Daniel Boone

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Image:Daniel boone.jpg Daniel Boone (November 2, 1734 – September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer, frontiersman and Indian-fighter, who blazed the trail known as the "Wilderness Road" and founded Boonesborough, Kentucky (also known as Boonesboro).

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Family and early life

Daniel was born to Squire Boone (November 25, 1696 - January 2, 1765) and Sarah Jarman Morgan (1700 - 1777) in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. His father was born to a family of Quakers in Devon, England. Squire Boone immigrated to Pennsylvania in early 1713 along with his older siblings George Boone and Sarah Boone. The rest of the family joined them on September 19 (Old Style)/September 30 (New Style), 1717.

Squire at first settled in Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania but then moved to Lower Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania. There he met Sarah Morgan, daughter to a family of Quakers from Wales. They married on October 4, 1720.

The couple eventually moved to Chalfont, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. By 1730, they were able to purchase their own 250 acres (1 km²) of land in Homestead, Pennsylvania.

Squire Boone and Sarah Morgan had twelve children:

Daniel received little formal education. Although Daniel was literate, his spelling and grammar were always rather crude. His uncle John, a schoolteacher, once expressed concern over Daniel's education. Daniel's father responded with a quote that has survived many centuries of retellings: "let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting..." In that mindset, he sent ten year old Daniel Boone to tend the cattle by himself all summer. Daniel, however, found it more entertaining to wander the woods and hunt rather than tend the herd.

Daniel Boone is presumed to have been trained as a farmer, blacksmith and weaver. He has been described as "an extremely calm man, with a very prominent forehead".

On December 31, 1747, Daniel's brother Israel married Mary S. Wharton, a non‑Quaker, with the consent of his father. The local Quaker community found the marriage scandalous and called the Boones to repentance, but Squire Boone continued to support it. As a result, in 1748 the Quakers shunned the entire Boone family.

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Travels and exploration

Squire Boone and his family left Pennsylvania in 1750, eventually to settle in Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. While serving with the British during the French and Indian War, in 1755, Daniel Boone barely escaped with his life from General Braddock's crushing defeat. In 1756, Daniel married Rebecca Bryan, a neighbor in the Yadkin Valley. Daniel fathered 10 children with Rebecca.

Boone explored much of Kentucky and Tennessee, which at the time were frontier hinterlands of the colonies almost unsettled by Europeans, and became instrumental in establishing the Wilderness Road over the Appalachians through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. In 1769, Boone blazed the first known trail from North Carolina to Tennessee. Boone spent the winter of 1769‑70 in a cave, on the banks of the Shawnee River, in Mercer County, Kentucky. A tree marked with his name, is yet standing near the head of the cave. He spent the next two years hunting and exploring in Kentucky ("Kaintuck"), where he was captured twice by Indians, and escaped both times.

In 1773, Boone attempted to settle in Kentucky, but an Indian attack resulted in the death of his oldest son James. In 1775, Boone worked as an agent for the Transylvania Company. Along with a party of thirty settlers, Boone began to clear the Wilderness Road and this time was successful in establishing a settlement at Fort Boonesborough near Lexington, Kentucky. This was the first settlement of Transylvania. This action was most significant because, by exploring and encouraging the settlement of "Boonesborough", he violated the agreements of the Royal Proclamation of 1763.

In 1776, Boone became an officer in the Virginia militia when Kentucky formally became a western county of Virginia (later a separate territory and state). During most of the American Revolutionary War, Daniel Boone fought against the Indian tribes along the western frontier. In 1778, Boone was captured by Shawnee raiders and held captive for four months, but survived after.

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Revolutionary War battles

During the American Revolutionary War, between the American rebels and the British, Native Americans fought on both sides. Native American loyalties during the War generally depended upon previous loyalties and alliances, although both sides lobbied hard to win support of the Indians. Boonesborough became the site of several battles during the War, when it was besieged at least three times over a period of months. In one of these sieges, on February 7, 1778, Daniel Boone and twenty-six companions were captured by Shawnee warriors, led by Chiungalla.

Continued fighting with the Shawnee and the British resulted in the loss of Daniel's second-oldest son, Israel during one of the last battles of the American Revolutionary War, the disastrous Battle of Blue Licks.

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Resettlement and death

After the Revolutionary War, Boone lost all of his land claims in Kentucky due to "faulty" titles, involving the failure of Richard Henderson's Transylvania Co. Taxes and creditors forced him out of Kentucky, and, in 1788, Boone settled at Point Pleasant on the Ohio River, in Kanawha County, Virginia (now West Virginia), where he worked as a surveyor.

In 1799, with his son Daniel Morgan Boone, he moved again, to Missouri, then part of the Louisiana Territory, under Spanish control: his son had met with the Spanish lieutenant-governor Don Z. Trudeau and had been invited to settle the Boone family in. Passing through Kentucky on his way to his new home, and asked why he was moving, he is reported to have said that Kentucky was "too crowded". Two years later, Boone was appointed "syndic" (a judicial magistrate) and commandant of the Femme Osage region.

  • After the Spanish territory that Boone had settled in was sold to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Daniel Boone once again lost all of his land titles.
  • Rebecca Boone died in 1813.
  • Daniel Boone's land claims were later restored by the U.S. Congress in 1814.

He died in Marthasville, Missouri and was buried on his farm near there in Warren County, Missouri, but in 1845 what were believed to be his remains and those of his wife were moved to Frankfort, Kentucky. There is some uncertainty, however, as to whose remains exactly were moved, and both Frankfort Cemetery in Kentucky and the Old Bryan Farm in Missouri claim his grave.

Boone and his family also owned a significant plot of land in central Missouri, buying it because of its number of salt licks. These salt licks were later named "Boone's Lick". The surrounding areas also hold the Boone name. (Ex. Boone County; Boonville, Boonesboro, Boone's Farm, etc.)

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Folklore

Many anecdotes of Boone folklore are recorded:

  • As a young boy (beginning at the age of ten), Daniel Boone often wandered the woods. One day while our in the woods with some other boys, the scream of a panther warned the wanderers that they were prey. While the other boys scattered in an attempt to escape, Daniel Boone calmly cocked his squirrel gun, and when the beast lept, shot it through the heart.
  • Once when Daniel Boone was napping (which he often did), two neighbor girls surprised him by emptying a bucket of fish entrails on the sleeping boy. Young Boone was not pleased, and sent the two girls home with bloodied noses. This is an early example of Boone basing his opinions and actions on an individual's actions and not on sex or perceived status. When Daniel Boone's mother, Sarah, was confronted by the neighboring mother, she showed her own frontier spunk by saying, "If thee has not brought up they daughters to better behavior, it is high time they were taught good manners. And if Daniel has given them a lesson, I hope, for my part, that it will, in the end, do them no harm; and I have only to add, that I bid thee good day." [Michael Lofaro, Daniel Boone: an American Life]
  • He never admitted to being lost; however, he once reported that he was "confused for several days."
  • Daniel Boone reportedly shot a bear along a stage road in Tennessee, carving his name in a beech tree to commemorate the event: "D Boone cilled a bar on tree in year 1760". Other similarly inscribed tree stumps include one reported to have been seen as late as the mid‑20th century in Fleming, Kentucky, and another now located in the museum of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Kentucky, which reads "D. Boon Kilt a Bar, 1803."
  • He was captured by Chief Black Fish of the Shawnee; but escaped, when he learned of a British and Indian plot to attack Boonesborough. He rallied the settlers and successfully repelled a 10‑day siege against the town.
  • While courting Rebecca, Daniel Boone tore her dress at a picnic (to see how she would react). To this, she calmly asked, "Why did you do that?", proving her unflappability; a desirable characteristic of a frontier wife.
  • Contrary to his depiction in several films and television shows, he did not wear a coonskin cap, but preferred a tall black felt hat. He likely wore buckskin clothes, with fringed-leather trim; the error was greatly reinforced in the public mind by the confusion of Daniel Boone with another American trailblazer, Davy Crockett, both played in popular television series by the same actor, Fess Parker; see Daniel Boone (TV series).

The publication of The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon in 1784 by John Filson immortalized Boone the frontiersman as an American "legend", and a true folk hero.

The name "Daniel Boone" was used by a British pop singer during the early 1970s, recording on Penny Farthing Records, and achieving a world-wide hit with "Hi, Hi, Hi, Beautiful Sunday."

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Ancestry

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Paternal

He is an alleged eighth-generation descedant of Sir John de Bohun III (born ca. 1433) and his wife Avelina de Ros, daughter of Robert de Ros, 1st Baron de Ros and Isabel D'Albini.

He is an alleged seventh-generation descedant of an elder Geoffrey Bohn (1450 – May 7, 1472) and his wife, Petrolina de Arderne.

He is an alleged sixth-generation descedant of Geoffrey Bohn II (1471 – 1530) and Anne Magerly, daughter of Piers Magerly.

He is considered a probable fifth-generation descedant of Gregory Bohun (1517 – 1589) and Constance Comyn. Gregory was born in Gwynedd, and was reportedly vassal to an Earl of Devon.

His paternal great-great-grandparents were George Boone I (c. 1625 – 1701 and Ann Fallace (c. 1615 – 1709). Ann was daughter to a Walter Fallace. George has been suggested as a descedant of the Bohun family.

His paternal great-grandparents were George Boone II (November 17, 1646 – 1706) and Sarah Mary Uppey (c. 1640 – 1720). George II was a blacksmith.

His paternal grandparents were George Boone III (1666 – 1744) and Mary Milton Maugridge (1669 – 1740). They were parents to nine children. George III was a weaver.

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Maternal

His alleged maternal great-great-grandfather Edward Morgan, 2nd Baronet Of Llantarnam was son to William Morgan, 1st Baronet Of Llantarnam and Lady Frances Somerset, a reported third daughter of Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester and Elizabeth Hastings.

His alleged maternal great-grandfather James Morgan, 4th Baronet Of Llantarnam, was son to Edward Morgan, 2nd Baronet of Llantarnam (1562 - June 24, 1653) and Mary Dorothy Englefield, daughter of Sir Francis Englefield, Bart., and Jane Browne.

His maternal grandparents were Edward Morgan and Elizabeth Jarman. Edward has been suspected as a (probably illegitimate) son of Sir James Morgan, 4th Baronet Of Llantarnam. Sir James is otherwise known to have died with no legitimate descedants. His title became forfeit following his death. Elizabeth was probably daughter to John Jarman, a Welsh Quaker and early settler of Pennsylvania.

The disproof of this line has been accepted by The Genealogist for publication. The parentage of Edward Morgan, Daniel's grandfather, remains unclear.

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External links

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Primary sources

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Secondary material

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Other material

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See also

  • Simon Kenton
  • Boone contains a partial list of the many places named for Daniel Boone
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References

  • Sparke's, American Biography, (New York, 1856)
  • R. G. Thwaites wrote a biography of Boone, (New York, 1902)
  • Steve Rajtar's "Indian War Sites" (McFarland and Co., Inc., 1999)
  • L. Edward Purcell, "Who Was Who in the American Revolution" (1993)de:Daniel Boone

es:Daniel Boone eo:Daniel Boone fr:Daniel Boone sv:Daniel Boone

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