Daniel Boone

**Daniel Boone** (1734 – 1820) was an American explorer and frontiersman. He is probably most famous for exploring Kentucky when it was not yet a US state.

In 1769, he made the Wilderness Road, a trail through the Appalachian Mountains from North Carolina and Tennessee and through Kentucky. He spent the last 20 years of his life in Missouri.

## Early life 
Boone was born on November 2, 1734 (N.S.). Boone's grandfather, George Boone, a Quaker, immigrated from England in 1717.

Boone was born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the son of Squire Boone and Sarah Morgan.

That was at the Battle of the Monongahela in which Colonel George Washington rallied the British and the Virginia militia into an organized retreat. In 1758, the British had several victories over the French, but their Cherokee allies also became tired of their poor treatment by the British and the Americans.

## Kentucky 
Boone first heard of the lands of Kentucky while he was serving with General Braddock in 1755 from was John Findley, another member of the wagon train. Findley had been there ti trade at a Shawnee village called Blue Lick. He made another attempt to reach the eastern Kentucky in 1763 but had to turn back. In 1775, he founded the settlement of Boonesborough, Kentucky. Kentucky was no longer the wilderness that it had been when he had first come there. He now wanted to discover new lands and so he was drawn to the wilds of what is now eastern Missouri. Boone served as syndic and commandant until 1804, when the area became part of the Louisiana Purchase. His land grants from the Spanish government had been largely based on verbal agreements, but the former lieutenant-governor, Zenon Trudeau, made the promise in writing, and Boone's lands were confirmed. However, Boone had not made the necessary improvements under the law and so the lands were again taken away. Around 1810, Boone sent a petition to Congress to restore his lands. It passed a special bill, which was signed by U.S. President James Monroe on 10 February 1814.

Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren, and continued to hunt and trap there as much as his health and energy levels permitted. He died on 26 September 1820 just before sunrise. His body was taken to Charette, Louisiana Territory (now Marthasville, Missouri) and was buried next to his wife, Rebecca. and took them to Frankfort, Kentucky to be buried in a tomb there. Reverend Philip Fall made a plaster cast of the skull of the body that had been removed from Missouri. The plaster cast was then presented to the Kentucky State Historical Society. Wolf said that the cast made by Fall did not provide enough evidence to be certain, but several clues also point to the conclusion that it may not be Boone. Wolf stated that he did not believe the skull shape, slope of the brow, the brow ridges, and occipital bone to be Caucasian. The body removed from Missouri was that of a "large and robust man." According to Boone's brother-in-law Daniel Bryan described Boone as having a height of about 5&nbsp;ft 8 or 9 in tall, blonde hair, and blue eyes.

Several Missouri historians have stated that the bones taken from the Missouri cemetery were actually those of a slave. When Boone died at 85, the gravediggers discovered that an unmarked body had been buried next to Rebecca Boone (died 1813). The stranger was left in his grave and Daniel was buried at the foot of his wife's grave, but 16 years later, a gravestone was mistakenly placed over the stranger's grave. When the party from Kentucky took the bodies in 1845, it took the bodies of Rebecca and the stranger next to her who, was wrongly marked as Daniel Boone. Both states claim to have the actual grave of Daniel Boone.

## Notes 
## References 
## Other websites 
* Daniel Boone; State Historical Society of Missouri 
* The Daniel Boone Homestead, Birdsboro, Pennsylvania
* Daniel Boone and The History of Fort Boonesborough
* Boone's Bones Brouhaha