Nathan Boone (1781-1856)

Nathan Boone was the tenth and youngest child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. He was born on March 2, 1781 at Boone’s Station, Kentucky and died on October 16, 1856 in Green County, Missouri.[1] He lived 75 years, 7 months, and 14 days. 

When Nathan was born, his father was away serving in the Virginia legislature (Kentucky at that time was part of Virginia). In fact, Daniel Boone was still in Charlottesville when on June 4th the city was taken by the British, and he was taken into custody for a couple days by Colonel Tarleton. When Daniel returned home to Boone's Station, he found that not only had his wife given birth, but so had his daughters Susannah and Jemima. Thus, they decided to see if Daniel could discern which was his child. He “was presented successively with the grandchildren, which he said were not his, but quickly recognized the right one.”[2]

Nathan was eight years old when the family moved in 1789 to Point Pleasant in present-day West Virginia. When he was ten years old, he traveled with his father and mother to Richmond, Virginia while his father served in the legislature for a few months.[3] When he was about 13 years old, he went to stay with the Hays and Callaways, his sisters' families, in Kentucky. There he attended a school run by a Baptist clergyman, Rev. John Rice.[4] After a year or two he returned to his parents in Point Pleasant. 

Nathan learned to hunt at an early age. On a hunt just north of the Ohio River in the fall of 1794, Nathan killed his first several deer (he had already hunted squirrels and birds). He and his father narrowly escaped hostile Indians on the fifth night of the hunt.[5] In 1795, Nathan moved with his parents back to Kentucky, settling on Brushy Fork near present-day Carlisle, KY. He went on hunts that became longer and longer, in search of buffalo, deer, and bear. In 1798 he settled on his own place near the mouth of the Little Sandy River in northeastern Kentucky, and his parents moved to his place later that year.[6]

When the Boones left for Spanish Louisiana (Missouri) in 1799, eighteen-year-old Nathan stopped to get a marriage license and then headed back 75 miles to the Van Bibber home and married sixteen-year-old Olive Van Bibber on September 26th, 1799.[7] A week later, the two teenagers traveled mostly by themselves to the Femme Osage settlement, about 25 miles upriver from St. Charles (MO), acquiring 680 acres for a horse, bridle, and saddle.[8] The couple went on to have fourteen children: eleven girls and three boys.[9] On this land, they would build a log house, and then a “commodious stone building,” in which his father would die in 1820.[10] This stone house can still be visited today. Daniel Boone lived with Nathan from 1804 until 1813, and then for most of the time from 1816 to 1820.[11]

Nathan continued to hunt deer and trap beaver during these years. For example, he and a friend trapped 800 beaver skins in 1802 and sold them for $2.50 each.[12] He and his brother, Daniel Morgan Boone, also operated Boone’s Lick from 1806 to 1810, making about 25 or 30 bushels of salt per day.[13] This led to the development of the Booneslick Trail from St. Charles to Boone's Lick.[14] In 1808, Nathan guided William Clark and his men along that route and assisted with the establishment of Fort Osage. During the War of 1812, Nathan served as a captain of a company of rangers, scouting and fighting in Missouri and Illinois.[15] In the post-war years, Nathan was busy managing his farm and a horse-run mill in St. Charles, producing government surveys nearby and abroad,[16] and serving in the 1820 Missouri Constitutional Convention.[17] He also began to accumulate more slaves, from one in 1817 to nine in 1830.[18] 

In the June of 1832 he began to muster a company of rangers from St. Charles County, of which he was the captain, for the Blackhawk War.[19] His company was formed too late to fight in that war, but they were sent to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).[20] When their enlistments were up, Nathan accepted a commission as a captain in the U.S. Dragoons, in which he would serve until 1853, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.[21] Most of this service focused on keeping the peace among various native tribes, and it took Nathan to what is now Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Texas.[22] His skills and experiences had prepared him well for this work, which included expeditions in the wilderness and surveying boundaries. He was also described by one of his soldiers as a “good, Christian man” who would kneel in prayer on his buffalo robe in his tent.[23] In 1837 he sold his property along the Femme Osage for $6,120 and moved his family to Ash Grove, Missouri, closer to where he was working.[24] This home can also be visited today. Nathan formerly retired from the military in 1853 at the age of 72 and passed away in 1856. His wife, Olive, died two years later in 1858.

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[1] Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 126.
[2] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 73. When the British took Charlottesville, Daniel Boone had remained behind with Jack Jouett to load up on wagons some of the public records. As they walked away from the British, Jouett slipped up by calling Daniel Boone "Captain Boone." This caused the British to take him into custody.
[3] My Father, Daniel Boone, 89-90, 158.
[4] My Father, Daniel Boone, 97. 
[5] My Father, Daniel Boone, 98-99.

[6] My Father, Daniel Boone, 101-104.
[7] My Father, Daniel Boone, 111-112.
[8] Spraker, 127; My Father, Daniel Boone, 112-113, 121. 

[9] R. Douglas Hurt, Nathan Boone and the American Frontier (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 218.
[10] My Father, Daniel Boone, 125, 138-139.
[11] My Father, Daniel Boone, 119, 138; Robert Morgan, Boone: A Biography (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007), 432.
[12] My Father, Daniel Boone, 120. Thus, each of them got $1,000 in a day where an average day's wage was around a dollar.
[13] My Father, Daniel Boone, 126-127.
[14] Spraker, 126.
[15] Spraker, 127; My Father, Daniel Boone, 129-133. 

[16] Hurt, 111-112, 129.
[17] Spraker, 126. Hurt, 113-118.
[18] Dakota Russell, “African-American Slavery and Freedom on the Nathan Boone Farm,” (Ash Grove, MO: Nathan Boone Homestead State Historic Site, 2007), 4. The number of slaves would fluctuate over the years between one and thirteen.
[19] Hurt, 135.
[20] Hurt, 138-139.
[21] Hurt, 142, 147. Spraker, 127.
[22] For more information on this aspect of his life, see Hurt, 140-216. A briefer overview can be found at "Boone, Nathan 1781-1856" in the online Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. 
[23] Gen. Abraham Buford, “Religion and the Turf” Wallace’s Monthly vol. VIII, num. 5, June 1882, 331 (available online at Google books). Buford wrote, "My first captain in the dragoon service was Nathan Boone, who was a son of Daniel Boone. Captain Nathan Boone was a good, Christian man. I have often seen him kneel in his tent on his buffalo robe and pray fervently, at which I, a young dashing dragoon, would laugh in derision at what I thought was the weakness of the old man. I now rejoice in the fact that I have lived to see the day when I am convinced that the weakness was on my part and not that of the old Christian pioneer." 
[24] Hurt, 185.

William Boone (1775)

William Boone was the ninth child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. He was born in North Carolina on June 20, 1775 and died in infancy.[1]

When Daniel Boone set out to blaze the Wilderness Road and establish Fort Boonesborough in Kentucky in early 1775, his wife remained at home in North Carolina with most of the children, expecting their ninth child. After establishing the fort, he returned to his family around the time William was born. Sadly, William died shortly afterwards. Daniel then took the rest of the family to Kentucky in August, arriving at the fort on September 8th.

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[1] Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 65. Spraker cites Daniel Boone's Bible Record. 

Jesse Boone (1773-1820)

Jesse Bryan Boone was the eighth child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. He was born on May 23, 1773 in North Carolina and he died on December 22, 1820 in Montgomery County, Missouri.[1] He lived 47 years, 6 months, and 29 days. 

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.

Daniel Morgan Boone (1769-1839)

Daniel Morgan Boone was the seventh child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. He was born on December 23, 1769 in North Carolina and died on July 13, 1839 in Jackson County, Missouri.[1] He lived 71 years, 1 month, 19 days. His middle name was the maiden name of his grandmother (Daniel Boone's mother), Sarah (Morgan) Boone.

He was born near the head of the Yadkin River in North Carolina (about 12 miles west of present-day Wilkesboro, NC), 7.5 months after his father set out on his first and longest long hunt in Kentucky.[2] He was five years old when they settled in Kentucky. When he was 21 years old in 1791, he and his younger brother Jesse were left in charge of their father’s business in Point Pleasant (present-day West Virginia) while the rest of the family accompanied Daniel Boone as he went to Richmond for his service in the Virginia legislature.[3] The next year, while he was hunting with his father a mile north of the Ohio River, he was shot at by hostile Indians and chased for a half a mile.[4] He hunted south of the Ohio River after that. 

Around 1795 he went exploring and hunting down the Mississippi River and the upper waters of the Tombigbee River (in the present-day states of Mississippi and Alabama). He did not like that country, but he heard about Missouri during the trip.[5] At the time, Missouri was Spanish territory, part of Upper Louisiana. He traveled there in 1797 and scouted out the Femme Osage valley, discussing the idea of a settlement in that region led by his father with Lieutenant Governor Zenon Trudeau. In 1798 he returned to Kentucky and went out to Missouri again with his nephew, Philip Goe, Jr., and three slaves. “He built a good house and left his Negroes to spend the winter in clearing land and preparing for the spring crop.”[6] He brought the main party from Kentucky to Missouri in the fall of 1799. His parents and his brother Nathan and Nathan's wife Olive would all stay with him that first winter.[7] His parents would live with him until about 1804.[8] His house was near present-day Matson, Missouri (his property included the land on which Matson stands). 

On March 2, 1800, Daniel Morgan Boone married Sarah Griffin Lewis (Jan. 29, 1786 - June 19, 1850) at St. Charles Borromeo Church. Sarah and her family had come from Virginia, settling in the Bon Homme settlement around 1795 (present-day Chesterfield). The church record of the wedding has been preserved, recording that Daniel professed "the Presbyterian Religion" and Sarah professed "the Protestant Religion" and that they had their parents' consent.[9] Five years later, the couple took in five of his nieces and nephews, raising them after the death of their mother, Rebecca (Boone) Goe. The following year, Sarah gave birth to the first of their twelve children.

Over the years, Daniel Morgan Boone was a hunter, trapper, land and road surveyor, salt maker, colonel of the militia,[10] captain of a company of rangers in the War of 1812,[11] sawmiller, and federal farmer. A fort was built around his house during the War of 1812, and settlers in the area would take refuge there in times of alarm.[12] He promoted the settlement of the town of Missouriton on his father’s old property along the Missouri River, and by 1818 had a horse-powered sawmill in that town. In 1819 he sold his land and moved to land near Loutre Lick in Montgomery County, MO. In 1820 he moved his family to the other side of the Missouri River and became involved in the pine logging business, owning and managing sawmills on the Piney Forks of the Gasconade River in the Ozarks. Four slaves, including Derry, worked under Daniel Morgan in this venture.[13] 

In 1827, Daniel Morgan Boone moved his family to Kansas, where he worked for the federal government from 1827 to 1831 as an agriculturalist among the Kaw tribe, teaching them how to farm. His son later wrote, he "was appointed, in 1827, farmer of the Kansas Indians, by General Clark, superintendent of Indian affairs. The Kansas Indians were then located at the mouth of the Big Blue, in Kansas. My father settled seven miles west of where Lawrence now stands, on the north bank of the Kaw river..."[14] His youngest son, Napoleon, is said to be the "first white child born in Kansas."[15] He then moved to Jackson County, Missouri and died of cholera at the age of 69 in 1839.[16]

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[1] Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 123.

[2] Lyman Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998), 208.

[3] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 89-90.

[4] My Father, Daniel Boone, 96.

[5] My Father, Daniel Boone, 107.

[6] My Father, Daniel Boone, 108. 

[7] My Father, Daniel Boone, 113.

[8] Statement to the Federal Land Commission, quoted in John Bakeless, Daniel Boone, Master of the Wilderness (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989 [1939]), 377

[9] Quoted in Spraker, 123-124 and in Bakeless, 369-370.

[10] Wm. S. Bryan and Robert Rose, A History of the Pioneer Families of Missouri (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1977 [1876]), 7. See My Father, Daniel Boone for more information on his hunts.

[11] R. Douglas Hurt, Nathan Boone and the American Frontier (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 90.

[12] My Father, Daniel Boone, 133. Nathan adds, "Twice my father, mother, and my family fled there in the dead of night. There were Indian alarms from 1811 until into 1815." 

[13] For much of this paragraph see: Lynn Morrow, “Daniel Morgan Boone’s Missing Years: Sending Ozarks Pine to St. Louis” (Southeast Missouri State University Press) Semopress.com. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20230320215555/http://www.semopress.com/daniel-morgan-boones-missing-years-sending-ozarks-pine-to-st-louis/.

[14] A letter by Daniel Boone III, 1879 in Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society, Volume 8 (Topeka, KS: Geo. A. Clark, State Printer, 1904), 433-434. See also the chapter on Jefferson County’s early history in William G. Cutler, History of the State of Kansas, Kancoll.org. Accessed July 6, 2026. https://www.kancoll.org/books/cutler/jefferson/jefferson-co-p2.html#EARLY_HISTORY

[15] A letter quoted in Cutler, History of the State of Kansas (see above). 

[16] Carlynn Trout and Kimberly Harper, “Daniel Boone 1769-1839” State Historical Society of Missouri. Shsmo.org, Accessed July 6, 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20170310101623/http://shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/b/boonedm/.

Rebecca (Boone) Goe (1768-1805)

Rebecca (Boone) Goe was the sixth child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. She was born on May 26, 1768 in North Carolina and died on July 14, 1805 in Clark County, Kentucky.[1] She lived 37 years, 1 month, and 18 days.

Rebecca married Philip Goe (1767-1805) around 1785.[2] When Daniel Boone traveled to Philadelphia in 1788 with a load of ginseng, he "left his son-in-law Philip Goe to operate his warehouse and run the business at Limestone" (Maysville, KY).[3] In general, though, Philip seems to have been rather unreliable. A relative later reported that Daniel said that he had provided Philip with “enough for a comfortable start three or four times, but that he would drink and run it out.”[4] 

When Daniel Boone and most of his family headed west in 1799, Philip Goe purchased the Brushy Creek farm where Daniel Boone had been living since 1795 (near present day Carlisle, KY), and Philip and his wife and seven children lived there until 1805. That year Philip “drank himself to death” in March and then Rebecca died at her sister Levina's house in July, being “weakly” and suffering from “consumption.”[5] Her brother, Daniel Morgan Boone, came out to Kentucky and brought back the oldest six children to Missouri, five of whom lived with him and his wife.[6]

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[1] Ella Hazel Spraker, The Boone Family (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Pub., 1993 [1922]), 122.

[2] John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), 236

[3] My Father, Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 82.

[4] Delinda Boone Craig, DM 30C73-74, quoted in Faragher, 236. 

[5] Delinda Boone Craig, DM 30C73-74, quoted in Faragher, 287-288; Spraker, 122; Letter from D.C. Daniel to Lyman Draper (Dec 16t,​ 1853). 

[6] Spraker, 123.

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.

James Boone (1757-1773)

James Boone was the oldest child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. He was born on May 3, 1757 in North Carolina and died on October 10, 1773 in the Clinch Mountains of Virginia.[1] He lived 16 years, 5 months, 7 days.

James learned the ways of the frontier from his boyhood in North Carolina and Virginia. James' younger brother Nathan later said of their father Daniel Boone,

sometimes on his shorter trips, he would take his oldest son, James, out with him. He began taking James on hunts when he was seven or eight years old; and sometimes during a cold, snowy spell, Father would have difficulty in keeping little James comfortable warm and could do so only by hugging him up to him.[2]

James was killed on the Boone family’s first attempt to enter Kentucky in 1773. They were traveling through the Clinch Mountains of Virginia on their way to the Cumberland Gap. James, along with seven others, mostly young men like himself, were attacked by Indians while they camped in Powell's Valley on the northern bank of Wallen’s Creek, three miles away from the main camp.[3] They were catching up after getting additional supplies. Two of them were killed instantly, two were wounded and fled, one was taken captive, and one hid under some driftwood and watched what happened to James Boone and Henry Russell. Olive Boone later recounted, 

In the attack James Boone was wounded through both hips, which were broken. I think young Russell was wounded in the same manner. When the Indians tortured James Boone, they pulled out his toenails and fingernails. He first begged Big Jim to spare him and finally, when being tortured, to kill him at once and put him out of his misery. Young Russell was tortured in the same way. Finally they were both severely stabbed all to pieces and probably tomahawked, which put them out of their misery.[4]

Big Jim had been befriended and shown hospitality by the Boones earlier in North Carolina. He was later killed in battle with Daniel Boone and others in 1786.[5]

When James was killed, the Boones and their friends turned back from their journey to Kentucky. The Boones lived in Virginia for a time. Daniel Boone returned to the site of the massacre on a hunting trip the following year to more securely bury James and Henry Russell, preventing the wolves from disturbing the graves. When a storm arose just after he finished, "Boone felt more dejected, as he used afterwards to relate, than he ever did in all his life ... He could never in after years speak of this affecting incident, even to his own family, without having his feelings deeply stirred within him."[6] This massacre in Powell's Valley was one of the events that culminated in Lord Dunmore's War between the Shawnee and the colony of Virginia in 1774. Daniel Boone served in that war as a scout and officer in the Virginia militia. After that war concluded, the Boones successfully moved to Kentucky in 1775.

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

[2] My Father, Daniel Boone:The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, ed. Neal O. Hammon (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 20.

[3] John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York, NY: Henry Holt and Co., 1992), 92-93.

[4] My Father, Daniel Boone, p. 41.

[5] My Father, Daniel Boone, p. 81.

[6] Lyman Draper, The Life of Daniel Boone (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998), 304-305