Daniel Boone
Birth: 2 November 1734
Death: 26 September 1820

Immortalized in the writings of President Teddy Roosevelt, the poetry of Lord Byron, and a handful of films and television series, Daniel Boone was among the most famous of all the early-American pioneers. Born into a family of English immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania, Daniel was introduced to the frontier at the age of fifteen when his family moved to North Carolina. It is difficult to imagine from our modern-day perspective, but in the mid-eighteenth century, the line that divided the civilized East from the wild, wild, West ran through Kentucky. The civilized areas of that era followed a strip down the Atlantic coast, from New England to Georgia, extending only a few hundred miles inland. The New World was a wide-open land, but the population was growing. America needed explorers, and Daniel Boone was the right person, born at the right time.

Daniel began exploring the forest and mountains near his home when he was a young boy, quickly becoming adept at the frontier skills that would serve well in his later years. Boone became an expert hunter, fisherman, and trapper, and was soon associating with the friendly Native American tribes in the area. A stint in the French Indian Wars at the age of twenty did nothing to satisfy his wanderlust, nor did his marriage a few years later. When Boone was thirty-three, and at a position in life when most men were settling down, he went on an expedition into Kentucky with fellow frontiersman, John Finley. Finley spun fascinating tales of adventures in the western forests, and Boone's previous interests in exploration solidified into his life's passion.

In 1769, Boone set out on a trip that would take him nearly two years to complete. During this exploration, he would travel as far west as the Falls of Ohio, the site of modern Louisville, Kentucky. Over the course of several trips through Kentucky, Boone built a log-cabin home in Harrodsburg, and followed the Kentucky River to its source. In 1775, Boone joined Colonel Richard Henderson and a group of twenty-eight settlers in an excursion through the Cumberland Gap of the Appalachian Mountains. Their goal was to boost Kentucky as the fourteenth American colony, and create a trail to open up further western expansion. The group built outposts in Boonsboro, Harrod's Town, and Benjamin Logan's; and established the Wilderness Trail-which soon became America's primary route to the west-but their effort to establish Kentucky as a separate colony failed, and the lands that Boone explored became a part of Virginia.

Daniel Boone played a small role in the American Revolution where he fought as a captain of the local militia. Though he fought bravely, defending a wilderness fort against an attack from the combined forces of the British and the Shawnee Indians, he was far more noteworthy in his role as an explorer and frontiersman, leaving his mark and his family name on the many lands he tamed. From a genealogical perspective, the Boone family tree has grown far and wide. Daniel was the sixth of eleven children, and fathered ten children of his own. Numerous researchers that have traced their roots through eighteenth century Kentucky will find that Daniel Boone has a place in their family tree, even if his branch is distant and far removed.

Ironically, even though Boone played a central role in the western expansion of the United States, he never permanently profited from the programs that provided land to pioneer families. Between 1783 and 1785, Boone was granted 7 plots of land in Fayette County, totaling several thousand acres. Then, when Kentucky was made a state in 1792, legal challenges arose that questioned many settlers' rights to the land, and Boone lost all his land due to lack of a clear title. Missouri properties granted to Boone by the French government were also lost to him when the area was sold to the U.S. as part of the Louisiana Purchase. In February 1810, Boone petitioned the federal government for another land grant, in recognition of his services in opening new territories. For reasons unknown, the petition was not granted. Like a secular American Moses, Daniel Boone had brought the people into a new land, but was denied entry. True to his spirit, Boone would not be held back, and he moved onto a plot of land that had been granted to one of his sons. There, he trapped, hunted, and fished to the end of his years-landless, but forever a part of the land that he loved.