American folk hero Daniel Boone was born on this date in 1734. I’ve attempted to provide 10 facts, but with so many tall stories about his life it’s hard to distinguish fact from folklore so don’t take any of this as gospel! Even his date of birth is suspect as he was born around the time of a calendar change so some sources may give his birthdate as 22 October!
His father, Squire, was a weaver and blacksmith from England who emigrated to Pennsylvania, where he met and married Sarah Morgan, whose family were Quakers from Wales. The couple built a one room cabin, where Daniel was born. The family were expelled from the Quakers after two of the children married outside the faith and one was visibly pregnant at the time. In 1750 Squire sold his land and moved the family to North Carolina, possibly as a result of the controversy. So while Daniel was brought up as a Quaker, as an adult he simply described himself as a Christian.
He wasn’t well educated. He preferred hunting to school, learning the skills from local Native Americans. When his teacher raised the issue of his absences with his father, Squire allegedly said, “Let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting.” From then on most of his education was from members of his family and he never did learn to spell. That said, he was better educated than many of the frontiersmen he travelled with – he could read, which was more than could be said for a lot of them. Sometimes he was the only one of a party who could read and often had a book or two with him. The Bible and Gulliver’s Travels were his favourites, and he’d read aloud to his fellows around the campfire.
In his teens, he figured out that a lot of money could be made from selling furs and animal hides, and as a teen went on his first long hunting trip, sold the furs in Philadelphia and then blew the lot on "a general jamboree or frolick."
He acquired a reputation as an able navigator who could remember every trail he walked. This brought him to the attention of land surveyors who’d take him on as an assistant when they went exploring. Boone picked up enough of their skills to become a surveyor in his ow right and is said to have surveyed land as far away as Texas. At least 150 patches of land were surveyed by him, but he wasn’t actually that good at it, and the maps he produced were not very accurate.
His reputation as a navigator got him the gig of opening a path through the Cumberland Gap, a narrow mountain pass near the modern borders of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. The result was the Wilderness Road, which made it possible for 200,000 settlers to move to Kentucky. Boone founded a fort settlement there, called Boonesborough, which consisted of 26 log cabins surrounded by 15-foot-high walls. It's now a state park.
While his relations with Native Americans were mostly good, there was the occasional hiccup. In 1778, Boone and a party of men were captured by Shawnee Indians. In order to survive, Boone had to promise the chief, whose name was Chief Blackfish, that Boonesborough would surrender peacefully to the tribe. Chief Blackfish adopted Boone as his son and gave him the name Big Turtle. Boone, however, managed to escape and travelled 160 miles over rough terrain, reaching Boonesborough four days later and was able to warn them of the upcoming attack. They successfully withstood a 10-day siege. On another occasion, Boone's daughter Jemima and some of her friends were abducted by Indians while on a canoeing trip. Boone managed to track the girls down within three days, although the fact it appeared he’d taught his daughter well must have helped – the girls broke twigs and left markings whenever they could.
Boone’s wife was called Rebecca Bryan. As he was often away on extended trips for years at a time she was left to bring up their ten children and the eight nephews and nieces they’d adopted, all by herself. At least he dropped in to visit at least ten times. Or maybe nine, if one folk tale is true. The story goes that he returned one time after a long trip of well over nine months to find that Rebecca had given birth to a child in his absence. Assuming he was dead, she’d turned to his brother to meet her needs and the inevitable happened. Daniel was a good enough sport about it to adopt the child and bring her up as his own. However, since the details, including which of his brothers it was, vary from source to source, it may not be true.
It’s also probably not true that he wore a coonskin hat, the iconic headgear of frontiersmen at the time, made from the skin and fur of a Raccoon and sometimes including the head and tail as well. Boone is often portrayed as wearing one, but according to one of his sons, he actually despised them and opted for a flat, broad-brimmed hat instead.
He was going on long hunting expeditions well into his 70s. At 76, he went 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.
In 1809, Daniel Boone dictated his autobiography to his grandson John Boone Calloway. This manuscript may well have been the most accurate account of Boone’s life, had it survived long enough to get published, which it didn’t. Calloway took it with him on a trip and was apparently reading it as he canoed down the Missouri River, when his canoe overturned and the whole thing was washed away. Hence it was left to others to tell his story. Boone lived to see some of the embellishments start to circulate and he hated it. He said, "Nothing embitters my old age [more than] the circulation of absurd stories … many heroic actions and chivalrous adventures are related of 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."
