77 Facts About Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone 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.

Daniel Boone founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Daniel Boone served as a militia officer during the Revolutionary War, which was fought in Kentucky primarily between American settlers and British-allied Indians.

Daniel Boone was taken in by Shawnees in 1778 and adopted into the tribe, but he resigned and continued to help protect the Kentucky settlements.

Daniel Boone left due to the Shawnee Indians torturing and killing one of his sons.

Daniel Boone 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.

Daniel Boone worked as a surveyor and merchant after the war, but he went deep into debt as a Kentucky land speculator.

Daniel Boone resettled in Missouri in 1799, where he spent most of the last two decades of his life, frustrated with legal problems resulting from his land claims.

Daniel Boone remains an iconic, if imperfectly remembered, figure in American history.

Daniel Boone was a legend in his own lifetime, especially after an account of his adventures was published in 1784, making him famous in America and Europe.

Daniel Boone spent his early years on the Pennsylvania frontier, often interacting with American Indians.

Daniel 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.

In one tale, the young Daniel Boone was hunting in the woods with some other boys when the howl of a panther scattered all but Daniel Boone.

Daniel Boone calmly cocked his rifle and shot the panther through the heart just as it leaped at him.

In 1742, Daniel Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child Sarah married a "worldling", or non-Quaker, while she was visibly pregnant.

Daniel Boone did not attend church again, although he always considered himself a Christian and had all of his children baptized.

Daniel Boone received little formal education, since he preferred to spend his time hunting, apparently with his parents' blessing.

Daniel Boone was often the only literate person in groups of frontiersmen, and would sometimes entertain his hunting companions by reading to them around the campfire.

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

Daniel Boone saw action as a member of the North Carolina militia during this "Cherokee Uprising," periodically serving under Captain Hugh Waddell on the North Carolina frontier until 1760.

Daniel Boone supported his growing family in these years as a market hunter and trapper, collecting pelts for the fur trade.

Daniel 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.

Rebecca confessed that she had thought that Daniel Boone was dead, and that his brother had fathered the child.

Daniel Boone did not blame Rebecca, and raised the girl as his own child.

Daniel Boone had difficulty making ends meet, and he was often taken to court for nonpayment of debts.

Daniel Boone sold what land he owned to pay off creditors.

Years before entering Kentucky, Daniel Boone had heard about the region's fertile land and abundant game.

In 1773, Daniel Boone packed up his family and, with his brother Squire and a group of about 50 others, began the first attempt by British colonists to establish a settlement.

Daniel Boone was still an obscure figure at the time; the most prominent member of the expedition was William Russell, a well-known Virginian and future brother-in-law of Patrick Henry.

The brutality of the killings sent shockwaves along the frontier, and Daniel Boone's party abandoned their expedition.

Daniel Boone then blazed "Daniel Boone's Trace," later known as the Wilderness Road, through the Cumberland Gap and into central Kentucky.

Daniel Boone founded Boonesborough along the Kentucky River; other settlements, notably Harrodsburg, were established at this time.

Daniel Boone was shot in the ankle while outside the fort.

Daniel Boone pursued this strategy so convincingly some of his men concluded he had switched sides, an impression that led to his court-martial.

Daniel Boone was adopted into a Shawnee family at Chillicothe, perhaps into Blackfish's family, and given the name Sheltowee.

Daniel Boone began earning money by locating good land for other settlers.

In 1780, Daniel Boone collected about $20,000 in cash from various settlers and traveled to Williamsburg to purchase their land warrants.

In contrast to the later folk image of Daniel Boone as a backwoodsman who had little affinity for "civilized" society, Daniel Boone was a leading citizen of Kentucky at this time.

The Shawnee beheaded Ned, believing him to be Daniel, and took the head as evidence that Daniel Boone had finally been slain.

In 1781, Daniel Boone traveled to Richmond to take his seat in the legislature, but British dragoons under Banastre Tarleton captured Daniel Boone and several other legislators near Charlottesville.

Daniel Boone kept a tavern and worked as a surveyor, horse trader, and land speculator.

Daniel Boone was initially prosperous in Limestone, owning seven slaves, a relatively large number for Kentucky at the time.

Daniel Boone began to have financial troubles after engaging in land speculation, buying and selling claims to tens of thousands of acres.

Frustrated with the legal hassles that went with land speculation, in 1789 Daniel Boone moved upriver to Point Pleasant, Virginia.

That same year, when Virginia created Kanawha County, Daniel Boone became the lieutenant colonel of the county militia.

Daniel Boone 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, though he was often hampered by rheumatism.

The next year, Daniel Boone applied to Isaac Shelby, the first governor of the new state of Kentucky, for a contract to widen the Wilderness Road into a wagon route, but the contract was awarded to someone else.

Daniel Boone's remaining land claims were sold off to pay legal fees and taxes, but he no longer paid attention to the process.

Daniel Boone served as syndic and commandant until 1804, when Missouri became part of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase.

Daniel Boone sold most of this land to repay old Kentucky debts.

Some historians believe Daniel Boone visited his brother Squire near Kentucky in 1810 and have accepted the veracity of Audubon's account.

Daniel Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren.

Daniel Boone 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.

Daniel Boone 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.

Daniel Boone 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.

Daniel Boone died on September 26,1820, at his son Nathan Daniel Boone's home on Femme Osage Creek, Missouri.

Daniel Boone was buried next to Rebecca, who had died on March 18,1813.

Resentment in Missouri about the disinterment grew over the years, and a legend arose that Daniel Boone's remains never left Missouri.

Daniel Boone remains an iconic figure in American history, although his status as an early American folk hero and later as a subject of fiction has tended to obscure the actual details of his life.

Daniel Boone emerged as a legend in large part because of John Filson's "The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon", part of his book The Discovery, Settlement and present State of Kentucke.

Flint embellished Daniel Boone's adventures, doing for Daniel Boone what Parson Weems did for George Washington.

In Flint's book, Daniel Boone fought with a bear, escaped from Indians by swinging on vines, and so on.

Thanks to Filson's book, Daniel Boone became a symbol of the "natural man" who lives a virtuous, uncomplicated existence in the wilderness.

Daniel Boone was celebrated as an agent of Manifest Destiny, a pathfinder who tamed the wilderness, paving the way for the extension of American civilization.

In popular mythology, Daniel Boone became the first to explore and settle Kentucky, opening the way for countless others to follow.

In Missouri, Daniel Boone went hunting with the Shawnees who had captured and adopted him decades earlier.

John Daniel Boone is one of the "First Hundred" colonists sent to permanently colonize Mars.

Daniel Boone's name has long been synonymous with the American outdoors.

The Boone and Crockett Club is a conservationist organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887, and the Sons of Daniel Boone was the precursor of the Boy Scouts of America.

One would be named the USS Daniel Boone, commissioning on 23 April 1964 and remaining in service until decommissioning in 1994.

Daniel Boone was the subject of a TV series that ran from 1964 to 1970.

Daniel Boone was portrayed this way in the TV series because Fess Parker, the tall actor who played him, was essentially reprising his role as Davy Crockett from an earlier TV series.

That Daniel Boone could be portrayed the same way as Crockett, another American frontiersman with a very different personality, was another example of how Daniel Boone's image was reshaped to suit popular tastes.

Daniel Boone was the subject matter for the song sung by Ed Ames called "Daniel Boone".

Arthur Guiterman in a four stanza poem recounts the life of Daniel Boone, ending with his ghost happily tracking animals, both ancient and mythical, across the Milky Way.

In Blood and Treasure, released in 2021, authors Tom Clavin and Bob Drury painted a much broader historical portrait of Daniel Boone than has been commonly described.