| b. , c. Nov. 2, 1734,
Berks County, Pa. d. , c. Sept. 26, 1820, St. Charles, Mo., U.S. |
Boone had little formal schooling but learned to read and
write. As a youth he moved with his family (English Quakers) to
the North Carolina frontier. Most of his life was spent as a
wandering hunter and trapper.
Many white men had traversed Kentucky before Boone; hence,
the legend that he was its discoverer needs qualification. Boone
first went a short way through Cumberland Gap to hunt in the fall
of 1767, and he and several companions returned to Kentucky to
trap and hunt in 1769-71. In 1773 Boone undertook to lead his own
and several other families to Kentucky, but the group was attacked
by Cherokee Indians just beyond the last settlement. Two of the
party, including Boone's son James, were tortured and murdered,
whereupon the survivors turned back.
In March 1775 Boone and 28 companions were employed by
Richard Henderson's Transylvania Company to blaze a trail through
Cumberland Gap. The company planned to establish Kentucky as a
14th colony. Despite Indian attacks, the party built the
Wilderness Road, which ran from eastern Virginia into the interior
of Kentucky and beyond and became the main route to the region
then known as the West. It helped make possible the immediate
opening of the first settlements in Kentucky: Boonesborough,
Harrod's Town, and Benjamin Logan's. In August 1775 Boone brought
his wife Rebecca and their daughter to Boonesborough. They were,
except for a few women who had been captured by Indians, the first
white women in Kentucky, and their arrival may be said to mark the
first permanent settlement there. The plan to establish the 14th
colony failed, however, and Kentucky was made a county of
Virginia. Boone became a captain in the county's militia and a
leader in defending Boonesborough against the Indians. He was
captured by Indians in 1778 and was adopted as a son by the
Shawnee chief, Blackfish. After five months he escaped to warn
Boonesborough settlers of an impending attack. When the attack by
British soldiers and Indians came (September 1778), the settlement
successfully withstood a 10-day siege.
Although a courageous and resourceful leader, Boone did not
prosper. He established extensive land claims but could rarely
make them good. After the American Revolution he worked as a
surveyor along the Ohio River. He settled for a few years in
Kanawha County, Va. (now West Virginia). Then, in 1799, he
followed his son Daniel Morgan Boone to Missouri, in Louisiana
Territory, where he continued to hunt and trap.
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."
John Bakeless, Daniel Boone (1939, reprinted 1965);
J.J. Van Noppen and I.F. Woestemeyer, Daniel Boone,
Backwoodsman (1966).