Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone, a legend in his own lifetime, was an explorer and hunter whose exploits made him one of the most famous frontiersmen in American history. Born on November 2, 1734, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, he was one of 11 children raised in a Quaker household and aspired to be a woodsman rather than a farmer. After family scandals led to his father's expulsion from the Society of Friends, the family moved to the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina in 1751 or 1752. From there Boone explored west into Kentucky in the 1760s and 1770s, and in 1775 he established Boonesborough, one of the first white settlements in Kentucky. When Kentucky became part of Virginia, he was named an officer in the Virginia militia and spent several years trail blazing and fighting Indians. His autobiography, written by John Filson and published in 1784, portrayed him as wily and adventurous and helped make him a folk hero. Boone sought to establish extensive land claims in Kentucky, but many were invalidated after 1780 and he could not retain them. After living in western Virginia, where he served three times in the state legislature, he moved in 1799 to what is now Missouri and settled there with his son, Daniel Morgan Boone; he was later granted land by the U.S. Congress. He died near St. Louis in 1820 at age 85 and is now buried in Frankfort Cemetery. In popular portrayals beginning in the 1820s, actors dressed Boone in buckskin and a coonskin cap, but Boone himself considered coonskin caps silly and impractical and wore a beaver or felt hat with a wide brim to keep out sun and rain.

Frankfort, Kentucky · United States