Skip to main content. You are here Home » Biographies. Daniel Boone. Birth Location:. Birth Date:. Death Location:. Death Date:. Themes 18th Century. United States. Cumberland Gap. Appalachian Mountains. French and Indian War. Wilderness Road. His fears were justified when, once again, U. However, in Congress confirmed a part of his Spanish grant.
Daniel Boone's greatest satisfaction was neither in opening up new territory to settlement nor in becoming the subject of laudatory books but simply in being able to journey back to Kentucky about to pay off his outstanding debts; he was left with only 50 cents. After his wife died 3 years later, the famous Kentuckian spent most of his remaining years in quiet obscurity in the Missouri home of his son, where he died on Sept.
Boone was moderately well known for the wilderness exploits that had been described in several books when Lord Byron devoted seven stanzas of his poem Don Juan to him in The poet made the recently deceased woodsman world famous, with the result that Boone became a target for belittlers and debunkers as well as mythmakers.
The latter sought to inflate his real-life adventures; the former tried to destroy his legend. All failed because the difference between legend and reality in Boone's case was so small. If he was not a dime-novel superman in buckskins, he was an unsurpassed woodsman; and he was strong, brave, loyal, and, above all, honest.
Although he was hardly the "happiest of men" as Byron described him and had been forced to flee from American land sharks to Spanish territory, he shrugged off his shabby treatment and accepted his fate without rancor. In short, the rough woodsman was something of a stoic. He was also a true gentleman and a great figure of American history.
Spraker, The Boone Family All rights reserved. Moving Westward Moving to Boone's Station, the scout held a succession of offices, including lieutenant colonel of Fayette County, legislative delegate, sheriff, county lieutenant, and deputy surveyor. Boone was born on November 2, , in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the sixth child of eleven born to immigrant Quaker parents, Squire and Sarah. Boone had no proper education but could read and write and often took reading material with him on his backwoods trips.
He received his first rifle at age 12, learned to hunt and became a skilled marksman, often providing his family with fresh game. According to legend, he once shot a panther through the heart as it charged. After the French and Indian War broke out , Daniel Boone joined the North Carolina militia and served as a wagoner — and narrowly escaped being killed by Indians during the Battle of Monongahela one of several American Indian wars in which Boone would fight against Native Americans.
He survived another Indian attack during the Battle of Fort Duquesne by snatching a horse and dashing away on horseback. Findley later accompanied Boone on his first trip to Kentucky.
Boone supported his large family by hunting and trapping. He often disappeared for months at a time during the fall and winter and returned in the spring to sell his pelts to traders.
In , Cherokee Indians raided the Yadkin Valley and forced many of its inhabitants, including the Boone family, to flee to Culpeper County, Virginia. One story holds that during one of his extended journeys, Rebecca thought Boone was dead and had a relationship with his brother, which produced a daughter whom Boone claimed as his own.
One of Boone's six sons, Israel, was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks in , one of the last skirmishes of the Revolutionary War Boone was also at the battle and saw his son die. In the fall of , Boone took a short excursion through the Cumberland Gap to Kentucky.
On May 1, , he headed back to Kentucky on a longer trip, helping to open a trail for future pioneers. Shawnee Indians captured him and one of his companions on December 22, stole their pelts and warned them never to return. Boone returned home but had no intention of heeding the warning. Boone returned to Kentucky with his family and a group of immigrants in July In October, disgruntled Indians attacked members of the party, including Boone's son James. The Indians brutally tortured and killed them, forcing the shaken immigrants back to North Carolina.
After the Indian attack, Boone was sent to notify surveyors in Kentucky that war with the Indians was imminent, and armed conflict did indeed break out the following year in Lord Dunmore's War of Boone quickly staged an ambush and rescued the girls, inspiring the historical novel, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Boone, however, escaped four months later and helped Boonsborough defeat the Shawnee at the Siege of Boonsborough. Boone established the settlement of Boone Station in December Over the next several years, he relocated to present-day West Virginia and served in the Virginia legislature.
Although he was famous as a militia leader, hunter and surveyor, Boone was not adept in business. By most reports he was an aggressive land speculator who often went heavily into debt to acquire property. After returning to Kentucky in — in plenty of time to see the opening of the Wilderness Road in October — Boone refused to testify in a lawsuit against him.
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