Levina (Boone) Scholl (1766-1802)

Levina (Boone) Scholl was the fifth child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. She was born on March 23, 1766 in the Yadkin valley in North Carolina and died on April 6, 1802 in Clark County, Kentucky.[1] She lived 36 years and 15 days.

Levina married Joseph Scholl (1755-1833) around 1783.[2] Joseph had come from Virginia to Kentucky in 1779 and had fought at the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782.[3] In 1792, Joseph moved his family and established Scholl's Station (Schollsville) with his two brothers on land Joseph's father had purchased from Daniel Boone.[4] It was between present-day Winchester and Mt. Sterling, Kentucky.

Joseph traveled with Daniel Morgan Boone and Colonel James Smith in 1797 to investigate the land west of the Mississippi. Since he and Smith were not pleased with the country, they turned back after making it as far as Fort de Chartres and Kaskaskia.[5] Thus, when Levina's parents and most of her siblings moved west in 1799, the Scholls remained in Scholl's Station. Levina died in 1802, leaving behind her husband Joseph and their eight children, aged 2 to 13. Soon after that, Joseph visited Missouri but then returned to Kentucky. Several of their children later moved out to Missouri, settling in St. Charles, Callaway, and Jackson counties.[6]

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[1] Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 121.

[2] Spraker, 121 says they married "about 1785," but it appears that they married before the fall of 1784 when Daniel Boone and Joseph Scholl moved from Boone's Station to Marble Creek (“Joseph Scholl” Trumboldfamilies.com. Accessed June 22, 2026. http://trumboldfamilies.com/scholl/josephscholl.html). Also, their first child was born on January 28, 1784 (according to her gravestone). 

[3] Spraker, 121.

[4] “Joseph Scholl” Trumboldfamilies.com. Accessed June 22, 2026. http://trumboldfamilies.com/scholl/josephscholl.html. 

[5] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 107.

[6] Meredith Mason Brown, Frontiersman (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2008), 247; Spraker, 121-122, 184-185; “Joseph Scholl” Trumboldfamilies.com. Accessed June 22, 2026. http://trumboldfamilies.com/scholl/josephscholl.html. 

Jemima (Boone) Callaway (1762-1834)

Jemima (Boone) Callaway was the fourth child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. She was born on October 4, 1762 and died on August 30, 1834.[1] She lived 71 years, 10 months, 26 days.  

The name Jemima is taken from the Bible where it is the name of one of Job’s daughters, of whom it was said, “And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job” (Job 42:15). Jemima was born in the Yadkin valley in North Carolina after the Boones had returned from Virginia.[2] They had lived in Culpeper County, Virginia for a year or two to avoid the Cherokee raids connected with the French and Indian War.

Jemima was 12 years old when her father brought her and the rest of the family to Fort Boonesborough in Kentucky in the August of 1775.[3] The most famous event of her life took place the following year. On July 14th, 1776, she and Betsy and Fanny Callaway were taken captive by a band of Shawnee and Cherokee warriors. The three of them had been in a canoe on the river just outside the fort when they were taken, and their screams alerted the men in the fort. Daniel and his men were able to follow the signs subtly left by the girls, and they recovered them after a skirmish a few days later.[4] The next spring (1777) Jemima married Flanders Callaway in a double wedding in which Fanny Callaway married John Holder.[5] Flanders Callaway (1752-1829) and John Holder had been members of the rescue party. 

Jemima remained in Kentucky with her husband when her father was taken captive by the Shawnee and the rest of the family returned to North Carolina for a time.[6] Thus, she was present at the siege of Fort Boonesborough (September, 1778) after her father had escaped from captivity and returned to the fort. Jemima was slightly wounded during the siege as she brought supplies to the defenders, hit by a ball that did not break the fabric and so fell out when she tugged at it.[7] Her granddaughter would later tell how Jemima “went the gathering the Spent Balls at Night in her apron that would Spatter against the fort, and mould them over to fight the Savage next day.”[8]

Jemima and Flanders continued to live near Boone’s Station when her father moved on to what is now West Virginia in 1789. Her younger brother Nathan stayed with them and the nearby Hays family for about two years to go to school around 1794.[9] They joined her father on his way out to Missouri in 1799 and acquired 800 arpents (680 acres) on the Femme Osage Creek and what would become Callaway Fork, about two and a half miles east of Nathan’s property.[10] About 8 or 11 years later, they gave this property to their oldest son, John, who would run a mill and distillery on it.[11] (John later sold some of the land in 1818 to his sister's husband, Abraham Darst.[12]) Instead, Jemima and Flanders moved closer to Marthasville and built the two-story house that has been moved in recent years to the Historic Daniel Boone Home property in Defiance, MO.

Daniel Boone lived with Jemima and Flanders following his wife’s death in the spring of 1813 until the spring of 1816,[13] as well as during the summer of 1820.[14] This home formed the nucleus for Callaway’s Fort during the War of 1812.[15] Daniel was at the fort in 1815 when news of the nearby Ramsey massacre reached him. He was “was pacing up and down in front of an open space in the stockades, which had not been completed, with his gun on his shoulder, and whistling in his usual undisturbed manner.”[16] During this war, Jemima’s son, Captain James Richard Callaway, was killed by Indians in an ambush.[17]

Jemima and Flanders had ten children, most of whom were born before they came to Missouri. Flanders hunted and trapped in Kentucky and Missouri with the Boones and farmed as well. The Callaways seem to have been financially successful, at least from the fact that Flanders mentions ten slaves in his will.[18] At least one of these slaves was taught to read and write.[19] They had a grist mill.[20] They helped establish Friendship Baptist Church in 1818, which first met in their house.[21] At least two of their slaves, “Uncle Will and Aunt Rose,” were known as “great Baptists” as well.[22] In his will, Flanders requested that “Rev. Lewis Williams” or another “respectable preacher of the Baptist faith and order” preach his funeral sermon.[23] The Callaways seem to have had close relations with the Francis Howell family, since three of their children married three Howell siblings.[24]

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[1] Lilian Hays Oliver, Some Boone Descendants and Kindred of the St. Charles District (Rancho Cordova, CA: Dean Publications, 1984), p. 16. Oliver cites the Daniel Boone Callaway Indenture and Draper Mss 6 S 299. Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 119 incorrectly says Jemima died in 1829. Jemima’s granddaughter Elviza said that she died in the fall of 1834 (Draper Manuscript (DM) vol. 21, letters 24 and 68). 

[2] DM vol. 21, letter 33. Eviza Coshow, Jemima's granddaughter, wrote, "my Grandmother Callaway was born in North Carolina--on Clinch river, as I herd her tell of her dear old Home". Eviza misremembered the river's name (this is not the only place where she called the Yadkin River the Clinch River). 

[3] Meredith Mason Brown, Frontiersman (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2008), 86.

[4] Brown, 106-110.

[5] John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), 139.

[6] Brown, 144.

[7] Brown, 156.

[8] DM vol. 12, letter 21. See also Spraker, 120.

[9] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 97.

[10] My Father, Daniel Boone, 121.

[11] Spraker, 181; Wm. S. Bryan and Robert Rose, A History of the Pioneer Families of Missouri (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1977 [1876]), 209; My Father, Daniel Boone, 135.

[12] Sanford Gladden, The Durst and Darst Families of America, Vol. I (Boulder Genealogical Society, 2013), 69. Abraham Darst was married to Tabitha, sister of John and daughter of Flanders and Jemima. 

[13] See Daniel’s letter quoted in Spraker, 59. He left for a long hunt in April, 1816 and returned to Nathan’s house (My Father, Daniel Boone, 136).

[14] My Father, Daniel Boone, 138.

[15] A great-grandson who arrived at the fort in 1815 later described it as “built after the manner of other forts with a blockhouse in each corner with port holes to shoot through. In size it covered about three (3) acres and was located about a quarter of a mile from the Missouri River....Daniel Boone and Grandfather Callaway owned the fort. They were partners and bought the land from the French. Bryan’s graveyard was almost directly east from the fort” (Larkin Barnes, DM vol. 21, letter 14). A granddaughter of Jemima said it was “made of logs 20 inches in diameter...The fort occupied four acres of ground...There was a well on the inside of the fort which was 18 feet deep and furnished abundance of living water....This fort was within 200 yards of the river originally and when the overflow of 1824 occurred it was swept completely into the river and now the spot where it was built is 3⁄4 of a mile in the water on an island and part of the old fort can still be seen” (Eviza Coshow, DM vol. 21, letter 64).

[16] Bryan and Rose, 103.

[17] My Father, Daniel Boone, 132-133.

[18] Flanders Callaway, “The Will of Flanders Callaway” Geni.com. Accessed July 24, 2017. https://www.geni.com/ people/Flanders-Callaway/6000000009118243700.

[19] S. Paul Jones, DM vol. 21, letter 5.

[20] Bryan, 528.

[21] R. S. Duncan, A History of the Baptists in Missouri (St. Louis, MO: Scammell, 1882), 88.

[22] Eviza Coshow, DM vo. 21, letter 55. Eviza, Jemima's grandaughter, wrote, "Old Uncle Bill and Aunt Rose were two of the best and most noted negros in the Boone and Callaway families. Uncle Bill had his cabin built close to the fortgate in Marthasville. He would take his gun and slip out every night, and reconnitre & watch for Indians. Grandpa Callaway used to scold him, & tell him the Indians would get his scalp; but he was brave--& would come stealthily about mid-night, call aunt Rose to let him in--I remember them well--great Baptists.--"

[23] Flanders Callaway, “The Will of Flanders Callaway” Geni.com. Accessed July 24, 2017. https://www.geni.com/ people/Flanders-Callaway/6000000009118243700.

[24] James Callaway and Nancy Howell, Larkin Callaway and Susannah Howell, and Susannah Callaway and Thomas Howell.

Susannah (Boone) Hays (1760-1800)

Susannah (Boone) Hays was the third child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. She was born on November 2nd, 1760 and died on October 19th, 1800.[1] She lived 39 years, 11 months, 17 days.

Susannah married William Hays when the Boone family was living on the Clinch River at Moore’s Fort in Virginia, in early March of 1775.[2] Susannah's younger brother, Nathan Boone, later described William Hays as “a brave man and always foremost, but he was bad-tempered and drank to excess,”[3] as well as one who “taught my father to write with an improved hand” and who “kept Father’s accounts for a while.”[4] Not only could he keep business accounts, but he was also a hunter, trapper, soldier, and weaver.[5] He was of Irish descent.

Within a month of their wedding, the young couple traveled to Kentucky with the party of about 30 men led by Daniel Boone that cleared the Wilderness Road and established the settlement at Fort Boonesborough.[6] She was the first white woman to stand on the banks of the Kentucky River (she and a slave woman were the two women on the trip), and her first child was said to be the first white child born in Kentucky.[7]

William and Susannah participated in the various adventures of the Kentucky frontier. When Daniel Boone was captured by Indians, William brought Susannah and her mother and most of her siblings to live in North Carolina and returned in time to participate in the defense of Fort Boonesborough. After that siege, Daniel brought them all back to Kentucky. William was received a bullet wound through the back of his neck during the relief of Bryan's Station in 1782 and survived.[8] They had ten children, all of whom came with them in 1799 to the Spanish territory of Upper Louisiana (present-day Missouri). They settled near where the Femme Osage Creek entered the Missouri River. Susannah died about a year after they arrived from a “bilious fever.”[9] From their ten children, they would eventually have over 75 grandchildren. 

Their marriage seems to have been somewhat troubled. Decades later there would be rumors of some degree of unchaste behavior on Susannah’s part early on in their marriage. Faragher quotes interviews with Josiah Collins (c. 1840s) and Nathaniel Hart, Jr. (c. 1843-44) to that effect, although he adds, "but another old Kentucky settler declared that he had never seen any evidence of lewd behavior, and that when he knew her at Boonesborough, she seemed 'a clever, pretty, well behaved woman.' What seems clear is that Susy was a high-spirited girl ... and such women came in for their share of gossip."[10] It was also said by several relatives that William came to treat his wife badly and to whip her (and that Daniel gave him a whipping when he found out).[11] In any case, William’s drinking to excess and bad temper increased after Susannah’s death.[12] This led to William’s death at his house in 1804 when he was shot in self-defense by his son-in-law, James Davis.[13]

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[1] Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 115.

[2] John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), 110.

[3] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 75.

[4] My Father, Daniel Boone, 45-46. 

[5] Spraker, 115-116

[6] Faragher, 110-113.

[7] Faragher, 127; My Father, Daniel Boone, 46. 

[8] My Father, Daniel Boone, 69, 75.

[9] Meredith Mason Brown, Frontiersman (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2008), 239. 

[10] Faragher, 110. 

[11] Faragher, 286-287. 

[12] Brown, 239; Faragher, 287.

[13] Brown, 239; Faragher, 287.

Israel Boone (1759-1782)

Israel Boone was the second oldest child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. He was born on January 25, 1759 in North Carolina and died on August 19, 1782 at Blue Licks, Kentucky.[1] He lived 23 years, 6 months, 25 days. 

Israel was 16 years old when his father brought him and the rest of the family to Kentucky in 1775. Israel generally lived with his family until his death at the Battle of Blue Licks, although he had acquired land of his own.[2] 

In 1782, the Boones were living at Boone's Station, which was about six miles away from where they had first settled in Fort Boonesborough. In August, a large force of what turned out to be 300 Indians and 60 Canadians made a feint at Hoy's Station and then besieged Bryan's Station. The call went out to rally the militia. 

When the news reached the Boones, Israel was recovering from a fever. There are conflicting accounts on whether Daniel tried to dissuade Israel from coming or exhorted him to come.[3] In any case, despite his stiff neck, Israel joined the militia unit that was led by his father, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Boone. When the militia units under Boone, Todd, and Trigg arrived at Bryan's Station, they found that the war party had left, unable to take the fort. With more militia under Benjamin Logan on their way, those who had already arrived decided to pursue the enemy.

These 182 Kentuckians were caught in an ambush when they crossed the Licking River at Blue Licks. Even though about 100 of the Indians had gone home, the rest still outnumbered and outmaneuvered the militia who walked into the trap. When Daniel realized their danger, he helped Israel on a horse and told him to flee. Instead of leaving right away, Israel waited for his father to get his horse, firing at the Indians, saying "Father, I won't leave you," and was shot through the heart.[4] Daniel himself barely escaped. About 75 of the militia men were killed. Daniel later returned to the battlefield with others and buried his son. For the rest of his life, he was "deeply affected, even to tears, when he spoke of the Blue Licks defeat and the death of his son."[5]

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[1] Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 65.

[2] Meredith Mason Brown, Frontiersman (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2008), 166.

[3] John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), 223. Israel's sister-in-law Olive said that Daniel and the rest of the family tried to dissuade Israel, while her daughter Delinda said that Daniel reproved his initial reluctance and exhorted him to come. 

[4] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 77-80; Spraker, 65.

[5] My Father, Daniel Boone, 78.