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Winston-Salem Sentinel Boone ClippingsThursday Af+ernoon • July 28, 1983 First of two parts Daniel Boone: The Tar Heel Years By TOM SIEG Sentinel Staff RepaMer Cabin of Daniel and Rebecca Boone * m't, Ore DAVIE COUNTY O�tC6 vt 6 Pd C ~PP c� Squire Boon and Daniel Boone Squire Boone John B e* Joppa yDnr,� Cemetery 9 ao CP MoCksville ({ F J Jonathan Boone t Sentinel Map by Jim Stanley Mop shows Boone family land holdings in Davie Counfy and fhe site of Daniel and Rebecca Boone's cabin. DAVIE CO. PUBLIC LIBRARv MOCKSVILLE,, NC In Search of Daniel He's Shedding Light on Boone Lore MOCKSVILLE — Along the Yadkin Riv- er and its feeder creeks in this part of Davie County, a visitor can walk through some of the fields and forests where Daniel Boone honed the hunting skills that would make him a legend. Most of the three Boone sites near here are private property and would require the owners' permission for an extensive visit. But this, along and off what is now Inter- state 40, is where Boone grew from a teen- ager to a mature young man of about 31. It is where he' married Rebecca Bryan and fathered sons James and Israel, both of whom would later be killed by Indians. It is also where he incurred the first of the debts and debtor's warrants that would make him, at least technically, a wanted man for much of his life. In recent years, through the efforts of county historian James W. Wall and Flos- sie Martin of the Davie County Library, much has become known — or at least strongly believed — about the Boones of Davie. Essential parts of the knowledge came after a stroke of luck five years ago, when Howell Boone retired from his job as an industrial filmmaker in New York City and moved here to pursue his lifelong in- terest in family history. Howell Boone had long been curious about the area. "In the late 1930s," he said, "we were visiting in Chicago — my father and moth- er and brother and I — and we decided to go back (to New York) by way of the site of Boonesborough (Ky.) . We came on through the Cumberland Gap, and we came through Mocksville because my dad had heard that the early Boones were buried there. "Both my brother and I were teenagers then. I was aware that there was a Boone connection in what is now Davie County." The family was already interested in establishing the existence of John Boone, Howell Boone's "five times great-grandfa- ther." John Boone, a cousin of Daniel, had been confused in story -telling and in print with Daniel's brother Jonathan, and the real John had been "lost." The visiting Boone family knew that Squire and Sarah Boone, Daniel's parents, See Descendant, Page 13 DAVIE CO. PUBLIC LIBRARK MOCKS.VILLE, NG Descendant Shedding Light on Boone Lore,. Continued. from Page 1 were buried in Joppa Cemetery here. "We stopped at a gas station," said Howell Boone, "and nobody knew where Joppa Cemetery was. As my dad was talking tothese people, some old fellow got up from a bench and said, 'Let me tell you how to get mere.' "So we did get to Joppa Ceme- tery, and Squire and Sarah Boone's tombstones were there in a con- crete encasement ...- My. father was really thrilled, but thought there should be. more Boone tomb- stones. We didn't find any." Through the years, Howell Boone's father insisted that he was descended from John Boone, the cousin — not the brother — ofDan- iel, but there was no proof. When Howell Boone decided to pass up retirement in a Florida condomini- um and, come here instead, confir- 'matiomofthe line of descent was a. Priority item on his research agen- da. He has traced about 100 mem- bers of the Squire and John Boone families, but it was in Raleigh, in the state archives, that he made perhaps his most thrilling find. "I discovered a 1773 (Lord) Gran- ville grant to John Boone, with his signature on it," said Boone. "It was proof of John Boone's rexistence. I then found some land warrants ty- ing him to this property." Today, Howell Boone and his thousands of books and documents reside in a white -frame cottage along the .original Boone Farm Road, on the original John Boone farm. His curiosity has never waned, and he continues to work the Boone puzzle, fitting bits of his own work and even family lore into the findings of others such as Ly- man C. Draper, whose exhaustive 19th -century research was done with benefit of conversations with Nathan Boone, Daniel's youngest son. In discussing Daniel, Howell Boone blends theory — but well founded and thought-out theory — with established' fact. And, as do many history and genealogy, buffs, he often mixes the present and past. tenses. Howell Boone does not believe that Daniel's father Squire (his giv- en name, not a title) was the first of the Burnes to come to the area. Part of his reasoning is based an the fact that Jonathan and Mary - Carter Boone's first child was born in Anson County about 1751. With the courtship and marriage pat- terns that existed in those days, Howell Boone believes, that would have placed Jonathan there before 1750. "I believe that Jonathan and per- haps Daniel's brother Israel came to what was Anson and soon to become Rowan (and later Davie) in 1746-7-8, along in there," said Boone."I feel that they persuaded their dad. to move down here be- cause the land had the same water as they had in'Pennsylvania. It had the same woods — lots of woods. And there was a feeling then that you didn't need barns for the cows because thewinter months were warmer." In any case, the Squire Boone property in Exeter Township, Berks County, Pa., was sold in 1750. The entire family — including John and possibly some other cousins or nephews — left in May of 1750, when Daniel was 1542 years old. Howell Boone believes that Dan- iel was especially close to his moth- er, perhaps already the "favorite child," and that he had begun devel- oping his marksmanship in Penn- sylvania with a makeshift spear. "Daniel, as a youth of 8 or 10 years of age,herds cows about eight to a dozen miles from their home," said Boone. "They would take the cows (to that property) in the spring and bring them back in the fall. Daniel and his mother slept in a lean-to in the pasture and looked after the cows together. They were very close, I believe ... "'As a small boy; Daniel of course had one of those large switches that you use for cows... He became skilled throwing that switch, killing an occasional rabbit ... He used it as a spear. He was a born hunter. He had the eye ... It is thought that his mother was instrumental in get- ting him a rifle. Very early, he be- comes the best marksman of all the Boones. When he leaves at 151h, he has had a gun for four and a half years." Boone also believes thefamily made the move in two stages. "Some members of the Boone family wintered in the Winchester, Va., area," he said. "I feel Squire and his older boys came on horse. back ahead of the family and in- spected the property they were lat- er to get a land grant for." In September of 1750,a land war- rant — an agreement to buy and letter of instruction for property to be surveyed — was issued to Squire Boone. The warrant had to betaken to Wilmington and sent by ship to England for approval by the Earl of Granville and then he returned, so it was to be 1753 before Squire re- ceived the approved. grant, In the meantime, Howell Boone believes, with the land not yet sur- veyed, Squire and the others re- turned to Virginia and wintered with the rest of the family. "I feel that they. brought their families in the spring of 1751 and camped on the land they had agreed to purchase," said Boone. "I feel that they started building log cabins, which were usable struc. tures but ... not permanent ... "So Daniel arrives in the Forks of the Yadkin, a youth with great skill as a hunter. The property that he lived on with HIS mother and father, I feel, is the Bear Creek property (which Daniel later acquired from his father), and not the Dutchman's Creek property. (The John Boone farm is on Hunting Creek.) "The familytradition is that when they first came to Bear Creek, they killed over 100 bears that first season. And Daniel is de- scribed in family tradition as hav- ing killed as many as 30 deer a day." Daniel is said to have been ex- cused from some of the book -learn. ing that other family members had to undertake, gaining a special sta- tus because of his special skills. But .Sarahand Squire were very much English and very much Quakers; members of their family had to learn not only to speak the lan- guage well, but to read and write. None of them spoke in the frontier manner of movies and television — or looked or dressed anything like. Fess Parker. From the beginning, the hunting pursued by Daniel entailed a great deal of waste; people in the sparse- ly settled area could not consume all those deer and bear and the buffalo, or bison, that still roamed the area and werealso targets of Boone's rifle. But not everything went to waste: ` "I think the bearskin was used for rugs," said Boone. "More impor- tant than the skin, they used the bear grease in sort of an open dish for light. They also used bear grease to cook. "The early settlers here pre- ferred not to eat their cattle and hogs, but to think of them as cur- rency and live off the wildlife. This was a paradise for a youth like Daniel Boone." - (In tomorrow's Sentinel: Boone's own success as a hunter makes it necessary for him and his family to move on.) Well, Who Is That in Boone's Who is buried in Daniel Boone's grave in Frankfort, Ky.? Whoever he is, his initials may not be D. B. For years, people in Defiance, Mo. — where Boone last lived — have been snickering and telling tourists that when Kentucky's gravedig- gers came to fetch Daniel and Rebecca Boone, they dug up a slave instead of Daniel. Some Missouri historians have believed the story. Now a forensic anthropologist, Kentucky's own Dr. David Wolf, says the story could well be true. Wolf recently studied a plaster cast made of Boone's skull before his reburial on Sept. 13, 1845. The findings weren't absolutely conclusive, but *The forehead doesn't slope as much as the usual male Caucasian skull. *"The general shape of the brow ridges is more black than white." • "The occipital (rear) bone is more pro- nounced ... which is a black feature." • An indentation of the frontal bone "tends to be more of a black feature than a white." • And besides, the body buried in the grave is a large one that probably belonged to "somebody you wouldn't want to meet alone in an alley." Boone stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall. The new findings, reported last month, delight Howell Boone. After all, they fit in with the lore of his branch of the family, which lived in New York City. "What my daddy told my brother and me as a boy," said Boone, "was that Rebecca died at her daughter Jemima's house while she was making J am over a cauldron after picking berries... She was buried in a Bryan family cemetery ... out- side Marthasville, Mo. "Sometime shortly after she died, her lifelong black slave died. He was buried at her side, where he had been serving his entire life. When Daniel was buried (seven years later), he was buried, according to his wishes, at her feet." Howell Boone thinks the mixup — if there was one — was intentional on the part of a Boone relative. Daniel had returned to Kentucky rather late in life (he lived to be 86 years old) and repaid Grave? many very old debts. He came back to Missouri saying he had only 50 cents left to his name and vowing never to return to Kentucky. "When the state of Kentucky petitioned the state of Missouri to be allowed to move Daniel and Rebecca Boone," said Howell Boone, "the state of Missouri consented. One of our maiden - aunt cousins several times removed was in- volved. She told them, 'There's Rebecca."' She also told them, "There's Daniel." But this time she lied. She pointed to the grave of the slave, which was located where a person might expect a woman's husband to be buried. There was a question at the time why Daniel's coffin showed much more deterioration than Re- becca's, since he died seven years after she did. (The slave died just after she did, and his coffin was of far lesser quality than hers.) Without ever figuring out the puzzle, the Ken- tucky gravediggers went off with the two coffins. "And that," said Howell Boone, "is what they have buried in Kentucky." — TOM SIEC Second of two parts . U By TOM SIEG v Z Sentinel Photo by Tom Si" HOWELL SOONE. "I'm living on land that my five -times great-grandfather owned ... before the American Revolution." He Was a Hunter ter in a Derby MOCKSVILLE — In the 1750s and '60s, when Daniel Boone lived in what is now Davie County, he and others in his family relied on his deer hides as their only real currency. Boone took the hides to Salisbury to trade them for shot and powder — and for cash, which was very scarce. The hides were made into buckskin trou- sers. "There was a tradition of using leather trousers in Europe and Eng- land;" said Howell Boone, a descen. dant of Daniel Boone's cousin John:'The trousers were highly prized and most men wore them if they could afford them, and Daniel became one of the -major suppliers." "It's my feeling that Daniel was a pretty good catch for Rebecca Bry- an.,. Rebecca was the daughter of Jo- seph and Alice (Aylee) Linville Bryan and thus became a member of three of the families that came South to popu- late the area: the Linvilles, the Bryans and the Boones. (One of the Linvilles later lent his name to the famed sce- nic waterfall in the Blue Ridge.) According to family legend, when Daniel was courting Rebecca, the cus- tom was for the man to cast a slain deer on the threshold of the home of the woman whose hand he was seek- ing and then dress out the deer. When Daniel did this, Rebecca is said to have commented that he had been sloppy in preparing the deer. Later, when Rebecca served the traditional meal she had cooked from the deer meat, Daniel picked up a wooden bowl and said something like "This, too, is not as clean as it might be." At any rate, the two were married Aug. 14, 1756, most likely in Joseph and Aylee Bryan's cabin. Squire Boone, who was a justice of the peace, conducted the Quaker -style ceremo- ny, with the bride and groom facing the guests. All of Daniel Boone's brothers and sisters — Sarah, Israel, Jonathan, Samuel, Elizabeth, Mary, George, Ed- ward, Squire Jr. and Hannah — also married, and most of them reared their children in the area, swelling the See The Real Daniel, Page 9 C.as The Rea/ Daniel.*CooW—s_irinNo Continued from Page 1 Boone population. Daniel and Rebecca's first two chil- dren also were born here, James in 1757 and Israel in 1759. Daniel and his first-born son, James, were said to have been very close. Daniel would take him hunting and it was not unusual, in the cold, misty light of dawn, to find the father warming the son by wrapping his coat around them both as they waited for their game along a deer trail. But by this time, Daniel had begun to fall on somewhat harder times. "There came a day," said Howell Boone, "when there weren't as many deer and bear. This was a year or two after Daniel and Rebecca married. He. then becomes what they call a long hunter ... He is hunting on the Upper Yadkin, in Wilkes County. He has to go farther and farther ... The deer, the buffalo, the bears have all been killed here." Daniel could have joined the rest of the Boones, who did quite well in farming, but that wouldn't do. "He was a hunter with a capital H;' said Boone. "He could plant crops. He helped with that. But he was a hunter . Now his hunting trips take longer, he needs more equipment ... "He gets to Nesbitt's Store in Salis- bury (a town that Jonathan helped survey and lay out) and instead of a large number of hides, he has maybe a half or a third ... He gets less for the hides and winds up having to borrow against his future hunting." This was the beginning of Boone's indebtedness, and although most of his debts were small, some were bother- some. Years later, in 1771, one Eben- ezer Frost, who was owed 14 pounds five shillings, was among those issuing warrants for Daniel Boone. The warrant said in part, "We therefore command that you attach the estate of said Daniel Boone if found to be in your bailiwick (and) compel the said Daniel Boone to ap- pear and answer the above com- plaint." It was too late. Boone had acquired the 640 -acre Bear Creek tract from his father on Oct. 12, 1759, but he had sold it to Aaron Vancleave on Feb. 21, 1764, just before another attempt to collect a debt — this one, at 50 pounds, one of Daniel's largest. Besides, by the time of the 1771 debt -collection effort, Dan- iel had moved his family to Wilkes County. The move undoubtedly was caused by the shortage of game — a shortage created mostly by Daniel himself — but it may also have been motivated at least partly by the lure of unincor- porated territory, where debts were not normally collected, and where the sheriff couldn't come by and conscript a resident for tasks ranging from road -building to militia duty. (Daniel had helped build a road through the Brushy Mountains, and he was proud of the "instinct" he possessed for put- ting roads just where they should go, but he didn't relish such interruptions of his life's work.) Before the move to Wilkes County, Daniel had built a hunting cabin there on land that is now under the waters of Kerr Scott Lake, but his home had continued to be in Davie. He had also moved his family, along with other Boones, to Culpeper, Va., when the French and Indian war broke out. Davie was the outer edge, the absolute frontier of the white man, and most families stayed away from late 1759 until 1762. Before going to Virginia, Daniel and Rebecca had spent some time in a cabin on the Squire Boone property, where they went after the marriage ceremony. "They stayed there for what is best described as 'a while,"' said Boone. "They then moved to an empty Bryan family cabin on Sugar Tree (now Sugar) Creek in the Bryan settlement.' After the return to North Carolina, said Howell Boone, "I feel they ... didn't so much live as visit with the Bryan group ... Daniel is hunting in Wilkes County, and he brings the fam- ily up as soon as he can." "As soon as he can" wasn'tparticu- larly soon — 1765 or 1766 — and the "visit" apparently became a long one. Finally, though, Daniel brought Re- becca and their four children — Su- sannah and Jemima had been born in Culpeper in 1760 and 1762 — to Beaver Creek, the site of the second Boone cabin in Wilkes County. They were squatters, living on land they didn't own, but there was no law around to tell them they couldn't stay. There, and in still another cabin at Stony Creek, near the town of Ferguson, four more Boone children were born: Le- vinia in 1766, Rebecca in 1768, Daniel Morgan in 1769 and Jesse Bryan in 1773. There, too, Boone hunted prolifical- ly. And there, at Stony Creek, he began to dream his dream of the new fron- tier in Kentucky. In 1773, Daniel, ever the charismat- ic man who inspired trust because he was known as a man who always did his best to keep his word, brought several families together and per- suaded them to make the trip. The effort, however, was abortive — and tragic. The adults went ahead on the trail, with their boys bringing the domestic animals along two or three miles be- hind. One night, as the boys camped around a fire, they were discovered by a group of Shawnee Indians armed with muskets. "They sneaked up and fired into the group of boys, wounding James Boone severely in the hip," said Howe Boone. "A Russell boy also was se(.,o verely wounded. James was captured'N and tortured. His nails were ripped out. His testicles most likely were cut'-' . He was a bloody mess (when his,' - father found him). His skin was just!. hanging in ribbons from his body." Both the wounded boys died. Daniel; - had lost the first-born son to whom hej c::, had been so close, but oddly it was he and his brother Squire Jr. who wanted to go on. The experience was too much for the others, however, and the expe- is dition was abandoned. The Boones set up housekeeping in Castle's Woods (now Castlewood), in the western cor- ner of Virginia northwest of where North Carolina's present Ashe County butts up against Virginia and Tennes- see. In Virginia, another child, Wil- liam, was born in 1775 and died in infancy. During the two years at Castle's Woods, Daniel continued his hunting and roving. He also blazed the Wilder- ness Road through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky — an achievement that, in later life, he would regard as perhaps his greatest. Finally, in 1775, the family made its successful trip to Kentucky, where Boonesborough was founded — and where Nathan was born March 2,1781, and Israel died Aug. 19, 1782, in the Battle of Blue Licks, Ky. There would be many years in Kentucky and then a move to Defiance, Mo., where Rebec- ca died in 1813 and Daniel in 1820, at age 86. Daniel returned to North Carolina at least occasionally after leaving, but his branch of the family never lived here again. There were others, howev- er. As Howell Boone put it, "John (his great -great -great -great -great-grand- father), along with George, Edward, Squire Jr., Samuel, Jonathan ... are the Boones no one has ever heard of." Howell Boone, who retired here five years ago to pursue his lifelong inter- est in family history, has been busy looking for and making discoveries about the "unknown" Boones. He found that John — and perhaps his wife, who was also named Rebecca Bryan Boone — was buried at Joppa Cemetery beside Squire and Sarah Boone. He also believes that Daniel's broth- er Israel, who died of consumption at age 30, lies in the graveyard. Unfortu- The SENTINEL, Winston-Salem, N. C.,• Friday, July 29, 1983—Pa9e 9 c.v ii V O Cti nately, burials in those days often were without benefit of marker, or with a simple wooden cross, and it has been impossible to make positive identification of other graves. Howell Boone has traced 100 Boones, most of whom had left the area by the early 1800s, but one obsta- cle to his progress has been an appar- ent lack of interest in history by area residents. If the Moravian, with their meticulous record-keeping had set- tled here, his problems probably would be small. But even the Boone - related cabins, some of which sur- vived into the 20th century, were torn down when they got in the way of progress — one of them as late as 1948. Still, Boone is making his discover- ies and loving what he's doing and where he's living. "I'm living on land that my five -times great-grandfather owned, on a. Granville grant, before the American Revolution," he said with a look of wonderment on his round, somehow British -looking face. He is also making plans, along with James Wall, for a Davie County obser- vance of Daniel Boone's 250th birth- day on Oct. 22 — a date that is a matter of some debate. Daniel de- clined to observe the then -new Grego- rian calendar when it was introduced in 1852. Under that calendar, his actu- al birth date would have become Nov. 2, but he insisted on observing Oct. 22 even after the change. The celebration will be low-key, with most details yet to be announced. Boone will donate biographies of his famous relative to area libraries — he found to his chagrin that they had none — and there may be a contest for school children to build replicas of the Daniel Boone cabin. (Dimensions and a description were recorded and are available.) There will be some sort of ceremo- ny, but the only thing that is definite about it is that it will not take place in Boone's Cave in nearby Davidson County. ("I do not believe that any Boone ever lived in Boone's Cave, or around there.") And if there is a turkey shoot, as is hoped — well, Howell Boone also has ideas about the prizes to be offered. "God forbid that they be coonskin caps," he said. "Do you know that Daniel never wore them and regarded them as useless? ... He wore a derby - type hat, when he wore anything at all on his head." He also wore a wool greatcoat and leather pants with an English cut and That's one problem with studying history. It ruins a lot of good legends.