The Daniel Boone Families Come to Missouri

by Margot Ford McMillen

The photograph is of an oil painting titled Daniel Boone Escorting Setlers through the Cumberland Gap. It was painted by George Caleb Bingham in 1851-52. It was given to the Washington Univeristy Gallery of Art, St. Louis, in 1890 by Nathaniel Phillips.

Early explorers relied on their wits, skill and sometimes pure luck to make new homes on the frontier

In the days before cities, schools and shopping malls, Missouri was a land of forests, prairies, creeks and rivers. The Native Americans who lived here traveled on waterways and old paths they had known all their lives.

When the land was settled by new Americans, they followed the same unmapped paths and waterways. These explorers had unlimited curiosity and desire to discover new places. They knew how to survive in the woods, and they were drawn by the prospect that a fortune might be waiting-just over the next hill.

The earliest explorers earned their keep by hunting deer, bears and beaver. Beaver skins were most valuable because the fur was shipped to Europe and made into top hats-the day's fashion for wealthy Europeans. As they hunted, the explorers made maps of the land and noted resources for the families who would follow.

Some of the first to arrive in Missouri were the grown sons of Daniel Boone. Daniel Boone had become famous as a pioneer in Kentucky. His adventures had been written about and exaggerated in a best-selling book, and his name was well-known.

By the 1790s, Kentucky was settled, and the Boones looked for a new frontier. One son, Daniel Morgan Boone, had hunted in Missouri. He liked the region well enough to build a cabin near the mouth of Femme Osage Creek.

Missouri had just a few towns, so it suited the wilderness-loving Daniel Boone. His sons wanted to build fine homes and raise families, but Daniel Boone said he wanted only "to hunt for beavers in some unfrequented corner of the woods."

In the spring of 1799, the Boone families began preparing to move. The men cut down huge trees to make dugout canoes to carry people and supplies. The biggest was 60 feet long and 5 feet wide, built in the style learned from Native Americans. Using special tools, the men burned and cut away the tree's interior. Then they shaped the bow and stern to cut through the water.

This cabin was photographed in th elate 1800s in St. Charles County. It is no longer standing, but historians think it may have been built by Boone. Photo courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

Daniel Boone's wife, Rebecca, and the other women had other work. Helped by the children, they gathered things they would need to start life in a new place. Kitchen pots, garden tools, seeds, gun powder and necessities such as flour and salt were prepared and packed into stoneware jars or other waterproof containers. There was little room for luxuries or toys.

By September, the boats were loaded and the Boones started off, along with cousins and friends. On their way, Boone's two daughters and their families joined them, bringing 17 children. Altogether, 15 families made the journey.

Daniel Boone, along with a hired man and some slaves, traveled next to the river on foot, driving a herd of hogs, cattle, hunting dogs and horses. On land, they watched for Osage Indians.

Boone respected the Indians. He said they were "kind and generous," and they knew where to find game, good water and food. They had lived on the land all their lives and knew more about it than anyone. Boone's code, when meeting Indians in the woods, was "Always meet them frankly and fearlessly, showing not the slightest sign of fear or trepidation. By kind acts and just treatment, keep on the friendly side of them . . ." Boone was disappointed when the families met no Osage on their trip.

After a month of travel, the pioneers were exhausted, but they had made it to St. Louis. People turned out to see the famous Daniel Boone. "He rode a sad looking horse . . . a rifle on his shoulder, leather hunting shirt, and a couple of hunting knives in his belt, accompanied by three or four hunting dogs . . ." wrote someone who saw the arrival.

The Boone family house that still stands today was constructed with limestone. It has five fireplaces, and the walls are two and a half feet thick.

The territory was under the government of Spain at the time, and the Spanish organized a welcoming parade with flags and drums. They offered the families land around the Femme Osage Creek and made Daniel Boone a "syndic"-the top officer of the district.

Daniel Boone and Rebecca moved into one side of Daniel Morgan Boone's home. There were new places to explore and plenty of family to keep them company. When Daniel Boone went hunting for several months at a time, Rebecca's children and grandchildren kept her busy.

Women and children had a hard life on the frontier. While the men went on long hunting trips, women were responsible for everything at home. Olive Vanbibber Boone, the wife of Daniel's young son Nathan, was a typical pioneer. Her life as a Boone started in Kentucky when she met Nathan. He had left with the others on the trip to Missouri but couldn't stand leaving 16 year-old Olive behind. A few days after the group set out, Nathan turned back.

After a hasty wedding, the newlyweds tried to catch up, but when one of their horses was crippled, they had to stop. They were about a month behind the rest. "My husband rowed and I steered and held the horses . . . " Olive later remembered, "It was rather a perilous trip for so young a couple."

Olive learned quickly to take care of herself. When Nathan was away on a hunt the first winter of their marriage, their log cabin flooded. The dirt floor turned to mud.

Olive was pregnant, and her only company and help was a young slave girl. The two of them cut down trees and built a wood floor for the cabin. They also built a chimney with sticks and mud so they could have a fireplace.

Nathan was surprised by the high quality of their work. He commented all his life that Olive's chimney was the best one on the place.

Over the years, Olive and Nathan raised 14 children. As soon as they could walk, the children learned the skills they needed for pioneer life-to take care of crops, cut wood for fuel, haul water from the creek, cook, tend livestock and hunt wild animals. There was no school. Most frontier people were illiterate.

Daniel Boone saw major changes in Missouri. The territory moved from Spanish control to French in 1800. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase and bought the territory for the Americans. Land became more valuable, and some old settlers lost the title given to them by the Spanish. Daniel Boone had never lived on his claim, so he lost it.

With new settlers coming in, Boone's sons saw a chance to make money. Settlers needed salt to preserve animal hides and meat. On their hunting trips, the Boones had seen salty springs about 200 miles from home. They took huge iron kettles to the site to boil the water away and harvest salt for sale. Merchants soon beat a trail-the Boone's Lick Trail-to the salt works. Towns were built nearby, including Boonesboro and Boonville. The area soon came to be called "The Boonslick." The name is still used.

Boone recognized that civilization was coming to his "unfrequented corner of the woods." In the winter of 1810-11, he took his last long hunt. With Derry Coburn, a young slave who had become a close companion, and with other friends and fur traders, Boone traveled up the Missouri and returned with a good haul of nearly sixty beaver skins. Over a six-month hunt, he said that he made it all the way to the Yellowstone River.

Daniel Boone's happiest times were his years in Missouri. Finally, too old to hunt, practically blind and in pain from rheumatism, the great explorer spent his last years surrounded by family. He ordered a coffin and kept it in his home. It gave his granddaughters the creeps, but he took the coffin down every so often to polish it, whistling happily while he looked it over.

Daniel Boone died at home in Missouri. "I am worn out," he said, "my time has come." Family members gave him a shave, cut his hair and brushed his teeth. Olive sang him some of his favorite songs. He died just after sunrise on September 27, 1820.

Daniel Boone had requested burial next to Rebecca, who died in 1813. He had picked out the site, an isolated spot near the Femme Osage Creek in the woods. Within a few years, books, poems and songs about Daniel Boone had made him even more famous. He is still the best-known hero of the American frontier.

Who's Buried in Daniel Boone's Grave?

In time, the small graveyard of Daniel and Rebecca became crowded with other relatives and slaves. It was a remote place, rarely visited and soon was covered with briars. In the 1830s, family members decided to put gravestones on the graves, but the area was never well-marked or landscaped.

In the 1840s, a cemetery company in Frankfort, Kentucky, wanted to move Daniel Boone's body to a beautiful spot overlooking the city. They said they would provide a monument and make it a place people could visit.

The offer touched off a battle between Missouri and Kentucky, but some of the Boone descendants agreed on the plan. Using the gravestones as guides, they dug up pieces of coffin, shroud, bone and teeth and took them to their new resting place. There was an elaborate funeral in Kentucky, and the remains were re-buried. Back in Missouri, the old grave stones fell over and later were given to the museum at Central Methodist College.

Some say that Daniel and Rebecca still are here in Missouri, and that the diggers removed and re-buried the wrong remains. Others have demanded the return of the bodies to the state where Daniel Boone was happy at last.

You can visit the house where Daniel Boone died, and the Boone grave site. They are both just off Highway 94 in St. Charles and Warren counties.