69Daniel Boone married Rebecca Bryan, daughter of Joseph Sr. and Alee Bryan, on 14 August 1756 in Rowan County, North Carolina. Joseph Bryan Sr. was born in 1720, a son of Morgan and Martha (Strode) Bryan. Morgan Bryan was born in Denmark in 1671 and died in Mocksville, Rowan County, North Carolina on 3 April 1763. He is buried in the old Joppa Cemetery where Daniel Boone's parents, Squire and Sarah, are buried. Martha (Strode) Bryan was born about 1678 in Holland and died 29 August 1762 in North Carolina.
It is unfortunate that we don't have much in the way of first-hand information about Rebecca. Women were rarely written about in those days and therefore there are scant mentions of her in old records, letters, etc. Apparently she had dark eyes that made an immediate impression on those who met her, as that is one thing that seems always to be mentioned in reference to her. The Nathan Boone home at Femme Osage, Missouri, has in the bedroom where Daniel passed away, a copy of a drawing that, if authentic, may be, the only "portrait" that was ever done of Rebecca. It is supposed to have been done from a painting by Peale. [This drawing was photographed by me with permission from the Daniel Boone Home and is shown above, photograph 2002] Daniel's portrait was not painted until after Rebecca had died so it is likely that no formal portrait was ever done of her.
William Bryan, an uncle of Rebecca (Bryan) Boone married Daniel Boone's sister, Mary about 1755 in Rowan County where the Boones and Bryans were neighbors. It is believed that it was at their wedding that Daniel and Rebecca first met. Olive Boone, wife of Nathan Boone, the youngest child of Daniel and Rebecca, stated that she had heard them say that the first time they ever saw each other was at a wedding.
They were married in a triple wedding ceremony with two other couples. Daniel's father, Squire Boone, performed the marriage ceremony, as the Justice of the Peace. According to Nathan, the young couple lived for awhile in a house on the property of Squire Boone, before moving to a place of their own.
The two families of Boone and Bryan were very close. Several of the Bryans moved to Kentucky with Daniel Boone's party. Four of Rebecca's uncles, William, Morgan, James, and Joseph Bryan, established Bryan's Station near Lexington, Kentucky. James Bryan moved to Missouri with the Boones. His wife died in North Carolina after the birth of their sixth child and Rebecca and Daniel took his children and raised them in their home. James Bryan never remarried and died in 1807. He was buried in the Femme Osage Valley of Missouri, a short distance from Nathan Boone's big stone house.
One of James's children, raised by Daniel and Rebecca, was David Bryan, born 29 October 1757 in Rowan County, North Carolina. David built a cabin near Teuque Creek at Marthasville, Missouri in present Warren County and is credited with starting the first American settlement within the present limits of Warren County. This Bryan settlement was located very near old Charette on the Missouri River, a Spanish fur trading village. Later David built a double log house on his property which remained standing until about 1870. At that time it was torn down and a new large two-story brick house was built on the property, which is still there today on the still-working farm. Some of the old apple trees on the farm are no doubt products of those planted by David Bryan with seed he brought from Kentucky.
It was on this farm of David Bryan that Daniel and Rebecca Boone were buried. David reserved one-half acre of his farmland on a small knoll overlooking Teuque Creek as a family cemetery. When Rebecca died in 1813, it was probably because of her request, having been very sick for nearly two weeks, that she was buried in the little Bryan family cemetery. She was a first cousin to David but she had raised him and had been a mother to him. Seven years later, in 1820, Daniel Boone was buried beside her at his request. David died about 1835 and his wife, Melinda (Morgan) Bryan died about 1839. They were buried near Daniel and Rebecca in the little cemetery. This cemetery is said to have been the first Protestant Cemetery west of the Mississippi.

another source says b. Exeter Township, Berks Co., Pennsylvania [experts are not in agreement]

Colonel Daniel Boone aka: Daniel Morgan Boone (Sr.)
b. , c. Nov. 2, 1734, Berks County, Pa.; d. , c. Sept. 26, 1820, St. Charles, Mo., U.S. (Encyclopædia Britannica Online)
“I have shown you the family records, which in my father’s own handwriting show his birth to have been Oct. 22, 1734. This date is according to the old calendar, or Old Style, as he and my mother always expressed their disapproval of adopting the New Style calendar.” Nathan Boone16
DIED.-On the 26th ult. [Sep.] at Charette Village [which was on Femme , Osage Creek, in St. Charles County, Mo.], in the ninetieth [actually 85th] year of, his age, the celebrated Col. DANIEL BOONE, discoverer and first, settler of the State of Kentucky.
another source says Died:  26 Sep 1820 Place:  St. Charles Co., Mo At Age 85yrs, 11mos., And 4 Days

- October 22, 1734 Old Style date which he always insisted on using --

I’ve seen this quote in several forms—2 examples:
I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks. - Daniel Boone
or
I can't say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days. - Daniel Boone

More than any other man, Daniel Boone was responsible for the exploration and settlement of Kentucky. His grandfather came from England to America in 1717. His father was a weaver and blacksmith, and he raised livestock in the country near Reading, Pennsylvania. Daniel was born there on November 2, 1734.
If Daniel Boone was destined to become a man of the wild, an explorer of unmapped spaces, his boyhood was the perfect preparation. He came to know the friendly Indians in the forests, and early he was marking the habits of wild things and bringing them down with a crude whittled spear. When he was twelve his father gave him a rifle, and his career as a huntsman began.
When he was fifteen, the family moved to the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina, a trek that took over a year. At nineteen or twenty he left his family home with a military expedition in the French and Indian War. There he met John Finley, a hunter who had seen some of the western wilds, who told him stories that set him dreaming. But Boone was not quite ready to pursue the explorer's life. Back home on his father's farm he began courting a neighbor's daughter, Rebecca Bryan, and soon they were married.
In 1767 Boone traveled into the edge of Kentucky and camped for the winter at Salt Spring near Prestonsburg. But the least explored parts were still farther west, beyond the Cumberlands, and John Finley persuaded him to go on a great adventure.
On May 1, 1769, Boone, Finley, and four other men started out. They passed Cumberland Gap and on the 7th of June, they set up camp at Station Camp creek. It was nearly two years before Boone returned home, and during that time he explored Kentucky as far west as the Falls of the Ohio, where Louisville is now. There was another visit to Kentucky in 1773, and in 1774 he built a cabin at Harrodsburg. On this trip, Boone followed the Kentucky River to its mouth.
Colonel Richard Henderson of the Transylvania Company hired Boone as his agent, and in March 1775, Boone came again to the "Great Meadow" with a party of thirty settlers. They began to clear the Wilderness Road and by April they were establishing their settlement at Boonesborough.
Boone left the Bluegrass in 1788 and moved into what is now West Virginia. Ten years later he again heard the call of unknown country luring him, this time to the Missouri region. As his dugout canoe passed Cincinnati, somebody asked why he was leaving Kentucky. "Too crowded" was his answer. He lived in Missouri the rest of his life, although he twice revisited Kentucky before he died at the age of 85.
He was buried beside his wife in Missouri. A quarter of a century later they were brought back to the Bluegrass and laid to rest in Frankfort's cemetery. There they rest, on a bluff above the river and town, on a "high, far-seeing place" like the ones he always climbed to see the land beyond. . . a monument to the new country in the wilderness which they had helped to explore and settle.
Story by Col. George M. Chinn, Director, Kentucky Historical Society
Note 1: Colonel Daniel Boone spent the winter of 1769-70, in a cave, on the waters of Shawanee, in Mercer county. A tree marked with his name is yet standing near the head of the cave.
Note 2: In 1775, having been engaged as the agent of a Carolina trading company (as mentioned above) to establish a road by which colonists could reach Kentucky and settle there, he built a stockade and fort on the site of Boonesboro. The first group of settlers crossed the Cumberland Gap to Boonesboro by the road established by Boone, later called the "Wilderness Road". During the American Revolution the community suffered repeated attacks, and in 1778 Boone was taken captive by Indian raiders. The settlement, however, was eventually established as a permanent village.
Hollywood-style movies made on the subject:
"Daniel Boone", 1936. George O'Brien. Rating: **1/2
"Daniel Boone, The Trailblazer", 1956, color. Rating: **1/2

" DANIEL BOONE "......................VINTAGE PRINT (1920) OF THE FAMOUS PIONEER...........BOONE, Daniel (1734-1820). At a time when most Americans were content to live along the Atlantic coast, Daniel Boone was one of the restless pioneers who pushed westward through the wilderness. Often accompanied by their families, these men and women explored, cut trails, and sometimes established new communities. Daniel Boone was born near what is now the city of Reading, Pa., on Nov. 2, 1734. He was the sixth of 11 children in a Quaker farming family. Daniel probably had no regular schooling, but he learned about cattle, horses, wagons, blacksmithing, and weaving. An aunt taught him to read and write. On his 12th birthday, when he was already an expert hunter and trapper, his father gave him a new rifle. He spent long days in the woods, learning to shoot and trap and developing great physical strength and agility. When Boone was about 16, his family sold their farm and trekked south. In the Yadkin River valley in North Carolina they staked out a farm and settled down. In 1755 Boone joined Gen. Edward Braddock's expedition that attempted to drive the French from Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh). An ambush by French and Native American forces ended the Braddock expedition, but Boone escaped . Returning home, Boone married his childhood sweetheart, Rebeccah Bryan, who often traveled with him. He visited the Kentucky wilderness in 1767 and returned in 1769 to spend two years hunting and trapping. Once he and a companion were surprised by Indians but escaped while their captors slept. When Indian tribes went to war in Lord Dunmore's War (1774), Boone helped defend frontier forts. Boonesborough. In 1775 Col. Richard Henderson, a Carolina judge, hired Boone to take 30 men to cut a trail 300 miles (480 kilometers) through the wilderness of the Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River. The trail became the Wilderness Road from eastern Virginia into Kentucky. The group built log cabins and started a fort at the end of the trail. They named the settlement Boonesborough (now Boonesboro). When settlers began to move into Kentucky, the local Shawnee became alarmed and attacked Boonesborough and other settlements. On July 14, 1776, a Shawnee raiding party captured and carried off Boone's 14-year-old daughter, Jemima, and two friends. Following the raiders with some companions, Boone rescued the girls. During the American Revolution Boone became a captain in the Virginia militia (1776). He was captured by the Shawnee (1778), but Boone escaped. He made his way on foot 160 miles (260 kilometers) in four days, reaching Boonesborough in time to warn the settlers that the Indians were about to attack. When the Kentucky Territory became part of Virginia, Boone was elected to the Virginia legislature (1781). Captured when British cavalry raided Charlottesville, where the legislature was meeting, Boone was later freed. Back in Kentucky, he joined in the pursuit of Indians who had attacked Bryan's Station. The Kentuckians rushed into an ambush, but Boone again escaped. Later years. In 1784 John Filson, an explorer and historian, published the book 'The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky', a work containing an "autobiography" of Boone. The book spread Boone's fame as a frontiersman who helped extend the new nation beyond the Allegheny Mountains. Boone, however, was still a poor man. Because he had neglected to file papers or pay taxes, he did not own any of the thousands of acres of land he had claimed in Kentucky and had helped to open to settlement. Again he and his family moved, this time up the Ohio River and into the Kanawha Valley in what is now West Virginia. At times Boone kept a store or tavern, guided settlers over the mountains, or sold horses. In 1791 he was elected to the Virginia legislature a second time. In 1799 the Boones again moved west. In the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River, Boone received a tract of land from the Spanish governor and was appointed a magistrate. But he found himself landless again when the United States bought the territory from France in 1803. In about 1810 Boone returned to Kentucky and paid old debts and bills. He later settled down in Missouri with his family. He died on Sept. 26, 1820. He was buried by his wife on a hilltop overlooking the Missouri River. Years later his body was taken back to Kentucky.

A legendary hero even at the time of his death, his fame spread worldwide when in 1823 Lord Byron devoted seven stanzas to him in "Don Juan."


The romantic legend leading to the marriage of Daniel Boone and Rebecca Bryan has Daniel leveling his long-rife at Rebecca as she was on her way to the spring to fetch some water. Daniel, displaying his aptitude for tracking game, followed his "deer" back to her fathers house where he met and "fell in love with Rebecca......so the story goes.....".


66In the year 1900 there was founded, in the New York University, the Hall of Fame, wherein it was planned to honor one hundred and fifty great Americans, thirty foreign born Americans and sixty American women. The persons whose duty it was to select the names of the persons to be thus honored being empowered to vote every five years, completing the list in the year 2000. At a meeting held in the year 1915, of the electors whose ballot admits to the Hall of Fame, the names of seven great Americans were added to the list of those previously admitted, and among the seven was that of "DANIEL BOONE, PIONEER," the subject of this sketch.

On July 9, 1921, Ray Baker, director of the mint, announced the completion, at the Philadelphia mint, of the quarter of a million dollars in special fifty cent pieces, authorized by congress in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of Missouri statehood.

"The coin is the regulation half dollar size. The obverse shows the head of Daniel Boone with the dates 1821 and 1921, on either side of the figure. On the reverse are figures of an Indian and of a Missouri pioneer, with twenty-four stars. At the top is the legend, 'Missouri Centennial' and at the bottom, 'Sedalia,' where the Missouri celebration is to be held." (K. C. Star, July 10, 1921.) Missouri being the twenty-fourth state to be admitted into the Union.

We have followed Daniel Boone throughout the course of his life, down to the most recent honor paid his memory, and will here let him rest; confident are we in the belief that while the names of other men who were endowed with more learning or who rose higher in the councils of his day will have been forgotten, the fame of Daniel Boone will continue and will be a source of pride to each of his descendants.
JESSE PROCTER CRUMP.

67. . . While the men were held as captives, several were adopted by Shawnee families. While it may seem strange to us, this ritual was very common during the Revolutionary War - and before. Daniel Boone, who had become very fond of Chief Blackfish, was adopted by Blackfish. Because Boone wore a heavy pack and walked slowly, the Shawnee thought he resembled a turtle. Boone was given the Shawnee name "Sheltowee" which means "Big Turtle." . . .

68Boone, Daniel - Mythologized early U. S. pioneer responsible for the exploration of Kentucky. Although his Masonic membership is unprovable, here is what Nathan Boone had to say about his father's funeral: "Father's body was conveyed to Flanders Callaway's home at Charette, and there the funeral took place. There were no military or Masonic honors, the latter of which he was a member, as there were then but very few in that region of the country." (Hammon, Neal O. (ed.) "My Father, Daniel Boone- The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone." Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1999. p. 139.)

"Many heroic exploits and chivalrous adventures are related to me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man." . . . Daniel Boone

He said: “I explored from the love of nature, I've opened the way for others to make fortunes, but a fortune for myself was not what I was after.”

"Many heroic exploits and chivalrous adventures are related to me which exist only in the regions of fancy.
With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man." ....Daniel Boone


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Saturday, 08 Mar 2003  

Fort Boonesborough
Located on the banks of the Kentucky River
in present Madison County, Kentucky

At the unveiling of the bust of Colonel Daniel Boone of Kentucky in the Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C., on May 12, 1926, he was memorialized as "the founder of the First American democracy in 1775, with the building of its capitol, Fort Boonesborough, on the site of Boone's Kentucky home of 1770."


Fort Boonesborough, named for Daniel Boone, was begun in April, 1775 and is called the "Birthplace of Kentucky." This is a sketch of what the fort looked like when the Boones lived there according to Moses Boone, son of Squire Boone, brother of Daniel Boone. Moses lived at the fort with his family.

Moses Boone [23 Feb 1769, NC - 08 Mar 1852, IN] stated that the fort contained about one acre and was one-third longer than wide. This calculates to about 180 feet by 240 feet. Moses's sketch of the fort agrees with Col. Richard Henderson's sketch in almost all areas. Moses stated that after his uncle Daniel returned from captivity (with the Indians) in 1778 the fort was put in repair with new stocking added where needed and the walls were extended to the east. He said that a second story was added to the stockades (on each corner) but that they were not roofed as they ran out of time before the attack which resulted in the fort remaining under seige by Indians for 11 days.

The "town" of Boonesboro was layed out in 1775 by Daniel Boone, Richard Henderson and the Transylvania Company, and was the first chartered town in Kentucky. Town lots were sold at the very first lottery held in what would be the state of Kentucky. After peace was established with the Indians, Boonesborough served as a trading place until the early 1800s. The population of the town dwindled to 68 people by 1810, and by 1820, the year that Colonel Daniel Boone passed away, was no longer considered a town. Collins' 1847 "History of Kentucky" refers to Boonesborough as "a small and dilapidated village."

Boonesborough State Park is southeast of Lexington at the end of Athens-Boonesborough Road. It is in northern Madison county along the Kentucky River on KY 627 and KY 388.

http://www.newspaperabstracts.com/link.php?action=detail&id=56150
Idaho Daily Statesman
Contributed by Gigimo

Description: Two Venerable Citizens. One of Them Has the Rifle of Their Kinsman, Daniel Boone.
Date: January 20 1895

Newspaper published in: Boise, Idaho

Nevada, Mo., Jan. 3. There is no family more widely known in Missouri than that of the BRYANS. Jonathan BRYAN, the father of Elijah and James BRYAN, who resides here built the first flouring mill in St. Louis, which was erected on the river Des Peres.

Elijah BRYAN is now in his ninety-fifth year, and his brother, James, is 87. Elijah has resided continuously in what is now the state of Missouri since December, 1800, and he is therefore the oldest citizen of our state. He helped to guard the forts and fight the Indians in what is now St. Charles county from 1813 to 1816, which period of history gives the first Indian war in this state.

The old Flintlock rifle, "Charley," which he carried in the early days is still in his possession. It has never been altered to suit modern requirements, but it remains just as it was nearly 100 years ago.

This gun was a great favorite of Daniel BOONE, a relative of the BRYANS, who then lived on Femmage, Osage Creek, in St. Charles county. During the massacre of the RAMSEY family near the present town of Marthasville, in Warren county, by Black Hawk and his band, in 1816, Elijah was summoned, with other men able to bear arms, to go in pursuit, but on arriving at the scene of the massacre he was detailed, on account of lameness, as one of the guards at Fort Charrette, which stood then on the north bank of the Missouri river, a mile and a half south of the present site of Marthasville.

He could ride horseback better than any of the neighbors, but in following Indian trails through the woods the men were compelled to walk. As he was lame and using crutches, which he has been compelled to do to the present day, he was required to remain behind with the boys and old men to guard the fort.

He has voted at every national and state election since 1820. He was an enthusiastic "old line Whig" until that party was absorbed by the American and Republican parties in 1859, when he joined the Democratic party and has voted with it ever since.

James BRYAN, his brother, was born in St. Charles county and came to Vernon county a number of years before the late civil war. He carried the American flag in front of the funeral procession that laid the remains of the great pioneer, Daniel BOONE, to rest in this state. He also fought in the Seminole war.

He has a splendid memory and tells thrilling anecdotes that came under his observations in his early days. They belonged to a long lived family. Their father, Jonathan, died at the age of 86. One of his sisters, Nancy COLE, died three years ago at Mexico, Mo., aged 91 years.

Jonathan BRYAN, their father, was a brother in law of Daniel BOONE, and his name was made famous in history by the many thrilling adventures he made in the annals of the early settlement of the western states. The two nephews have a number of relics which were the property of Daniel BOONE, which they prize highly. J. E. MARTIN