DANIEL BOONE

Born as a Quaker near Reading, PA, doesn't sound like the beginnings of a famous frontiersman who would help open up the West. But Daniel Boone was all of that. He was born on November 2, 1734, the son of Squire and Sarah (Morgan) Boone. For his first 16 years he raised cattle on his father's farm in a sparsely populated area. In 1750 the family, with the 6 children who still lived at home, headed south to North Carolina to find rich, cheap farmland they had heard about. Daniel never took farming seriously, however. He loved to roam.

In 1755, he returned to Pennsylvania with General Braddock during the French and Indian War. In 1767 and in 1769 he went into the Kentucky region and began the adventures that would make him famous. Traveling through the Cumberland Gap in 1775, he and his followers built a small fort named Boonesborough in what would become the county of Kentucky, Virginia, and finally a state of its own.

In 1778, Boone was captured by the Shawnees but managed to escape to warn the settlers at Boonesborough of the attack. In 1780, he was chosen for the legislature, and he also served some time as sheriff, county lieutenant, and deputy surveyor. He lived for 10 years in Point Pleasant, Virginia, after his land holdings had been invalidated due to improper registration, and in 1798 Boone moved into what is now Missouri. He died there near St. Charles on September 26, 1820. Daniel Boone became famous for his exploits, and for some he never had, in literature of the time by Lord Byron in Don Juan, as well as by John Filson and Daniel Bryan. James Fenimore Cooper used him as a model for his Leatherstocking Tales. These writers made Boone larger than life, and created a legendary figure over most of the world.