Jesse was a baby when the Boones first attempted to move to Kentucky in 1773 and was two years old when they settled at Fort Boonesborough in 1775. He grew up on the Kentucky frontier and then moved with the family in 1789 to Point Pleasant (now in West Virginia). During the summer of 1790, 17-year-old Jesse traveled in a canoe with six armed friends from Point Pleasant to what is now Charleston, West Virginia to acquire a marriage license.[2] On their journey, they almost encountered a band of Shawnee warriors who attacked Coal Fort an hour or so after they passed by (the fort, also known as Fort Tackett, was attacked and burned on August 26, 1790). Having acquired the marriage license, Jesse married 18-year-old Chloe Van Bibber (1772-1822), a daughter of John Van Bibber (her cousin Olive later married Jesse's brother Nathan). Jesse and Chloe went on to have nine children. During the early 1790s Jesse fought a couple times as Indians attacked him and other men working in the common fields outside of Point Pleasant.[3] The smallpox swept through Point Pleasant while he was living there in 1793 and his infant firstborn child named Jemima died from it.[4]
In 1797, Jesse and his family followed other Boones to the area near present-day Carlisle, Kentucky, and then again in 1799 to the Little Sandy River near Greenup, Kentucky. In the fall of 1797, he and his brother Nathan and brother-in-law Flanders went hunting together in eastern Kentucky and they killed 156 bears, selling the meat, oil, and skins. After moving to Greenup, Jesse became the inspector of the saltworks on the Little Sandy River and the Justice of the Kentucky County Court for Greenup.[5] During the War of 1812, he was the aide to General Joseph Desha on General Harrison's 1813 campaign to Canada and fought at the battle of the Thames, an American victory in which Tecumseh was killed.[6] Lilburn Boggs, who married Jesse's daughter Panthea in 1823, later recounted,
he was at the Battle of the Thames. This I know personally as I was myself there at the same time & met with him frequently. I was then about 17 or 18 years of age, he joined our Company & requested permission to fight in our ranks at the “skirmish” (the day before the main battle) at the bridge across the Thames[.] his own Brigade was in the rear that day but hearing the firing upfront he got permission to leave & joined the troops in front[.] our boys were delighted to have him join our company & he was joyfully welcomed.[7]
Jesse moved from Greenup, Kentucky to Montgomery County, Missouri (near Loutre Lick and present-day Mineola) in the spring of 1818.[8] He was elected in 1820 to be the representative of Montgomery County in the first session of Missouri's House of Representatives.[9] He was serving there as it met in St. Louis when his father died on September 26, 1820. Jesse himself "was taken sick during the session and died a few days after the adjournment, the corps was taken to his home in Montgomery Co & burried the day after Christmas."[10]
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[1] Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 125; and Draper Manuscript, Volume 23, Letter 27, Lilburn W. Boggs to Lyman Draper (January 18, 1857).
[2] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 90-91.
[3] My Father, Daniel Boone, 95-96.
[4] Boggs (see citation above). He notes that "(it was a girl and named Jemima on the record it is printed 'Jeremiah' a mistake of the printer)".
[5] My Father, Daniel Boone, 102, 104-105. See also, Draper Manuscript 6S13-16, quoted in Spraker, 125.
[6] My Father, Daniel Boone, 105; and Boggs.
[7] Boggs.
[8] My Father, Daniel Boone, 93; and Boggs.
[9] Spraker, 125.
[10] Boggs.
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