Explorers, Pioneers, and Frontiersmen
Daniel Boone
1734-1820

Daniel Boone was born near Reading, Pennsylvania to Quaker parents of English descent. Around 1750, the family moved to the Yadkin Valley in present-day North Carolina. In the new environment, Boone rapidly developed his skills as a hunter and trapper.

During the French and Indian War, Boone served in Braddock’s disastrous campaign against Fort Duquesne. Following the war, Boone became interested in settling in Florida, but was unable to persuade his wife to make the move.

Beginning in 1769, Boone began a two-year exploration of eastern Kentucky. His party crossed through the Cumberland Gap and proceeded as far as the Ohio River falls (present day Louisville). In 1773, an initial attempt at settlement in the region was thwarted by Native American resistance.

In 1775, Boone was selected as the agent for the Transylvania Company, a group of Carolinian land speculators. His men cleared a path into Kentucky that later was known as the Wilderness Road. A stockade was erected at Boonesborough near the Kentucky River. Boone later brought his family to the new settlement.

During the War for Independence, the small community of Boonesborough was under constant attack from Native American allies of the British. Boone, a captain in the local militia, led the defense. In 1778, he was captured by Shawnee warriors and taken to the British headquarters in Detroit. After four months in captivity, he escaped and returned to protect his home from the continuing assaults. Bogus charges of disloyalty were made against Boone by his rivals; he was quickly acquitted, but his feelings for the settlement had soured and he left for North Carolina.

Boone returned to the Kentucky area (then part of Virginia) in 1779 and founded Boone’s Station near present-day Athens. In 1788, he moved to Point Pleasant (today in West Virginia) where he remained, uncharacteristically, for 10 years. He served several terms in the Virginia legislature, but lost most of his land holdings in a variety of title disputes.

In 1799, a dispirited Boone traveled down the Ohio River by canoe to St. Louis; the Missouri Territory at that time was a Spanish possession. He was granted a large tract of land and became a public official. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 ended his tranquility; ownership of Missouri went to the United States and many land titles were challenged, including Boone’s. For the second time in his life he lost most of his holdings and became deeply indebted. An act of Congress in 1814 restored a portion of his lands.

Boone became a widely known figure through the literary efforts of two disparate writers. Lord Byron, the great English romantic poet, devoted seven stanzas to the frontiersman in his Don Juan (1821). Earlier, John Filson, a land speculator in Kentucky, featured Boone’s exploits in Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (1784), which utilized the hero as a marketing tool for western lands.

Many of Boone’s legendary feats have been called into question by historians, but he made a major contribution through his exploration and settlement of Kentucky.

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