My Boone line:
George Boone III and Mary Milton Maugridge
…Joseph Boone (DOB 4/5/1704 in Stoke, Torridge District, Devon, England; DOD 1/30/1776 in Exeter, Berks County, PA) and Catherine Warren (DOB 11/30/1708 in Westminster, London, England to John Warren V and Abigail Hastings; DOD 1/31/1778 in Exeter, Berks County, PA)
……Jacob Boone and Catherine Jamison
………Jacob Martin Boone and Elizabeth “Betsy” Holt
…………John Locie Boon(e) and Maria Barbara Summers
……………Andrew Boon(e) and Jane Hobbs
……………..Peter William Boon and Mary Jane Smith
………………..Eva Malinda Boon married William Eli Huneycutt
…………………..Oscar Alexander Huneycutt and Vivian Mae Barnes
……………………..William Avery Huneycutt and Eleanor Elaine Reese
………………………..Me
George Boone III was born 3/19/1666 in Stoke Canon, East Devon, Devon, England to George Boone II and Sarah Mary Uppey. He married Mary Milton Maugridge (DOB 9/23/1669 in Bradninch, Mid Devon, Devon, England to John Milton Maugridge and Mary Milton) in Devon, England on 8/16/1689. They had: George Boone IV, Sarah Adeline Boone, Mary Boone (#1), Squire Boone, Sr., Mary Boone (#2), John Boone, Sr., Benjamin Boone, Sr., James Maugridge Boone, Sr., Samuel Maugridge Boone, Sr.
Squire Boone, Sr., was the brother of my direct ancestor, Joseph Boone. Squire Boone, Sr. was born 11/25/1696 in Bradninch, Exeter, Devon, England. He married Sarah Morgan (DOB 9/23/1700 in Gwynedd, Montgomery County, PA), daughter of Edward Morgan, Sr. and Margaret Elizabeth Jarman. Squire Boone and Sarah Morgan are the parents of Daniel Boone. That means my direct ancestor, Joseph Boone, was the uncle of Daniel Boone. Joseph‘s son, Jacob Boone, and Daniel Boone were 1st cousins. That makes me Daniel Boone‘s 1st cousin 8 times removed.
Daniel Boone was born 11/2/1734 in Berks County, PA. He was one of the 12 children of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone: Nathaniel Boone (1722-1723 died in infancy), Israel Morgan Boone (5/20/1726 in PA-6/26/1756 in Mocksville, Davies County, NC, died young of consumption, married Martha Ann Farmer), Martha Boone (1727-9/9/1757 in Rowan County, NC and married Isaac Wilcockson or Isaac Wilcoxson), Samuel Boone, Sr. (5/20/1728 in PA-1808 in Fayette County, KY, married Sarah Day), Jonathon Boone (10/6/1730 in Exeter, Berks County, PA-1808 in Mt Carmel, Wabash County, IL, married Mary Carter), Elizabeth Boone (2/5/1733 in Berks County, PA-2/25/1814 in Fayette County, KY, married William Grant, II), Daniel Boone (married Rebecca Ann Bryan), Mary Boone (9/3/1736 in Exeter, Berks County, PA-7/6/1918 in Harrison County, KY, married William Bryan), George Boone, Sr. (1/2/1793 in Exeter, Berks County, PA-11/11/1820 in Shelby County, KY, married Nancy Ann Linville), Edward “Ned” Boone (10/19/1740 in Exeter, Berks County, PA-10/6/1780 in Clark County, KY, married Martha Bryan), Squire Boone, Jr. (10/5/1744 in Exeter, Berks County, PA-8/5/1815 in Corydon, Harrison County, IN, married Jane Vancleve), Hannah Boone (8/24/1746 in Exeter, Berks County, PA-4/9/1828 in Tompkinsville, Monroe County, KY, married John Stewart).
Morgan Bryan left his parents in Ireland and came to Pennsylvania, America. He lived in Chester County and married Martha Strode. About 1728-1730 he received a grant of 1,000 acres of land on the Potomac and Opequan Rivers in Virginia. This is where the rest of their children were born and Martha Strode Bryan died. In the Fall of 1748, he moved his family to the forks of the Yadkin River in what is Rowan County, NC now. About 2 years later, Squire Boone and his family moved from Pennsylvania to NC and were neighbors of Morgan Bryan. Morgan Bryan and Martha Strode Bryan had a son named William Bryan who married Mary Boone AND a son named Joseph Bryan, father of Rebecca Bryan and Martha Bryan. This is how Daniel Boone met and married Rebecca Bryan and Ned Boone married Martha Bryan. So this family was very close.
Daniel Boone and Rebecka Bryan had these children:
1) James Boone (DOB 3/5/1757 in Yadkin County, NC; DOD 10/10/1773 in Lee County, VA at 16 yrs old, killed by Indians).
2) Israel Boone (DOB 1/25/1759 in Yadkin County, NC; DOD 8/19/1782 in Fayette County, KY at 23 yrs old, killed by Indians).
3) Susannah Boone (DOB 11/2/1760 in Yadkin River, Rowan County, NC; DOD 10/19/1800 in St. Charles County, MO) married William Hays (DOB 12/13/1754 in Scott County, VA; DOD 1904 in St. Charles County, MO).
4) Jemima Boone (DOB 10/4/1762 in NC; DOD 8/30/1834 in Warren County, MO) married Flanders Isham Callaway (DOB 12/9/1752 in Lunenburg County, VA; DOD 2/22/1829 in Montgomery County, MS).
5) Levina Lavinia Boone (DOB 3/23/1766 in Yadkin River, Rowan County, NC; DOD 4/6/1802 in Clark County, KY) married Joseph Scholl (DOB 1/1755 in Shenandoah, Page County, VA; DOD 1/1830 in Clark County, KY).
6) Rebecca Boone (DOB 5/26/1768 in Settlement, Rowan County, NC; DOD 7/14/1805 in Kiddville, Clark County, KY) married Philip Goe (DOB 3/24/1767 in Queen Ann Parish, Prince George’s County, MD; DOD 3/1805 in Nicholas County, KY).
7) Daniel Morgan Boone (DOB 12/23/1769 in NC; DOD 7/13/1839 in Jackson County, MO) married Sarah Griffin Lewis (DOB 1/29/1786 in Albemarle County, VA; DOD 6/19/1850 in Jackson County, MO).
8) Jesse Bryan Boone (DOB 5/23/1773 in Yadkin, Rowan County, NC; DOD 1/21/1821 in St. Louis County, MO) married Chloe Van Bibber (DOB 8/13/1772 in Botetourt County, VA to Peter Van Bibber and Margery Bounds; DOD 8/1822 in Callaway County, MO).
9) William Bryan Boone (DOB 6/20/1775 in Rowan County, NC; DOD 7/12/1775 in Rowan County, NC).
10) Nathaniel “Nathan” Boone (DOB 3/2/1781 in Boone’s Station, Clark County, KY; DOD 10/16/1856 in Ash Grove, Greene County, MO) married Olive Van Bibber (DOB 1/13/1783 in Greenbrier County, WV to Peter Van Bibber and Margery Bounds).
We need to do some history before we move on with the story of Daniel Boone. These are the times he faced, he lived in, he brought his family up in so let’s look at some history.
The Shawnee were a nomadic people, following animal populations throughout the winter months and establishing more permanent villages in the summers, where women did the farming of crops, and the men hunted and served as warriors. The women of the tribe did the domestic labor. They built the lodges, dressed the game, cooked, planted and cultivated the gardens, scraped and tinned hides, made clothing and blankets, wove baskets and made vessels of clay… The women also cared for the ailments within a tribe, and were extremely skillful at mixing herbs and setting fractured bones.
The Shawnee divided themselves into different clans and their principal leaders could only come from the “Chillicothe” clan. When a village was called Chillicothe, it meant that it was home to the principal chief, the “capital city” of the Shawnee. Chiefs were hereditary and held for life. The Shawnee, whose name means “Southerners”, once occupied a vast region west of the Cumberland mountains of the Appalachian chain in what is now part of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. The Shawnee migrated often, but their territory in the late seventeenth century may have ranged from the Illinois River east to the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Savannah Rivers. Some scholars place them on the Cumberland River at or before that time. Shawnee villages have been located within an enormous area, ranging from the present states of New York and Illinois south to South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Their aboriginal home may have been around the south shore of Lake Erie, and they lived in southern Ohio during the second half of the eighteenth century. Their large villages were located near the fields in which women worked and the males generally did the hunting.
The Iroquois may have begun pushing scattered Shawnee bands south into Ohio as early as the sixteenth century. Iroquois attacks on Shawnees in Ohio lasted until the mid- to late eighteenth century, when the Iroquois forced the last Shawnees out of that area. Starting in 1640, the Iroquois Confederacy, a confederation of five Iroquoian-speaking American Indian tribes, began a campaign referred to as the Beaver Wars during which they fought other American Indian groups, including those in the Ohio Country, in order to gain new access to fur-bearing game animals, especially beaver and deer. Shawnees pushed into Pennsylvania in the late seventeenth century, and a population center was established on the Savannah River by that time as well. In the early eighteenth century, bands began a general westward movement again, settling on the north bank of the Ohio River. By about 1750 most Shawnee had come to that location, with Iroquois permission. Some groups also joined the Creek Nation in Alabama about that time.
Once the fur trade was well under way, American Indian groups competed against one another for hunting grounds in order to secure enough furs to develop strong relationships with French and British fur traders, the Shawnee being no exception. Conflict, hostilities and long grievances between American Indian tribes intensified. Heavy involvement in the fur trade from the early eighteenth century on left many Shawnee in the clutches of alcohol and debt. While they gained guns, ammunition and European goods, they also traded for rum or brandy, leading to serious social problems related to alcohol abuse by their members.
Most Shawnee bands were pro-French, but some were steadfast British trade partners and military allies. During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the Shawnee supported the French. Throughout the summer of 1754 the Shawnee, Delaware and Mingo stood ready to join the British against the French but then it was learned the Iroquois had ceded Ohio to the British. The Ohio tribes lost confidence in the Iroquois and saw the British as enemies. The French assembled a force of 300 French Canadians and 600 allies from the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes tribes to defend Fort Duquesne against the British, but this would include only four Shawnee and no Delaware. In 1753 The Pride, a Shawnee war chief, had been captured in South Carolina during a raid against the Catawba. After he died in a British prison, his grieving relatives retaliated in 1754 with raids against the North Carolina frontier. The Shawnee and Delaware sent a delegation to Philadelphia to protest the Iroquois cession of Ohio at this time and they were hanged. In July, 1755 General Edward Braddock met disaster when his 2,200-man army was ambushed just before reaching Fort Duquesne. Half the command was killed (including Braddock himself) and when the news reached the colonies a force of 300 French Canadians and 600 allies from the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes tribes to defend Fort Duquesne against the British, but this would include only four Shawnee and no Delaware. In 1755 war parties struck the frontiers in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland in a wave of death and destruction that killed 2,500 colonists during the next two years. In July, 1759 the Shawnee and Ohio Delaware made peace with the British and ended their attacks on the frontier. Quebec and Fort Niagara fell in the fall, and with the surrender of Montreal in 1760, the war in North America was over. The Ohio tribes had taken over 650 white prisoners during the war. These were exchanged on Ohio’s Muskingum River in 1761. The Shawnee expected the British now to leave but they built Fort Pitt at the site of Fort Duquesne and they felt betrayed. No longer forced to compete with the French, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the British military commander in North America, decided to treat the native allies of the French as conquered peoples. Annual presents to alliance chiefs ended and the supply of trade goods was restricted, particularly gunpowder and rum. Since the tribes had grown dependent on these items, there was a severe reaction. The British Indian agent, Sir William Johnson, discovered a plot by the Shawnee and Delaware to engage in another uprising. The overwhelming British victory in the war resulted in a loosely united Indian rebellion, led by Pontiac, Chief of the Ottawa Tribe, a series of attacks referred to as Pontiac’s War or Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-1764). Most Shawnees participated in Pontiac’s rebellion of 1763-1764. Chief Pontiac who convened a war council and enlisted support from practically every Indian tribe from Lake Superior to the lower Mississippi. His plan was to expel the British from the Indian lands and “exterminate” the settlers. Chief Cornstalk was in charge of exterminating the settlers in the Greenbrier region of Virginia. The Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo besieged Fort Pitt and hit the Pennsylvania frontier with a series of raids which killed 600 settlers. In desperation, Amherst wrote the commander at Fort Pitt, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, suggesting he deliberately attempt to infect the Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo besieging his fort with gifts of smallpox-infected blankets and handkerchiefs. Ecuyer took this as an order and did exactly that. This epidemic killed thousands, including British colonists. In August the Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo were defeated by Colonel Henry Bouquet in a two-day battle at Bushy Run which broke the siege of Fort Pitt.
Iroquois leaders relinquished American Indian rights to land south of the Ohio River by signing the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1768) without consulting other tribes living in the Ohio. Chief Cornstalk was present at the negotiations but refused to sign. Settlers immediately moved into the area. The Shawnee and other tribes tried to push British colonist settlers west of the Appalachian Mountains. Under Chief Cornstalk, they also fought the British later in 1764 over the issue of land. They fought Virginians in Lord Dunmore’s War. (Lord Dunmore gave veterans of the French and Indian War who fought under him land that belonged to the Shawnee). Pressured by the colonies to cede land, the Shawnee joined the British cause in the American Revolution. The loss in that war led to further land cessions in Ohio and Indiana. After the treaty at Fort Stanwix, the British government had basically washed its hands of the whole affair other than invalidating the claim by the Wabash Company to lands in Indiana. The British closed Fort Pitt (only Michilimackinac, Kaskaskia, and Detroit had garrisons) and sat back “to watch the fur fly.” By 1774 there were 50,000 frontiersmen west of the Appalachians spoiling for a fight. Most had been fighting Indians for several generations, and they could be as brutal and merciless as any warrior. Shawnee agreed to the British’s terms and some also agreed to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784), which ceded their rights to land east and south of the Ohio River. This was the first time American Indians who lived in Ohio agreed to relinquish some of their land. In the 1790s, a group of Shawnee and Lenape moved to Missouri to occupy a Spanish land grant. Then Little Turtle’s war (1794).
The Shawnee continued to fight the settlers, and joined an American Indian Alliance led by Little Turtle, Chief of the Myaamia Tribe, along with the help of Blue Jacket of the Shawnee, as well as warriors from the Lenape, Wyandotte, Ottawa, and Ojibwa tribes. Although the alliance aimed to thwart settlers’ attempts to take native lands by force, the Alliance was in no way a united body as they had a long history of conflicts between tribes.
Tecumseh attempted to unite American Indian peoples with ties to Ohio Territory lands in resistance but due to the advanced technology of the whites, and the American Indians’ failure to put aside their long tribal conflicts, Gen. William Henry Harrison defeated the Shawnees at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. Tecumseh died at the Battle of Thames in 1813.
Their power broken, many Ohio tribes, including the Shawnee, became refugees, drifting in scattered bands throughout Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Meanwhile, the Missouri Shawnee living on Spanish land were slowly joined by other Shawnee groups. Resulting tensions forced the groups apart once again.
How peaceful and non-violent were the Shawnee? As you can see from this brief history, they were warriors, not docile, peace-seeking peoples. They had conflict with other Native American tribes. The poor farmers, planters, colonists and families had plenty of examples of Shawnee atrocities to be afraid of them. Many said they would rather be killed outright than taken captive by them. One survivor of captivity told how his wife and children were murdered and to prevent his escape the Indians cut deep gashes in his heels, only to do it again and again, as well as, searing his feet with hot irons to keep him a cripple, unable to escape. Eyewitnesses and survivors told horrifying brutal stories of attacks, murders, rapes, tortures, forced marches, enslavement, sieges, attempts to starve out the colonists and to “exterminate” them. If you do brief research on the Shawnee online, there are too many saying this tribe was a peace loving, family oriented, close-to-nature people. But it seems they were just as human as the rest of mankind. They didn’t seem to mind oppressing their women; participating in wars with other Native American tribes and the white man; murdering, scalping, enslaving white women and children; torturing, enslaving and murdering white men. The racism was on both sides. No one is immune from evil.
The Shawnee believed in Moneto, a supreme being who ruled the entire universe and distributed blessings upon all who earned his favor, and desperate sorrow upon those who merited his disfavor. The Great Spirit of the Shawnee was a grandmother who ruled the destinies of her children. The “Golden Rule” of the Shawnees was: “Do not kill or injure your neighbor, for it is not him that you injure, you injure yourself. But do good to him, therefore add to his days of happiness as you add to your own. Do not wrong or hate your neighbor, for it is not him that you wrong, you wrong yourself. But love him, for Moneto loves him also as he loves you.”
As you will see, they didn’t follow their Golden Rule any better than many white men/women followed their Golden Rule.
Braddock’s Defeat took place in 1755 nine miles from Fort Duquesne on the Monongahela River. General Braddock was shot, his troops broke and ran for the river. Of the 1300 British who crossed the river, over 500 didn’t come back. The Indians marched the survivors back to Fort Duquesne naked and tortured them to death. The French stood by and watched so they were eyewitnesses. The Indians were firing muskets into the air. Some were wearing red coats and officers’ hats. They began stretching hundreds of scalps on hoops. The prisoners were naked. Where the two rivers met was an island called Smoky Island and this was where they tortured the prisoners. They tied the prisoners to stakes and began torturing them. They piled hot coals on their feet. The women heated ramrods in fires and drove them in ears or nostrils. The Shawnee practised shooting arrows into them.
Mid-morning on July 30, 1755, a Shawnee war party attacked the small settlement. Col. James Patton was killed. Mary Draper Ingles’ mother, Eleanor Draper, was tomahawked and scalped. Betty Draper’s infant child was dashed against the side of a cabin and a neighbor, an old German man named Casper Barger, was decapitated. Mary Ingles, along with her young sons, George and Thomas; her sister-in-law, Betty Draper; and two unrelated men, James Cull and Henry Leonard, were captured. Later that fall, Mary, along with an old Dutch woman, escaped and walked across the entire state of West Virginia back to Draper’s Meadow. Both were near death from starvation.
The entire Virginia frontier was in chaos after Braddock’s defeat in 1755. The Indians attacked the settlements at will, murdering men, women, and children and taking captives. First Greenbriar Massacre took place in 1759 and 27 warriors began going cabin to cabin murdering. Charles Daugherty was killed. Next was the Jacob Cunningham cabin. With Cunningham away, his wife was killed and his 10-year old daughter was knocked unconscious, scalped, and left for dead. She survived to face the Indians a second time when Chief Cornstalk and his men later massacred the settlers at Kerr’s Creek.
Next came the home of Thomas Gilmore; the elderly Gilmore and his wife were leaving to visit a neighbor when they were killed and scalped. Five of the ten members of the Robert Hamilton family were killed next. By that time, the community was alerted to the danger and residents were scrambling for safety.
One account says that John and Jane McKee had earlier sent their six children to Timber Ridge for safekeeping. When the alarm sounded through the neighborhood, the McKees fled. Jane McKee could not keep up and John had left the house without his gun. As the Indians neared their home, Jane begged her husband to run on without her or their children would be orphans; John McKee helped his wife hide in a sink hole before he ran. He hid until dark and returned to find his wife lying dead in the sink hole. She had survived long enough to wrap her kerchief around her head wound. He buried her where she lay, wrote her name in the family Bible, and went on to raise their children without her. Another account says that John had gone to help a neighbor and found his wife had been slaughtered when he returned home. In either case, the Shawnees slaughtered Jane McKee and John McKee raised his children without her.
Charles Lewis (the same Charles Lewis who was killed in the Battle of Pt. Pleasant) raised three companies of militia (about 150 men) to go after Cornstalk and his men. One company overtook the Indians near the head of Back Creek in what is now Highland County, Virginia, but the other two companies were behind the advance group and the Shawnees escaped.
The militia companies eventually caught up with the Shawnees at Straight Fork, four miles below the present West Virginia line, and about 20 Indians were killed. Thomas Young was the only white man killed, and Captain Dickenson was wounded.
The Second Greenbrier Massacre at Muddy Creek Mountain settlement. Cornstalk’s 60 warriors crossed the Ohio in canoes, which they sank at the mouth of the Kanawha. Going overland about 160 miles to Muddy Creek. On July 16, 1763, Cornstalk and his band suddenly appeared at the Frederick See cabin and pretended to be friendly. The Sees offered to share food with the Shawnees and the Shawnees agreed. After the meal was finished, the Indians lounged around for awhile and rested. Suddenly, the Shawnees attacked their hosts, killing Fredrick See, his son-in-law, Littleberry Roach, and his nephew Valentine (Felty) Yocum, scalping them before the eyes of their families. All of the women and children were taken prisoner. In one short day, the Muddy Creek settlement was annihilated. Leaving a few warriors behind at Muddy Creek to guard the terrified wives and children of the murdered men they moved on to the Third Greenbriar Massacre at Kerr’s Creek where about 30 families and 150 people lived. The settlers were gathered for service at Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church and others at Archibald Clandenin’s farm, a leader in the settlement and who thought he was on good terms with the Shawnees. Those at the church fled into the woods. When the Shawnees appeared at Clandenin’s farm, they were entertained and fed as they had been at Muddy Creek. One man, Conrad Yocum, was suspicious so he took his horse some distance from the house and soon heard screams and gunfire so he fled to the fort on Jackson’s River. He was the only white man there who was not murdered that day. An old lady had heard the Indians were healers and asked them if they could cure her leg. The answer was a tomahawk blow to the head killing her which signalled the start of the massacre. The men were killed, the women and children taken prisoner and their homes looted and burned down. Archibald Clandenin was scalped and his wife flew at the Shawnee who was holding her husband’s scalp. He hit her in the face with the bloody scalp. Mrs. Dale grabbed a horse and escaped. Managing to balance her baby and cling to the horse, she outran the Indians. She said the terror-stricken people ran in every direction, trying to hide. The Indians chased first one, then another, killing everyone in their path. Some fled for the spring pond, hiding in the water and in the weeds along the banks. The warriors found them, killed and scalped them, and tossed the bodies in the pond. Even the cattle were shot. Thomas Gilmore was killed and his wife, Jenny, stood over his body fighting the Shawnee who murdered her husband. Her life was spared due to her bravery. Margaret Cunningham had lived through being scalped but was captured here and the Indians brought out her scalp and placed it on her head. Mary Hamilton had a baby in her arms. She dropped him in some grass to save it. Later, after being ransomed she returned home to find his bones where he had died anyway. Ann Clandenin managed to escape after a few days and went home to find her dead husband. She then walked to Fort Jackson. All the women and children prisoners were forced to march to Ohio and those who could not keep up were murdered. When they reached Shawnee villages, the women left were forced to run the gauntlet and be beaten.
November 15, 1764 was the Battle of Point Pleasant. Col. Henry Bouquet marched down the Ohio River to the forks of the Muskingum and met in a conference with the Indians. He gave them twelve days to agree to give up all of their prisoners without exception; Englishmen, Frenchmen, children; adopted into the tribe, married off to Shawnee, or living among them under any denomination or pretense. The Indian tribes, lead by Chief Cornstalk, agreed to release their prisoners.
The following story was found in A History of the Pioneer Families of Missouri, With Numerous Sketches, Anecdotes, Adventures, Etc. Relating To Early Days In Missouri Also the Lives of Daniel Boon and the Celebrated Indian Chief Black Hawk by William S. Bryan and Robert Rose, Section: Part II. The Indian War, originally published in St. Louis, MO, 1876
Capt. James Callaway raised his first company of rangers for service against the Indians in 1813. This company included Daniel Hays and Boone Hays, 1st cousins of James Callaway. This group enlisted for a term of only a few months and he organized several others before his death. The roll of hi last company was in his possession when he was killed and was lost but from memory not including the Hays. on 3/7/1815, Capt. Callaway with Lt. Riggs and 14 men left Fort Clemson on Loutre Island in pursuit of Sac and Fox Indians who had stolen horses. The group swam Loutre slough on their horses and followed the Indian trail which led them up the west bank of the mainstream. The trail was plain and they had no trouble following it. Reaching Prairie Fork, a branch of Loutre, they swam it on their horses about 75 yards. It was now about noon and they began to advance with caution to the rear of the Indians. About 2:00 pm about 12 miles from their Prairie Fork crossing when they came upon the stolen horses hidden in a bend of Loutre creek protected only by some squaws who ran. It could be seen that the Indian party numbered from 80-100 but no sign of Indian warriors. This aroused their suspicions. Lt. Riggs reconnoitered and still found no Indian warriors which made him even more suspicious. He recommended they not go back the way they had come but Capt. Callaway dismissed him and they headed back. About a mile from the mouth of Prairie Fork, they stopped to rest. Lt. Riggs still felt leery and reminded Capt. Callaway that they were outnumbered 3 to 1 and were encumbered by the horses. Callaway not only refused to heed his advice but cursed him for a coward. So they continued. When they went to swim across Prairie Fork on the horses, the stream was swollen from rains, they were fired on by Indians hidden on the banks. Although they made it to the bank, they were killed. Capt. Callaway also made it to the bank but his horse was killed and he was injured. He threw his gun muzzle down and ran down the stream and jumped back in the stream and began swimming but he was shot in the back of the head where he sank and his body was not further mutilated.
Lt. Riggs and the rest of the men were forced to retreat. Several were wounded but not killed. One man, Wolf escaped to the fort and brought the news. Riggs fell back a mile, made a wide circuit and crossed Prairie Fork and made it back to the fort. The next day they went back to bury the dead. Flanders Isham Callaway came from St. Charles County with a company of men to assist in finding the body of his son. The bodies of the 3 men who had been killed had been cut to pieces and hung on surrounding bushes. Their pieces were buried together in a common grave. Capt. Callway’s body wasn’t found for several days but finally found hanging in a bush and his gun found stuck fast in the mud at the bottom of the creek. It still fired. His body was wrapped in a blanket and buried on a hill overlooking Loutre Creek. Of the Indians, one of the chiefs, Keokuk, was wounded and died shortly after. It was not known of any others.
I think we are now ready to look into Daniel Boone’s life. We know his family and we know the history he was living in.
Squire Boone, Sr. belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, aka Quakers. They dissented from the Church of England and were persecuted for their beliefs. As a result, he and his brother, George, and sister, Sarah, went to America ahead of their parents in 1713, joining William Penn’s colony. He was a weaver, gunsmith, blacksmith and farmer. His parents arrived in Pennsylvania in 1717.
In 1730 Squire and Sarah Boone purchased 250 acres in Oley Township, in present Berks County, PA. Nine of their 11 children were born there, including Daniel in 1734. The Boones built a one-room log cabin in the Oley Valley in what is now Berks County, PA, near present Reading, where Daniel was born.
Boone was a trustee and overseer of the Oley Meeting. The oldest children, Sarah (obviously pregnant before married) and Israel, “married out,” that is, married non-Quakers, and Boone was reprimanded by the church for this. He refused to shun his children and supported them. The Boones were acquainted with the Morgan Bryan family, and with the Willcocksons, Grants, and others who migrated to the Yadkin River. Jonathan Boone, had married Mary Carter, daughter of James Carter, founder of Salisbury, and had settled in the fork of the Yadkin and South Yadkin rivers in southern Davie County. Fertile, cheap land and abundant game were available in North Carolina. So on 11 Apr 1750, Squire and Sarah Boone sold their 158-acre farm, and on 1 May 1750, they set out for North Carolina.
Squire Boone reached the Yadkin River in late 1751 or early 1752 and may have lived first at Boone’s Cave in Davidson County. A cave is there today on a high bluff well above the Yadkin River, and a replica cabin has been built at the site. One tradition holds that the Boones used this cave for shelter while building their cabin. Another tradition had the cabin as a fishing and hunting cabin used by the family. On 13 Apr. 1753, Boone received from Lord Granville a grant of “640 acres on South side of Grants otherwise Licking Creek.” Sixteen known deeds drawn between 1753 and 1832 designate tracts of land on the present Elisha (formerly Grants or Licking) Creek and Dutchman Creek, in Davie County, as adjoining the Squire Boone grant or containing parts of it. On 29 Dec. 1753, Boone received another Granville grant of 640 acres on both sides of Bear Creek. The tract, designated as in the Parish of St. Luke’s, Rowan County, is two miles west of Mocksville in Davie County. On 12 Oct. 1759, Squire and Sarah Boone conveyed this land to Daniel Boone. In a deed dated 21 Feb. 1764, Daniel and Rebecca Bryan Boone sold their 640 acres on “Bair Creek” to Aaron Van Cleve.
Squire Boone was prominent in Rowan County, formed in 1753. He held extensive and valuable landholdings. He served as a justice of the first Rowan County Court in June 1753. Court minutes show him to have been a very faithful and active member through the year 1757. He served as a juror and for at least one year secured a license to operate a “Publick House at his own Plantation.”
The Boones conveyed their lands to Squire Boone, Jr., and Daniel Boone and move to Maryland in 1759 probably due to the danger of Indian uprisings. They did return in the spring of 1762, on horseback.
Daniel Boone spent his early years in the Pennsylvania frontier and then the North Carolina frontier. He wasn’t as interested in education so he hunted even as a boy. He was chopping wood by the time he was five years old and was taking care of his father’s cows by the time he was ten. Daniel loved the outdoors. He would do anything not to be cooped up inside. While watching his father’s cowherd, he would hunt small game and learn to find their tracks in the woods. When Daniel was still just fourteen years old, he spotted bear tracks near his father’s herd. He tracked the bear down and killed his first bear. In one story, Daniel was hunting in the woods with some other boys when the howl of a panther scattered all but Boone. He calmly cocked his rifle and shot the predator through the heart just as it leaped at him. He was taught to read and write from family members but his spelling was always atrocious. On his hunts and wanderings he always took the Bible and a copy of Gulliver’s Travels to read.
Daniel hunted enough animal skins to help his family buy 1280 acres of land in NC. He became known as the land’s best sharpshooter winning all the contests he entered.
When the French and Indian War (1754–1763) broke out Boone joined a North Carolina militia company as a teamster and blacksmith in 1755 at the age of 21 yrs old. He returned home and married Rebecca Bryan. They lived in a cabin on his father’s farm and began their family. They would have 10 children AND raised children of his brother who died young.
In 1758, conflict erupted again with the Indians and the family fled to Culpeper County, VA. Daniel Boone joined the North Carolina militia during this “Cherokee Uprising,” periodically serving under Captain Hugh Waddell on the North Carolina frontier until 1760.
Boone supported his growing family afterwards as a market hunter and trapper, collecting furs for the fur trade. Almost every autumn, despite the unrest on the frontier, Boone would go on “long hunts”. He would be gone for weeks and months on these hunts. He would usually go with a small group of men. Often they carved their names in caves or on trees.
In the mid-1760s, Boone began to look for a new place to settle. The population was growing in the Yadkin Valley, and game was getting scarce. Boone had difficulty making ends meet; he was often taken to court for nonpayment of debts. He sold what land he owned to pay off creditors. After his father’s death in 1765, Boone traveled with 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.
On the move to Kentucky, somewhere near present-day Abingdon, VA, Daniel Boone sent his oldest son, James Boone (16 years old), John and Richard Mendenhall, Henry Russell (William Russell‘s son and 17 years old), Isaac Crabtree, Samuel Drake (son of John Drake) and two slaves named Charles and Adam on a provisioning party. In early October 1773, these young men camped for the night near Wallen’s Creek, Virginia. As morning broke on 10 October, they were attacked by Delaware, Shawnee and Cherokee Indians. Only Isaac Crabtree and Adam escaped. The young men, James Boone, Henry Russell, John and Richard Mendenhall, and maybe two others were killed. Among the attackers was “Big Jim,” a Shawnee who had once visited the Boones at their cabin. He was recognized by James. James Boone pleaded for his life and that of his companions, but the Indians cruelly tortured them with knives. When they would strike young Russell with a knife, he would seize the knife with his hand. This caused his terrible bloody mutilation. When the torture continued, James begged the Shawnee to end his work quickly and not torture them any longer. Young Russell (and perhaps James) had been shot through the hips and thus rendered unable to escape. The Indians stabbed him also with knives, and at each thrust he grabbed the knife blade with his hands. He was horribly mutilated. His hands were cut to pieces. His “corpse was mangled in inhuman manner and there was left in him a dart of arrows and a war club was left by him.” (Draper Manuscripts, 6 C 14.) Soon after the tragedy, Captain William Russell and Captain David Gass came along and found the mutilated bodies. Daniel Boone was reached at his waiting place and apprised of the tragedy. James Boone and his companions were buried there at their camping place by their fathers. Their lonely graves remain unmarked and undiscovered. Having sold out in NC, Daniel Boone and his family had no place to go back to. They returned to Captain Russell’s place at Castlewood and lived in a deserted cabin belonging to Captain David Gass. It was two years before the trip could be undertaken again because of Indian troubles and the Dunsmore War.
In the summer of 1774, Boone traveled with a companion to Kentucky on a journey of more than 800 miles, to notify surveyors there about the outbreak of war. Upon his return to Virginia, Boone helped defend colonial settlements along the Clinch River earning a promotion to captain in the militia.
Following Dunmore’s War, Richard Henderson, a prominent judge from North Carolina paid Daniel to found a settlement at Transylvania. In 1775, Boone and a group of some 30 woodsmen left to complete a 200-mile trail through the wilderness to the Cumberland Gap—a natural break in the rugged Appalachian Mountains—and into Kentucky. Boone traveled to several Cherokee towns and invited them to a meeting, held at Sycamore Shoals in March 1775, where Henderson purchased the Cherokee claim to Kentucky. Boone then blazed “Boone’s Trace,” later known as the Wilderness Road, through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky. Boone founded Boonesborough along the Kentucky River; other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were also established. Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone brought his family and other settlers to Boonesborough on September 8, 1775. The Wilderness Road became the gateway by which an estimated 200,000 settlers journeyed to the western frontier by the early 19th century.
Violence in Kentucky increased with the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). American Indians 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, Boone and his family were among the fewer than 200 colonists who remained in Kentucky. On July 14, 1776, Boone’s daughter Jemima and two other girls were kidnapped by the Shawnee and taken towards Ohio. Elizabeth and Frances Callaway were daughters of Colonel Richard Callaway. The girls had been warned by their fathers not to stray too far from the Fort but they wanted to pick grapes and flowers and took a canoe which drifted across. They were abducted when the canoe approached the opposite side. Their screams alerted Col. Callaway. Boone, and a group of men from Boonesborough, followed in pursuit, finally catching up with them two days later. The girls had been attempting to mark their trail so they could be followed. Boone and his men ambushed the Indians, rescuing the girls and driving off their captors. Jemima married Flanders Isham Callaway, who had been one of the rescuing party.
On April 24,1778, the British-allied Shawnees lead by Chief Blackfish mounted the Siege of Boonesborough. Boone was shot in the ankle while outside the fort but, amid a flurry of bullets, he was carried back inside 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, killing cattle and destroying crops. With food running low, the settlers needed salt to preserve what meat they had, so in January 1778, Boone led a party of 30 men to the salt springs on the Licking River. On February 7, when Boone was hunting meat for the expedition, he was captured by Blackfish’s warriors. He was used by Blackfish to persuade the party of men to surrender. Blackfish intended to attack Boonesborough but Daniel Boone managed to convince him that this wouldn’t work as the women and children would not survive the wilderness winter march. He promised Blackfish he would surrender Boonesborough to him in the Spring. He played his part of traitor so well that many of the men believed he had betrayed them. But Daniel Boone was waiting for the right opportunity. Meanwhile, although he saved the lives of the party, he was forced to run through the gauntlet. They were taken to Chillicothe. He was “adopted” by a Shawnee family, perhaps Blackfish. In the summer of 1778, Boone learned Blackfish was going to attack Boonesborough with a large force, he escaped and covered 160 miles on horse and foot to warn them. He led 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. But he was very nearly court-martialed for his portrayal as a traitor. He was found not guilty and promoted.
Rather than remain in Boonesborough, Boone founded the nearby settlement of Boone’s Station. He began earning money by locating good land for other settlers. Transylvania land claims had been invalidated after Virginia created Kentucky County, 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 he repay the stolen money, which took him several years to do.
Edward (Ned or Neddie) and Daniel married sisters, Martha and Rebecca Bryan, whose father, Joseph Bryan, was one of the founders and defenders of Bryan Station near Lexington, Kentucky. Edward spent most of his life in what is today Wilkes County, North Carolina where he was a community leader and family man. He served on juries, was a road surveyor, a tax collector, a constable. Although the Boones had for many years been Quakers, he was baptized in the Baptist Church and loved to sing. He was “A peace man.” (Draper Manuscript 23C17-4) “E. Boone migrated at the same time with his Brother and the Scholls – he was Clerk & Deacon of the Baptist Church in NC”. In 1780, Daniel and Ned Boone were returning to Boone’s Station located in present Fayette County, where Daniel lived from 1799 until about 1783. The two men were coming from Blue Licks on the Licking River where they had been hunting. Their horses were loaded with game. They paused in a meadow and Ned suggested they crack some nuts from a grove of trees nearby. Daniel was uncomfortable and commented that this was a likely place for an ambush by Native Americans. Daniel saw a bear lumbering away, followed it into the woods, and shot it. He heard shots and realized Ned had been ambushed. He made his way quietly back and overheard the Shawnees bragging they had killed Daniel Boone (he and Ned looked alike). They decapitated Ned to take his head back for bragging rights. Daniel Boone escaped by foot going back with a search party the next day. He found his brother’s body with a mountain lion chewing on it. He buried his brother and they followed the Indians for a time. On the way back, they killed game for Ned’s widow and their children.
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, he was elected as a representative to the Virginia General Assembly, which was held in Richmond. In 1782, he was elected sheriff of Fayette County. In 1781, as he traveled to Richmond to take his seat, Banastre Tarleton captured Boone and he was paroled several days later.
Boone joined General George Rogers Clark’s invasion of the Ohio country in 1780, fighting in the Battle of Piqua against the Shawnee. His son, Israel, was killed at the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782, one of the last skirmishes of the Revolutionary War (Boone was also at the battle and saw his son die).
The battle occurred ten months after Lord Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, which had effectively ended the war in the east. In July 1782 a meeting took place at the Shawnee villages near the headwaters of the Mad River in the Ohio Country, with Shawnees, Delawares, Mingos, Wyandots, Miamis, Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomis in attendance. As a result, 150 British rangers under Captain William Caldwell (of Butler’s Rangers) and some 1,100 Indian warriors supervised by Pennsylvania Loyalists Alexander McKee, Simon Girty, and Matthew Elliott set out to attack Wheeling, on the upper Ohio River. This was one of the largest forces sent against American settlements during the war. The expedition was called off, however, when scouts reported that a force under George Rogers Clark, whom the Indians feared more than any other commander, was about to invade the Ohio Country from Kentucky. Caldwell and about 50 Loyalists, supported by 300 Indians, crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky. They meant to surprise and destroy the settlement of Bryan Station, but the settlers discovered them and took shelter within their stockade. Caldwell and McKee’s force laid siege to Bryan Station on August 15, killing all of the settlers’ livestock and destroying their crops, but withdrew after two days when they learned that Kentucky militiamen were on the way. On a hill next to the Licking River in what is now Robertson County, Kentucky (then Fayette County, Virginia), The militia arrived at Bryan Station on August 18. The force included about 47 men from Fayette County and another 135 from Lincoln County. The highest-ranking officer, Colonel John Todd of Fayette County, was in overall command, assisted by Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Boone, famed frontiersman. Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Trigg and Major Hugh McGary led the Lincoln County contingent. Benjamin Logan, colonel of the Lincoln militia, was gathering men and had not yet arrived. The militiamen could pursue the raiders immediately, to keep them from escaping, or they could wait for Logan to arrive with reinforcements. Daniel Boone advised waiting for Logan, who was only a day away, but others urged immediate action, pointing out that the enemy force had a 40-mile lead on them. Boone felt compelled to go along. On the morning of August 19, the Kentuckians reached the Licking River, near a spring and salt lick known as the Lower Blue Licks (today within Nicholas County). A few Indian scouts were seen watching them from across the river. Behind the scouts was a hill around which the river looped. Todd called a council and asked Daniel Boone, the most experienced woodsman, what he thought. Boone said he had grown increasingly suspicious because of the obvious trail the Indians left. He felt the Indians were trying to lead them into an ambush. Hugh McGary, known as both a fierce Indian fighter and an unstable hothead, urged immediate attack. When no one listened, he mounted his horse and rode across the ford, calling out, “Them that ain’t cowards, follow me.” The men immediately followed McGary, as did the officers, who hoped to restore order. Boone remarked, “We are all slaughtered men,” and crossed the river.
Most of the men dismounted and formed a line of battle several rows deep. They advanced up the hill, Todd and McGary in the center, Trigg on the right, Boone on the left. As Boone had suspected, Caldwell’s force was waiting on the other side, concealed in ravines. When the Kentuckians reached the summit, the Indians opened fire at close range with devastating accuracy. After only five minutes, the center and right of the Kentuckians’ line fell back. Only Boone’s men on the left managed to push forward. Todd and Trigg, easy targets on horseback, were shot dead.The Kentuckians began to flee down the hill, fighting hand-to-hand with Indians who had flanked them. McGary rode up to Boone’s company and told him everyone was retreating and that Boone was now surrounded. Boone ordered his men to retreat. He grabbed a riderless horse and ordered his 23-year-old son, Israel Boone, to mount it. Israel suddenly fell to the ground, shot through the neck. Boone realized his son was dead, mounted the horse and joined in the retreat. Caldwell had lost seven killed and ten wounded during the ambush.
After the Revolutionary War ended, Boone resettled in Limestone (later renamed Maysville, Kentucky), then a booming Ohio River port. He kept a tavern and worked as a surveyor, horse trader, and land speculator. As settlers poured into Kentucky, the border war with American Indians north of the Ohio River resumed. In September 1786, Boone took part in a military expedition into the Ohio Country led by Benjamin Logan. Returning to Limestone, Boone housed and fed Shawnees who were captured during the raid, and helped to negotiate a truce and prisoner exchange. Although the war would not end until the American victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers eight years later, the 1786 expedition was the last time Boone saw military action. Boone was initially prosperous in Limestone, owning seven slaves. A leader, he served as militia colonel, sheriff, and county coroner. In 1787, he was again elected to the Virginia state assembly, this time from Bourbon County. But land speculation caused him financial troubles and mostly failed for him. 1789 Boone moved upriver to Point Pleasant, Virginia (now West Virginia). There he operated a trading post and occasionally worked as a surveyor’s assistant. That same year, when Virginia created Kanawha County, Boone became the 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, so he closed his store and returned to hunting and trapping, though he was often hampered by rheumatism. In 1795, Boone and his wife moved back to Kentucky, on land owned by their son Daniel Morgan Boone in what became Nicholas County. 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 contract was awarded to someone else.
In 1799, he moved his extended family to what is now St. Charles County, Missouri, but was then part of Spanish Louisiana. The Spanish governor appointed Boone “syndic” (judge and jury) and commandant (military leader) of the Femme Osage district until 1804, when Missouri became part of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase. He was appointed captain of the local militia. Because Boone’s land grants from the Spanish government had been largely based on oral agreements, he 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.
Although he had said he would never return to Kentucky, in 1810 it seems he visited his brother, Squire Boone, paid off some creditors that had heard of his land grant in Missouri and met James John Audubon who later painted his portrait from his memory of that meeting.
He continued to hunt and trap as much as his health and energy levels permitted, intruding upon the territory of the Osage tribe, who once captured him and confiscated his furs. In 1810, at the age of 76, he went with a group on a six-month hunt up the Missouri River, reportedly as far as the Yellowstone River, a round trip of more than 2,000 miles.
Rebecca Bryan Boone died 3/18/1813 in Femme Osage, St Charles, MO. They were living with their son, Nathan Boone, and near their daughter, Jemima Boone Callaway.
He began one of his final trapping expeditions in 1815, in the company of a Shawnee and Derry Coburn, a slave who was frequently with Boone in his final years. They reached Fort Osage in 1816.
Knowing he was near death he asked his daughter, son and daughter-in-law to prepare him. They brushed his near full set of teeth, shaved him and cut his hair. His daughter-in-law, Nathan’s wife, Olive, sang his favorite songs. He died 9/16/1820 in Femme Osage, St Charles, MO. He and his wife were buried together in unmarked graves until 1845 when they were disinterred and moved to a grave in Frankfort, KY. Although some think the remains were not actually Daniel and Rebecca Boone after all and they are still in Missouri.
Boone’s rifle was given the nickname the “Ticklicker” because it was said that he could shoot the tick off of a bear’s nose.
“The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke,” by John Filson, a Pennsylvania schoolteacher turned Kentucky land speculator was published in 1784. The book was written in an effort to lure settlers to Kentucky. He interviewed Daniel Boone and it became very popular while Daniel Boone was alive.
“The Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone, the First Settler of Kentucky” by Timothy Flint and released in 1833 also made him famous after death. His legend and importance in American history cannot be discounted.
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