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20 Fascinating Facts About Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the Thirteen Colonies. In 1775, Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky, in the face of resistance from American Indians, for whom the area was a traditional hunting ground. 

Boone founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. By the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people had entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone. However, Boone’s story is not without its complexities. His interactions with Native Americans, while often marked by mutual respect and understanding, were also intertwined with the harsh realities of frontier conflict. Read more fascinating facts about Daniel Boone.

1. Boone served as a militia officer during the Revolutionary War 

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the military conflict of the American Revolution in which American Patriot forces under George Washington’s command defeated the British, resulting in the Treaty of Paris 1783 recognizing the independence and sovereignty of the United States. 

Boone was taken in by Shawnees in 1778 and adopted into the tribe, but he resigned and continued to help protect the Kentucky settlements. He also left due to the Shawnee Indians torturing and killing one of his sons. He was elected to the first of his three terms in the Virginia General Assembly during the war and fought in the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782, one of the last battles of the American Revolution.

2. Boone’s adventures made him popular in America and Europe

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Boone remains an iconic, if imperfectly remembered, figure in American history. He was a legend in his lifetime, especially after an account of his adventures was published in 1784, making him famous in America and Europe. 

After his death, Boone became the subject of many heroic tall tales and works of fiction. His adventures real and legendary helped create the archetypal frontier hero of American folklore. In American popular culture, Boone is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen.

3. Boone received little formal education

Since Boone preferred to spend his time hunting, apparently with his parents’ blessing. According to a family tradition, when a schoolteacher expressed concern over Boone’s education, Boone’s father said, “Let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting.”

Boone was tutored by family members, though his spelling remained unorthodox. Boone regularly took reading material with him on his hunting expeditions, the Bible and Gulliver’s Travels were favorites. He was often the only literate person in groups of frontiersmen, and would sometimes entertain his hunting companions by reading to them around the campfire.

4. Boone spent his early years in Pennsylvania, often interacting with American Indians

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Boone learned to hunt from local settlers and Indians; by the age of fifteen, he had a reputation as one of the region’s best hunters. Many stories about Boone emphasize his hunting skills. In one tale, the young Boone 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 panther through the heart just as it leapt at him. The story may be a folktale, one of many that became part of Boone’s popular image.

5. Boone married Rebecca Bryan and they had ten children together

Rebecca was an American pioneer and the wife of famed frontiersman Daniel Boone. She began her life in the Colony of Virginia, and at the age of ten moved with her grandparents and extended family to the wilderness of the Province of North Carolina. 

It was there that she met her future husband, Daniel Boone. Rebecca Boone raised ten of her children and eight nephews and nieces that she and Daniel had adopted. Since Daniel was away for extended hunting and exploration trips, sometimes for several years at a time, Boone generally raised and protected their eighteen children by herself. 

6. Boone served as a blacksmith in the colonial militia during the French and Indian War

The French and Indian War that happened between 1754 and 1763 broke out between the French and the British, along with their respective Indian allies, and Boone joined a North Carolina militia company as a teamster and blacksmith.

In 1755, his unit accompanied General Edward Braddock’s attempt to drive the French out of the Ohio Country, which ended in disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela. Boone, in the rear with the wagons, took no part in the battle and fled with the retreating soldiers.

7. Boone gained a reputation for his ability to survive in the wilderness

Boone supported his growing family in these years as a market hunter and trapper, collecting pelts for the fur trade. Almost every autumn, despite the unrest on the frontier, he would go on long hunts, extended expeditions into the wilderness lasting weeks or months. 

Boone went alone or with a small group of men, accumulating hundreds of deer skins in the autumn, and trapping beaver and otter over the winter. When the long hunters returned in the spring, they sold their take to commercial fur traders. On their journeys, frontiersmen often carved messages on trees or wrote their names on cave walls, and Boone’s name or initials have been found in many places.

8. After his father died in 1765, Boone travelled with a group of men to Florida

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In the mid-1760s, Boone began to look for a new place to settle. The population was growing in the Yadkin Valley, which reduced the amount of game available for hunting. He had difficulty making ends meet, and he was often taken to court for nonpayment of debts. He sold what land he owned to pay off creditors. 

After his father died in 1765, Boone travelled 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, he purchased land in Pensacola, but Rebecca refused to move so far away from friends and family. The Boones instead moved to a more remote area of the Yadkin Valley, and he began to hunt westward into the Blue Ridge Mountains.

9. Boone blazed the Wilderness Road

Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap in 1775. This road made it possible for settlers to travel more easily between Kentucky and the eastern colonies.

The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national-era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other more northern route is sometimes called the Cumberland Road because it started in Fort Cumberland in Maryland.

10. Boone founded the settlement of Boonesborough in Kentucky in 1775

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Boone founded Boonesborough along the Kentucky River; other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were also established at this time. Despite occasional Indian attacks, Boone brought his family and other settlers to Boonesborough in 1775.

By late spring of 1776, Boone and his family were among the fewer than 200 colonists who remained, primarily at the fortified settlements of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Logan’s Station.

11. Boone fought in the Battle of Blue Licks

The Battle of Blue Licks fought on August 19, 1782, was one of the last battles of the American Revolutionary War. The battle occurred ten months after Lord Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, which had effectively ended the war in the east. On a hill next to the Licking River in what is now Robertson County, Kentucky, a force of about 50 Loyalists along with 300 indigenous warriors ambushed and routed 182 Kentucky militiamen, who were partially led by Daniel Boone.

This marked a disastrous defeat for the Kentuckians in which Boone’s son Israel was killed. In November 1782, Boone took part in another Clark-led expedition into Ohio, the last major campaign of the war.

12. While in  Boonesborough, Boone’s daughter Jemima was captured by Native Americans

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On July 14, 1776, Boone’s daughter Jemima and two other girls were captured outside Boonesborough by an Indian war party, who carried the girls north toward the Shawnee towns in the Ohio county. 

Boone and a group of men from Boonesborough set out in pursuit, finally catching up with them two days later. Boone and his men ambushed the Indians, rescuing the girls and driving off their captors. The incident became one of the most celebrated events of Boone’s life.

13. Boone faced many dangers from Native American tribes in the region, particularly the Shawnee and Cherokee

Boone and his men were taken to Blackfish’s town of Chillicothe. As was their custom, the Shawnee adopted some of the prisoners to replace fallen warriors. Boone was adopted into a Shawnee family at Chillicothe, perhaps into Blackfish’s family, and given the name Sheltowee. In March 1778, the Shawnee took the unadopted prisoners to Governor Hamilton in Detroit. Blackfish brought Boone along, though he refused Hamilton’s offers to release Boone to the British. Hamilton gave Boone gifts, attempting to win his loyalty, while Boone continued to pretend that he intended to surrender Boonesborough.

Boone returned with Blackfish to Chillicothe. On June 16, 1778, when he learned Blackfish was about to return to Boonesborough with a large force, Boone eluded his captors and raced home, covering the 160 miles to Boonesborough in five days on horseback and, after his horse gave out, on foot. Biographer Robert Morgan calls Boone’s escape and return one of the great legends of frontier history.

14. Boone was known for his famous coonskin cap, which became an iconic symbol of the American frontier

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In the 20th century, Boone was featured in numerous comic strips, radio programs, novels, and films, such as the 1936 film Daniel Boone. Boone was the subject of a TV series that ran from 1964 to 1970. In the theme song for the series, Boone was described as a big man in a coonskin cap.

A coonskin cap is a hat fashioned from the skin and fur of a raccoon. The original coonskin cap consisted of the entire skin of the raccoon including its head and tail. Beginning as traditional Native American headgear, coonskin caps became associated with North American frontiersmen of the 18th and 19th centuries and were highly popular among boys in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia in the 1950s.

15. In his later years, Boone faced financial difficulties and legal disputes over land claims

Boone returned to North Carolina to take his family back to Kentucky. In the autumn of 1779, a large party of emigrants came with him, including the family of Captain Abraham Lincoln, grandfather of the future president. 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 travelled 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.

16. After the Revolutionary War ended, Boone resettled in Limestone 

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Limestone was 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 County led by Benjamin Logan. Boone was initially prosperous in Limestone, owning seven slaves, a relatively large number for Kentucky at the time. 

17. In 1787, Boone was elected to the Virginia state assembly

This time, he was elected from Bourbon County. He began to have financial troubles after engaging in land speculation, buying and selling claims to tens of thousands of acres. These ventures ultimately failed because of the chaotic nature of land speculation in frontier Kentucky and Boone’s poor business instincts. Frustrated with the legal hassles that went with land speculation, in 1789 Boone moved upriver to Point Pleasant, 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.

18. Boone spent his final years in Missouri

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In 1799, he moved his extended family to what is now St. Charles County, Missouri, but was then part of Spanish Louisiana. Boone served as syndic and commandant 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 much too old for militia duty. Although Boone reportedly vowed never to return to Kentucky after moving to Missouri, stories were told of him making one last visit to Kentucky to pay off his creditors.

19. Boone made one of his final trapping expeditions in 1815

Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren. 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. 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, where an officer wrote, “We have been honoured by a visit from Col. Boone. He has taken part in all the wars of America, from Braddock’s war to the present hour, but he prefers the woods, where you see him in the dress of the roughest, poorest hunter.

20. Boone was immortalized in John Filson’s book The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon

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First published in 1784, Filson’s book was primarily intended to popularize Kentucky to immigrants. It was translated into French and German and made Boone famous in America and Europe. 

Based on interviews with Boone, Filson’s book contained a mostly factual account of Boone’s adventures from the exploration of Kentucky through the American Revolution, although many have doubted if the florid, philosophical dialogue attributed to Boone was authentic. Often reprinted, Filson’s book established Boone as one of the first popular heroes of the United States.

Boone’s legacy extends far beyond his physical explorations. He became a symbol of the American frontier spirit, embodying the ideals of self-reliance, perseverance, and the unyielding pursuit of dreams. His adventures captured the imaginations of generations, inspiring countless individuals to venture into the unknown and forge their paths.