Daniel Boone - Youth

Youth

Daniel Boone was of English and Welsh ancestry. Because the Gregorian calendar was adopted during his lifetime, Boone's birth date is sometimes given as November 2, 1734, (the "New Style" date), although Boone himself used the October date. The Boone family belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, disparagingly called "Quakers" and persecuted in England for their dissenting beliefs. Daniel's father, Squire (his first name, not a title) Boone (1696–1765) emigrated from the small town of Bradninch, Devon (near Exeter, England) to Pennsylvania in 1713, to join William Penn's colony of dissenters. Squire Boone's parents, George and Mary Boone, followed their son to Pennsylvania in 1717, and in 1720 built a log cabin at Boonecroft. In 1720, Squire Boone, who worked primarily as a weaver and a blacksmith, married Sarah Morgan (1700–77). Sarah's family were Quakers from Wales, and settled in Towamencin Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania in 1708. In 1731, the Boones moved to the Oley Valley, near the modern city of Reading, Pennsylvania. There they built a log cabin, partially preserved today as the Daniel Boone Homestead. Daniel Boone was born there, the sixth of eleven children.

Daniel Boone spent his early years on what was then the edge of the Pennsylvania frontier. There were several Indian villages nearby. The pacifist Pennsylvania Quakers had good relations with the Indians, but the steady growth of the white population compelled many Indians to move further west. Boone received his first rifle at the age of 12, and he learned to hunt from both local settlers and American Indians, beginning his lifelong love of hunting. Folk tales often emphasized Boone's skills as a hunter. In one story, the young Boone was hunting in the woods with some other boys, when the howl of a panther scattered the boys, except for Boone. He calmly cocked his rifle and shot the predator through the heart just as it leaped at him. As with so many tales about Boone, this may not be true, but it was told so often that it became part of his popular image.

In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community that existed in what is now present day Lower Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child, Sarah, married John Willcockson, a "worldling" (non-Quaker). Squire Boone's apology was warranted in larger part because the couple had "kept company", and thus were considered "married without benefit of clergy". When Boone's oldest brother Israel also married a "worldling" in 1747, Squire Boone stood by his son and was therefore expelled from the Quakers, although his wife continued to attend monthly meetings with her children. Perhaps as a result of this controversy, in 1750, Squire sold his land and moved the family to North Carolina. Daniel Boone did not attend church again, although he considered himself to be a Christian, and he had all of his children baptized. The Boones eventually settled on the Yadkin River, in what is now Davie County, North Carolina, about two miles (3 km) west of Mocksville.

Because he spent so much time hunting in his youth, Boone received little formal education. According to one family tradition, a schoolteacher once expressed concern over Boone's education, but Boone's father was unconcerned, saying "Let the girls do the spelling and Dan will do the shooting…." Boone received some tutoring from family members, though his spelling remained unorthodox. Historian John Mack Faragher cautions that the folk image of Boone as semiliterate is misleading, however, arguing that Boone "acquired a level of literacy that was the equal of most men of his times." Boone regularly took reading material with him on his hunting expeditions — the Bible and Gulliver's Travels were favorites — and he was often the only literate person in groups of frontiersmen. Boone would sometimes entertain his hunting companions by reading to them around the evening campfire.