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Frontiersman Daniel Boone was born in 1734 to Quaker parents living in Pennsylvania. The family moved first to Virginia and later to North Carolina where Squire Boone, his father, was granted 640 acres from Lord Granville on Bear Creek. Squire Boone then became involved in establishing the new county, serving as justice of the peace in Rowan County in 1753. Young Daniel moved with his parents and learned at an early age how to find his way in the frontier, often supporting his family through hunting expeditions. At the age of twenty-one, Boone participated in the French and Indian War and later helped to defend western North Carolina colonists against Indian attacks. Daniel Boone purchased his father’s property in 1759 and, having recently married, made the area his home for his new family.
Traveling extensively throughout the frontier of western North Carolina into what is now Tennessee and Kentucky, Boone sought to promote settlement in the region and worked to encourage migration into the areas, eventually moving his family to a frontier station in Kentucky called Boonesborough after working with other explorers to cut a path through to the area, called the Wilderness Road, for future settlers. Boone participated in the Revolutionary War by protecting the region from Indian attacks encouraged by the British and worked to negotiate treaties with the natives after the war ended. In the 1780’s Boone represented Kentucky interests in the Virginia legislature but, after some failures to establish his landholdings in Boonesborough, he moved his family to western Virginia around Charleston, again serving in the Virginia legislature. In 1799 Boone moved again, this time to settle in the Spanish territory of Louisiana, now part of Missouri, where he lived until his death in 1820.
Although the Boone family moved often as they helped to expand the American frontier, Daniel Boone apparently called the western section of North Carolina home longer than any other place while he perfected his skills as a frontiersman, surveyor, and politician. Local tradition holds that his home on the property granted first to his father fell into disrepair and by 1840 a new owner of the property had torn down the remaining portions of the building and re-used some of the lumber in a new home, leaving only stones from the chimney and foundation.
References:
James W. Wall, History of Davie County in the Forks of the Yadkin (1969)
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, I, 174-175—sketch of Daniel Boone by Ina Van Noppen and sketch of Squire Boone by James W. Wall
Ansley Wegner, History for All the People: 100 Years of Public History in North Carolina (2003)
Daniel Boone, The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone, formerly a Hunter; containing Narratives of the Wars of Kentucky (1784) online edition: http://earlyamerica.com/lives/boone/
Daniel Boone Wilderness Trail: http://www.danielboonetrail.com/
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