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| The burial place of Squire and Sarah Boone |
While Daniel Boone is known for moving west, discovering new opportunities and developing new communities, this work had begun with his parents. Squire set a new pattern that his son would follow, leaving the ancestral homeland in England to move Pennsylvania and then again to the backwoods of North Carolina.
Daniel Boone’s father, Squire Boone, was born November 25th, 1696 in Bradninch, Devonshire, in the southwest of England.[1] According to parish records, he was baptized at St. Disen's Church on Christmas Day, December 25th, 1696. The family continued to participate in the Church of England, with their children being baptized at St. Disen’s, until they became Quakers around 1703 (their son Joseph, born in April of 1704, was the first one not to be baptized at St. Disen’s). They joined the Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends at Callumpton, about a mile from Bradninch.[2]
Quakers did not practice baptism and other rituals common to most churches. They believed that the inner light from God in each person, rather than Scripture or the teachings of the church, was the true source of truth and authority. They wore plain clothes and avoided terms that showed respect to rank or privilege (hence they used “thee” and “thou” rather than the more formal “you,” which at first was used for superiors). They refused to take oaths and were pacifist. These beliefs alienated them from society and led to persecution until the late 1680s. Pennsylvania had been founded by William Penn, a Quaker, with provisions for religious liberty. The Boone family joined in the Quaker migration to Pennsylvania about ten years after becoming Quakers.
Squire and his older siblings, George and Sarah, preceded the rest of the family in coming to Pennsylvania. George was married on July 27, 1713 at the Abingdon Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends near Philadelphia,[3] and Squire and Sarah either had accompanied him or joined him in 1714.[4] The rest of their family would follow them in 1717 and join the Gwynedd Monthly Meeting of the Friends in North Wales, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1717.[5] There Squire married Sarah Morgan, another Quaker, on July 23, 1720.[6]
The Cherokees were allied with the British for the early part of the French and Indian War, but due to various provocations they switched sides and began to attack the settlers in North Carolina in 1759. Thus, Squire, his son Daniel, and son-in-law William Grant and their families moved to safety. Daniel went to northern Virginia and Squire and William went to Georgetown, Maryland (present-day Washington D.C.).[30] At this time Squire conveyed his eastern parcel of land to his son Squire and his western parcel of land to Daniel.[31] They returned to the Yadkin valley in 1762, where Squire and Sarah likely lived on the properties that now belonged to their sons.[32]
Daniel Boone’s father, Squire Boone, was born November 25th, 1696 in Bradninch, Devonshire, in the southwest of England.[1] According to parish records, he was baptized at St. Disen's Church on Christmas Day, December 25th, 1696. The family continued to participate in the Church of England, with their children being baptized at St. Disen’s, until they became Quakers around 1703 (their son Joseph, born in April of 1704, was the first one not to be baptized at St. Disen’s). They joined the Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends at Callumpton, about a mile from Bradninch.[2]
Quakers did not practice baptism and other rituals common to most churches. They believed that the inner light from God in each person, rather than Scripture or the teachings of the church, was the true source of truth and authority. They wore plain clothes and avoided terms that showed respect to rank or privilege (hence they used “thee” and “thou” rather than the more formal “you,” which at first was used for superiors). They refused to take oaths and were pacifist. These beliefs alienated them from society and led to persecution until the late 1680s. Pennsylvania had been founded by William Penn, a Quaker, with provisions for religious liberty. The Boone family joined in the Quaker migration to Pennsylvania about ten years after becoming Quakers.
Squire and his older siblings, George and Sarah, preceded the rest of the family in coming to Pennsylvania. George was married on July 27, 1713 at the Abingdon Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends near Philadelphia,[3] and Squire and Sarah either had accompanied him or joined him in 1714.[4] The rest of their family would follow them in 1717 and join the Gwynedd Monthly Meeting of the Friends in North Wales, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1717.[5] There Squire married Sarah Morgan, another Quaker, on July 23, 1720.[6]
Sarah had been born in 1700 to parents who were natives of Wales. Her father Edward was a tailor and early settler in the Welsh settlement of Gwynedd, Pennsylvania.[7] Daniel Boone later said that his mother was a relative of “General Daniel Morgan, hero of the Revolution” and that she was “a woman of great neatness and industry in her housekeeping.”[8] It is said by one who knew them that “Squire Boone was a man of rather small stature, fair complexion, red hair and grey eyes; while his wife was a woman something over the common size, strong and active, with black hair and eyes, and raised in the Quaker order.”[9] Squire and Sarah went on to have eleven children, seven of whom lived past the age of eighty.[10]
In 1730 Squire and Sarah purchased 250 acres in what would become Exeter Township, in present Berks County, Pennsylvania.[11] There he built a log cabin over a cellar with a spring in it. That is where Squire and Sarah’s sixth child, Daniel, was born on October 22, 1734. Squire was a weaver, as his father had been, as well as a blacksmith and farmer.[12] He kept five or six looms in operation and employed Henry Miller to work in the blacksmith shop and to teach Daniel the trade as well.[13] When Daniel was ten years old, he began to accompany his mother during “grass season” as they moved several miles away with their cows for better pasture. Sarah attended to the milk and Daniel herded the cows during the day and hunted, first with a club and then with a rifle.[14] Daniel also helped his father with the farming.[15] Daniel’s parents were loyal to him, as can been seen in several stories where they stood by him when he frustrated a tutor, got into a fight, and provoked the jealousy of “Saucy Jack” at a shooting contest.[16] The family attended the local Oley (later renamed Exeter) Meeting of the Society of Friends, and Squire became a trustee there in 1736 and an overseer in 1739.[17]
In 1742 Squire’s oldest child, Sarah, married a non-Quaker, provoking a reprimand from the Meeting. Squire formally confessed “himself in fault in keeping them in his house after their keeping company” and promised to be more careful in the future.[18] Sarah also made confession of her sins after it became evident that she had been with child before the wedding.[19] In 1747 Squire’s next child, Israel, also married a non-Quaker. A committee of the Meeting confronted Squire about this marriage, but this time Squire denied he had done anything wrong and so refused to repent.[20] It is not stated why his response was different this time,[21] but it led the Meeting the next year to declare that Squire was no longer a member of the Society of Friends.[22]
In 1750, Squire moved his family from Pennsylvania to the Yadkin valley of North Carolina, purchasing two parcels of land, each of 640 acres, in 1753.[23] One was at the confluence of Elisha Creek and Dutchman Creek (just east of present-day Mocksville, NC) and the other was on both sides of Bear Creek (two miles west of Mocksville).[24] There he continued his prior occupations. In addition, he became a justice of the peace and a member of the county court in 1753 and was licensed to operate a “Public House” in 1754.[25] One of the attorneys who frequently appeared on legal business before him was Richard Henderson, who later employed Daniel Boone to work for the Transylvania Company in its effort to settle Kentucky.[26]
While Squire’s wife, Sarah, received in 1750 a certificate from the women’s Meeting at Exeter as a traveling minister[27] and their daughter Hannah “often preached in public on the Quaker faith,”[28] yet most of the family left the Society of Friends when they left Pennsylvania. Even Hannah later joined Mill Creek Baptist Church in Kentucky. Much of Daniel Boone's family became members at Boone’s Ford Church, a Baptist church organized and pastored by Rev. John Gano in the 1750s.[29] People from a variety of denominations had built a meeting house for the use of all, and within two years the main body organized as a Baptist church.
In 1730 Squire and Sarah purchased 250 acres in what would become Exeter Township, in present Berks County, Pennsylvania.[11] There he built a log cabin over a cellar with a spring in it. That is where Squire and Sarah’s sixth child, Daniel, was born on October 22, 1734. Squire was a weaver, as his father had been, as well as a blacksmith and farmer.[12] He kept five or six looms in operation and employed Henry Miller to work in the blacksmith shop and to teach Daniel the trade as well.[13] When Daniel was ten years old, he began to accompany his mother during “grass season” as they moved several miles away with their cows for better pasture. Sarah attended to the milk and Daniel herded the cows during the day and hunted, first with a club and then with a rifle.[14] Daniel also helped his father with the farming.[15] Daniel’s parents were loyal to him, as can been seen in several stories where they stood by him when he frustrated a tutor, got into a fight, and provoked the jealousy of “Saucy Jack” at a shooting contest.[16] The family attended the local Oley (later renamed Exeter) Meeting of the Society of Friends, and Squire became a trustee there in 1736 and an overseer in 1739.[17]
In 1742 Squire’s oldest child, Sarah, married a non-Quaker, provoking a reprimand from the Meeting. Squire formally confessed “himself in fault in keeping them in his house after their keeping company” and promised to be more careful in the future.[18] Sarah also made confession of her sins after it became evident that she had been with child before the wedding.[19] In 1747 Squire’s next child, Israel, also married a non-Quaker. A committee of the Meeting confronted Squire about this marriage, but this time Squire denied he had done anything wrong and so refused to repent.[20] It is not stated why his response was different this time,[21] but it led the Meeting the next year to declare that Squire was no longer a member of the Society of Friends.[22]
In 1750, Squire moved his family from Pennsylvania to the Yadkin valley of North Carolina, purchasing two parcels of land, each of 640 acres, in 1753.[23] One was at the confluence of Elisha Creek and Dutchman Creek (just east of present-day Mocksville, NC) and the other was on both sides of Bear Creek (two miles west of Mocksville).[24] There he continued his prior occupations. In addition, he became a justice of the peace and a member of the county court in 1753 and was licensed to operate a “Public House” in 1754.[25] One of the attorneys who frequently appeared on legal business before him was Richard Henderson, who later employed Daniel Boone to work for the Transylvania Company in its effort to settle Kentucky.[26]
While Squire’s wife, Sarah, received in 1750 a certificate from the women’s Meeting at Exeter as a traveling minister[27] and their daughter Hannah “often preached in public on the Quaker faith,”[28] yet most of the family left the Society of Friends when they left Pennsylvania. Even Hannah later joined Mill Creek Baptist Church in Kentucky. Much of Daniel Boone's family became members at Boone’s Ford Church, a Baptist church organized and pastored by Rev. John Gano in the 1750s.[29] People from a variety of denominations had built a meeting house for the use of all, and within two years the main body organized as a Baptist church.
The Cherokees were allied with the British for the early part of the French and Indian War, but due to various provocations they switched sides and began to attack the settlers in North Carolina in 1759. Thus, Squire, his son Daniel, and son-in-law William Grant and their families moved to safety. Daniel went to northern Virginia and Squire and William went to Georgetown, Maryland (present-day Washington D.C.).[30] At this time Squire conveyed his eastern parcel of land to his son Squire and his western parcel of land to Daniel.[31] They returned to the Yadkin valley in 1762, where Squire and Sarah likely lived on the properties that now belonged to their sons.[32]
Squire Boone lived three years more before he died at on January 2nd, 1765 in his sixty-ninth year.[33] He was buried in the cemetery of the Joppa Meeting House, which would become the meeting place of a Presbyterian church but at the time was open to use by all denominations.[34] After this, his wife Sarah lived with their daughter Mary and her husband William Bryan. Daniel Boone left for Kentucky after his father died, even as Squire had left Pennsylvania after his father had died, but in Daniel’s case his mother was still living. It is said that when he left North Carolina in 1773, “Even Daniel, in spite of his brave and manly heart was seen to lift the lapel of his pouch to dry the tears from his eyes whilst his dear old mother held around his neck weeping bitterly. Daniel was devoted to her and she loved Daniel above all her children.”[35] Sarah died in 1777 and was laid to rest in the Joppa burial ground next to her husband.
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[1] Lyman Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998), 104-105.
[2] Hazel A. Spraker, The Boone Family (Genealogical Pub. Co., [1922] 1993), 21. This is where their certificate was from when they came to Pennsylvania.
[3] Spraker, 590. Ken Kamper, “A Year by Year Listing of Events in the Life and Family of Daniel Boone” (2017).
[4] Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone, 106; Ken Kamper, “A Year by Year Listing of Events in the Life and Family of Daniel Boone” (2017).
[5] Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone, 106.
[6] Ibid, 108.
[7] Spraker, 32.
[8] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 10.
[9] Ibid, 108. This statement is from Daniel Bryan.
[10] Spraker, 38. “Extraordinary Longevity” Newbern Sentinel (New Bern, North Carolina) 23 Dec 1820, Sat.
[11] Spraker, 108.
[12] My Father, Daniel Boone, 11-12; Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone, 104.
[13] My Father, Daniel Boone, 12.
[14] Ibid., 11.
[15] Ibid., 13.
[16] Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone, 113, 127-128; John Bakeless, Daniel Boone (University of Nebraska Press, 1989 [1939]), 11.
[17] Exeter Meeting Records, cited in Spraker, 35, 39. The meeting house still stands 1.5 miles from the Boone homestead.
[18] Minutes of Exeter Meeting, Book A, page 33, cited in Spraker, 35.
[19] Minutes of the Exeter Meeting, cited in John M. Faragher, Daniel Boone (New York, NY: Henry Holt, 1992), 24.
[20] Faragher, 25
[21] That this was a son instead of a daughter, that Squire had asked for others to dissuade his son from marrying a non-Quaker, and that premarital sex was perhaps not part of the situation, may have been why he saw this case differently. He wrote an angry letter to the Meeting which might have shed light on this, but the secretary deemed it too impertinent to record in the minutes (Faragher, 25).
[22] Minutes of the Exeter Meeting, cited in Faragher, 26.
[23] Meredith Mason Brown, Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 10.
[24] James W. Wall, “Boone, Squire” Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, ed. by William S. Powell (University of North Carolina Press, 1979).
[25] Ibid.
[26] Archibald Henderson, “The Creative Forces in Westward Expansion: Henderson and Boone” (The American Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Oct., 1914), pp. 86-107), 96ff.
[27] Minutes of the Exeter Meeting, cited in John J. Stoudt, “Daniel and Squire Boone,” July 1936 issue of the Historical Review of Berks County.
[28] My Father, Daniel Boone, 29.
[29] Henry Sheets, A History of the Liberty Baptist Association (Raleigh, N.C. : Press of Edwards and Broughton Printing Co., 1909), 122-123; John Gano, Biographical memoirs of the late Rev. John Gano, of Frankfort (Kentucky) (New York, Printed by Southwick and Hardcastle for J. Tiebout, 1806), 81-85.
[30] Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone, 147-148.
[31] James W. Wall, “Boone, Squire” Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, ed. by William S. Powell (University of North CarolinaPress,1979).
[32] Ibid. Daniel’s land was closer to the Joppa Meeting House where Squire was later buried, but Daniel sold his land in 1764, so at least in 1765 Squire and his wife were likely living on Squire, Jr.’s land.
[33] Ibid., 183; Spraker, 38.
[34] Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone, 198. Draper also records that Squire “performed services for the meeting.” Some have understood this to mean that Squire led services at Joppa, but in context it seems that this refers to the Quaker meeting in Pennsylvania, especially since the source is Thomas Pearson of Berks County.
[35] Peter Houston, A Sketch of the Life and Character of Daniel Boone (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997), 12. Peter and his family were neighbors and friends of the Boones in North Carolina. He was 12 years old at the time.
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