved to a more remote area of the Yadkin Valley, and Boone began to hunt westward into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Kentucky -- "Capture of Boone and Stuart" from Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone by Cecil B. Hartley (1859)

Boone first reached Kentucky in the fall of 1767 while on a long hunt with his brother Squire Boone, Jr. While on the Braddock expedition years earlier, Boone had heard about the fertile land and abundant game of Kentucky from fellow wagoner John Findley, who had visited Kentucky to trade with American Indians. Boone and Findley happened to meet again, and Findley encouraged Boone with more tales of Kentucky. At the same time, news had arrived about the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, in which the Iroquois had ceded their claim to Kentucky to the British. This, as well as the unrest in North Carolina due to the Regulator movement, likely prompted Boone to extend his exploration.

On May 1, 1769, Boone began a two-year hunting expedition in Kentucky. On December 22, 1769, he and a fellow hunter were captured by a party of Shawnees, who confiscated all of their skins and told them to leave and never return. The Shawnees had not signed the Stanwix treaty, and since they regarded Kentucky as their hunting ground, they considered white hunters there to be poachers. Boone, however, continued hunting and exploring Kentucky until his return to North Carolina in 1771, and returned to hunt there again in the autumn of 1772.

On September 25, 1773, Boone packed up his family and, with a group of about 50 emigrants, began the first attempt by British colonists to establish a settlement in Kentucky. Boone was still an obscure hunter and trapper at the time; the most prominent member of the expedition was William Russell, a well-known Virginian and future brother-in-law of Patrick Henry. On October 9, Boone's eldest son James and a small group of men and boys who had left the main party to retrieve supplies were attacked by a band of Delawares, Shawnees, and Cherokees. Following the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, American Indians in the region had been debating what to do about the influx of settlers. This group had decided, in the words of historian John Mack Faragher, "to send a message of their opposition to settlement…." James Boone and William Russell's son Henry were captured and gruesomely tortured to death. The brutality of the killings sent shock waves along the frontier, and Boone's party abandoned its expedition.

George Caleb Bingham's Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap (1851–52) is a famous depiction of Boone.

The massacre was one of the first events in what became known as Dunmore's War, a struggle between Virginia and, primarily, Shawnees of the Ohio Country for control of what is now West Virginia and Kentucky. In the summer of 1774, Boone volunteered to travel with a companion to Kentucky to notify surveyors there about the outbreak of war. The two men journeyed more than 800 miles (1,300 km) in two months in order to warn those who had not already fled the region. Upon his return to Virginia, Boone helped defend colonial settlements along the Clinch River, earning a promotion to captain in the militia as well as acclaim from fellow citizens. After the brief war, which ended soon after Virginia's victory in the Battle of Point Pleasant in October 1774, Shawnees relinquished their claims to Kentucky.

Following Dunmore's War, Richard Henderson, a prominent judge from North Carolina, hired Boone to travel to the Cherokee towns in present North Carolina and Tennessee and inform them of an upcoming meeting. In the 1775 treaty, Henderson purchased the Cherokee claim to Kentucky in order to establish a colony called Transylvania. Afterwards, Henderson hired Boone to blaze what became known as the Wilderness Road, which went through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. Along with a party of about thirty workers, Boone marked a path to the Kentucky River, where he established Boonesborough. Other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were also established at this time. Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone returned to the Clinch Valley and brought his family and other settlers to Boonesborough on September 8, 1775.

American Revolution - Violence in Kentucky increased with the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Native Americans who were unhappy about the loss of Kentucky in treaties saw the war as a chance to drive out the colonists. Isolated settlers and hunters became the frequent target of attacks, convincing many to abandon Kentucky. By late spring of 1776, fewer than 200 colonists remained in Kentucky, primarily at the fortified settlements of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Logan's Station.

This 1877 illustration, entitled The rescue of Jemima Boone and Betsey and Fanny Callaway, kidnapped by Indians in July 1776, is one of many depictions of the famous event.

On July 14, 1776, Boone's daughter Jemima and two other teenage girls were captured outside Boonesborough by an Indian war party, who carried the girls north towards the Shawnee towns in the Ohio country. Boone and a group of men from Boonesborough followed in pursuit, finally catching up with them two days later. Boone and his men ambushed the Indians while they were stopped for a meal, rescuing the girls and driving off their captors. The incident became the most celebrated event of Boone's life. James Fenimore Cooper created a fictionalized version of the episode in his classic book The Last of the Mohicans (1826).

In 1777, Henry Hamilton, a British Lieutenant Governor of Canada, began to recruit American Indian war parties to raid the Kentucky settlements. On April 24, Shawnees led by Chief Blackfish attacked Boonesborough. A bullet struck Boone's leg, shattering his kneecap, but he was carried back inside the fort amid a flurry of bullets by Simon Kenton, a recent arrival at Boonesborough. Kenton became Boone's close friend as well as a legendary frontiersman in his own right.

While Boone recovered, Shawnees kept up their attacks outside Boonesborough, destroying the surrounding cattle and crops. With the food supply running low, the settlers needed salt to preserve what meat they had, and so in January 1778 Boone led a party of thirty men to the salt springs on the Licking River. On February 7, 1778, when Boone was hunting meat for the expedition, he was surprised and captured by warriors led by Chief Blackfish of the Chilicothe Shawnee. Because Boone's party was greatly outnumbered, he convinced his men to surrender rather than put up a fight.[citation needed]

Blackfish wanted to continue to Boonesborough and capture it, since it was now poorly defended, but Boone convinced him that the women and children were not hardy enough to survive a winter trek. Instead, Boone promised that Boonesborough would surrender willingly to the Shawnees the following spring. Boone did not have an opportunity to tell his men that he was bluffing in order to prevent an immediate attack on Boonesborough, however. Boone pursued this strategy so convincingly that many of his men concluded that he had switched his loyalty to the British.

Illustration of Boone's ritual adoption by the Shawnees, from Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone, by Cecil B. Hartley (1859)

Boone and his men were taken to Blackfish's town of Chillicothe where they were made to run the gauntlet. As was their custom, the Shawnees adopted some of the prisoners into the tribe to replace fallen war

Daniel Boone (November 2, 1734 [O.S. October 22] – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now Kentucky, which was then part of Virginia but on the other side of the mountains from the settled areas. Despite some resistance from American Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1775 Boone blazed his Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains from North Carolina and Tennessee into Kentucky. There he founded the village of Boonesborough, Kentucky, one of the first American settlements west of the Appalachians. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 European people migrated to Kentucky/Virginia by following the route marked by Boone.[2] (more...)

See good stories under his brother, Squire Boone. Oldest sister, Sarah, is the direct line to the Hansel/Needham family.

(no need to be tedious here) Go to wikipedia

Colo. Daniel Boone the explorer and settle of KY

He and his wife had 10 children. So I guess he didn't spend all his time out exploring!!

Early American Pioneer, Frontiersm

Pic