Daniel Boone - American Hero

In the cemetery stands a monument to Daniel and Rebecca Boone, erected by a grateful Commonwealth in 1860. Their remains had been brought back from Missouri and reburied September 13, 1845. A tribute to that outstanding frontiersman and his wife, who pioneered in carving out a wilderness empire ~ now Kentucky. 

Daniel Boone (October 22, 1734 – September 26, 1820) 

was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the settled part of Thirteen Colonies (This region legally belonged to both the Commonwealth of Virginia and to the American Indian Tribes.) Despite some resistance from American Indian tribes such as the Shawnee, in 1778 Boone blazed his Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains - from North Carolina and Tennessee into Kentucky. There he founded the village of Boonesborough, Kentucky, one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachians. Before the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 European people migrated to Kentucky/Virginia by following the route marked by Boone.

Boone was a militia officer during the Revolutionary War (1775 – 82), which in Kentucky was fought primarily between the European settlers and the British-aided Native Americans. Boone was captured by Shawnee Indians in 1778, who after a while adopted him into their tribe, but he later left the Indians and returned to Boonesborough in order to help defend the European settlements in Kentucky/Virginia.

Boone was elected to the first of his three terms in the Virginia General Assembly during the Revolutionary War, and fought in the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782, which was one of the final battles of the American Revolution. (Lord Cornwallis and all of his army of British troops had surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, Virginia, in mid-October 1781.)

Following the war, Boone worked as a surveyor and merchant, but he then went deeply into debt as a land speculator in Kentucky. Frustrated with all the legal problems resulting from his land claims, in 1799 Boone emigrated to eastern Missouri, where he spent most of the last two decades of his life (1800–20). When Boone and his family settled near Defiance, Missouri, that land west of the Mississippi River belonged to the French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, and not to the United States. That huge area of land was bought from the French by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.

Boone remains an iconic figure in American history. He was a legend in his own lifetime, especially after an account of his adventures was published in 1784, making him famous in America and Europe. After his death, he was frequently the subject of heroic tall tales and works of fiction. His adventures—real and legendary—were influential in creating the archetypal Western hero of American folklore. In American popular culture, he is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen. The epic Daniel Boone mythology often overshadows the historical details of his life.

Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer

Sterling Point Books: Daniel Boone: The Opening of the Wilderness

Source:  Wikipedia