Daniel Boone - October 22, 1734 – September 26, 1820 was an
American pioneer and hunter whose frontier exploits made him one of the first
folk heroes of the United States. A Stan Klos Website
BOONE, Daniel, pioneer, born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, 22 October, 1734 (For more on Daniel Boone's birthplace
please visit his Homestead);
died in Missouri, 26 Sept., 1820. Among the immigrants that landed, 10 Oct.,
1717, at Philadelphia was George Boone, of Exeter, England, who came with his
wife and eleven children, bought land near Bristol, Bucks County, Pennsylvania,
and joined the society of Friends. His son, Squire Boone, married Sarah Morgan,
and Daniel was their son. Squire Boone, who was a farmer, moved, about 1748, to
Holman's Ford, on the Yadkin, in North Carolina.
Daniel's education was very limited ; he could read and
write, but beyond that all he knew related to the fields, the woods, the net,
the rifle, and hunting. He was a hunter born, and loved the solitude of the
forest. Strong, brave, lithe, inured to hardship and privation, he traced his
steps through the pathless forest, sought out the hiding places of panther,
bear, and wolf, and was the match of any Indian in the sagacity with which he
detected the footsteps of the red man. About 1755 he married Rebecca Bryan and
set up his own log cabin, but, displeased with the encroachments of civilization
on his solitude, and incited by the glowing accounts brought by John Finley, who
had penetrated into the unknown regions of Kentucky, formed a company of six
kindred spirits, and, bidding adieu to his family and the comforts of home, on 1
May, 1769, set out on his perilous journey of exploration.
After numerous adventures with the Indians, having become
intimately acquainted with the character of the country, established an enviable
reputation for sagacity and integrity on important frontier service assigned to
him by Lord Dunmore in the campaign against the Indians, usually called "Lord
Dunmore's War," and constructed a strong fort on the left bank of Kentucky
river, which he named "Boonesborough," he determined to bring his wife and
family to the new home. Some of his neighbors joined him, and he conducted the
party, numbering upward of thirty, safely to "Boonesborough" without having
encountered any other difficulties than such as are common to this passage. On
one occasion Boone, with an armed party of thirty men, had gone for a supply of
salt to a place called " Salt Licks," nearly 100 miles north of Boonesborough,
and was captured, with twenty-seven of his men, by a band of more than 100
Indian warriors led by two Frenchmen. They carried them first to Old
Chillicothe, on the Miami, and then to Detroit, where they surrendered for a
ransom all their prisoners except Boone ; him they took back to Old Chillicothe,
where the great Blackfish, a renowned Shawanese chief, adopted him into his
family under an imposing but painful ceremonial; all his hair, except a tuft
three or four inches in diameter on the crown of the head, was plucked out; that
tuft was allowed to grow to the length of the "warlock," dressed with feathers
and ribbons; an ablution in the river was supposed to cleanse him from the taint
of white blood; a coat of paint on his face, and a solemn charge from Blackfish,
completed the rite.
After a prolonged and anxious residence among them, during
which he was kindly treated, he discovered their intention of marching upon
Boonesborough, and resolved, at the peril of certain death in the event of
recapture, to attempt his escape and save his family and friends. Chased by 450
Indians, he performed that daring feat in the forty-third year of his age, and
thus simply records it: "On the 16th [of June], before sunrise, I departed in
the most secret manner, and arrived at Boonesborough on the 20th, after a
journey of 160 miles, during which I had but one meal." At the fort he learned
that his wife and children, despairing of ever seeing him again, had returned,
and safely reached her father's home in North Carolina. The Indians assailed the
fort, but were repelled with loss, and retreated. Boone then, in the autumn of
1778, rejoined his family on the Yadkin, and returned with them to Kentucky in
1780.
The country, though well settled, was still unsafe, and,
soon after his return, Boone and his brother, Squire, were surprised by Indians
; Squire was killed and scalped, and Daniel had a narrow escape. A sanguinary
engagement, called the "Battle of the Blue Licks," took place in 1782, in which
Boone's two sons fought at his side. One of them was killed, and the other
severely wounded. Boone was full of expedients, and on one occasion extricated
himself from four armed Indians by blinding them with tobacco dust. Kentucky was
admitted into the union, 4 Feb., 1791, and in the survey of the state the title
to Boone's land was disputed. The case was decided against him, and, stung to
the quick by the wrong, he had again to seek a new home, which he established at
Point Pleasant, between the Ohio and the Great Kanawha; but in 1795 he removed
to Missouri, then a Spanish possession, and received not only the appointment of
commandant of the Femme Osage district, but a grant of 8,000 acres. The Spanish
possessions passed into the hands of Napoleon, who sold them to the United
States, and, in the survey that followed, the Spanish grant of Boone's lands was
pronounced invalid. An appeal to the legislature of Kentucky, and another to
congress, resulted in a grant by the latter of 850 acres. Boone was then
seventy-five years of age, hale and strong. The charm of the hunter's life clung
to him to the last, and in his eighty-second year he went on a hunting excursion
to the mouth of Kansas river. He had made his own coffin and kept it under his
bed, and after his death they laid him in it to rest by the side of his wife,
who had passed away seven years before.
Daniel Boone [October 22 (November 2 new style), 1734 – September 26,
1820] was an American pioneer and hunter whose frontier exploits made him one of
the first folk heroes of the United States.
Daniel Boone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Daniel Boone
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.[1]
Daniel Boone [October 22 (November 2
new style), 1734 – September 26, 1820] 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
1775 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.[2]
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.[3]
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.
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. The scream of a
panther
scattered the boys, except for Boone, who 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.[5]
In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local
Quaker community. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly
apologize after their eldest child Sarah married John Wilcoxson, a "worldling"
(non-Quaker), while she was visibly pregnant. 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.[6]
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.[7]
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 would eventually have 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.[8]
I can't say as ever I was lost,
but I was bewildered once for three days.
—Daniel Boone[9]
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 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."[10]
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.[11]
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.[12]
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 when 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.[13]
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.[14]
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.[15]
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.[16]
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.[17]
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).[18]
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 ankle,
smashing the bone, 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 Blackfish.
Because Boone's party was greatly outnumbered, he convinced 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.
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 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.[19]
During Boone's absence, his wife and children (except for Jemima) had
returned to North Carolina, fearing 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
10-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.[20]
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.[22]
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.[23]
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.[24]
This engraving by Alonzo Chappel (c. 1861) depicts an elderly Boone
hunting in Missouri.
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."[25]
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. 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.[26]
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 present day
Marthasville, Missouri. In 1845, the Boones' remains were disinterred and
reburied in a new cemetery in
Forgotten Founders Historic Documents and Coins of Freedom - By Stanley
L. Klos - Last Exhbit at the 2008 GOP Convention:
http://www.pinellasrepublican.org/
Forgotten Founders Historic Documents and Coins of Freedom - By Stanley
L. Klos
Uncommon Sense: President Obama and
US China Trade 1784-2009
The United Colonies 1st
government began in a Philadelphia Tavern
and the United States 1st federal government ended in a
NYC Tavern!
The Founders convened the government in 11 different capitol buildings and
experienced 15 years of challenges that
included war,
hyper-inflation, a failed
constitution, judicial corruption, armed citizen and U.S. Army rebellions.
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