Family History of Daniel Boone
Daniel Boone may have inherited his spirit of adventure. His grandfather, George Boone, was a weaver, in a humble way, of Bradnich, near Exeter, England, where he was a member…
From: 1682 C.E. To: 1727 C.E.
Location: Bradninch, Exeter, UK; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America; Oley,
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Pennsylvania Pioneers” from Daniel Boone by Lucile Gulliver, 1916.
Daniel Boone may have inherited his spirit of adventure. His grandfather, George Boone, was a weaver, in a humble way, of Bradnich, near Exeter, England, where he was a member of the Society of Friends. The Quakers, or Friends, suffered many persecutions on account of their religion, and William Penn, one of their number, dreamed of a refuge for them in the New World.
In 1682, on an October day bright with autumn color, he sailed up the Delaware River in the little English bark Welcome, and took possession of a grant of land made him by King Charles II, where he intended "to lay the foundation of a free colony for all mankind" and for the Quakers in particular. In honor of Penn's father, an admiral, this new province was christened Pennsylvania by Charles, but Penn, being a modest man, appealed to the king and offered twenty guineas to the secretary to change it. "Had he appealed to the secretary and bribed the king," wrote one of his biographers facetiously, "he might have had his wish."
As time wore on, glowing reports of this “Holy Experiment," as Penn's colony was sometimes called, reached the hamlet near Exeter, and George, his wife, and their seven sons and two daughters weighed these reports seriously. The thought of a life free from persecution and rich in the spoils of a land said to be blossoming like the rose appealed to them. The young son named Squire, especially curious, longed for definite information, and went about picturing this far paradise as best he could. News came all too slowly in those days to suit the impetuosity of youth, and after many family consultations, Squire, then about sixteen years of age, accompanied by his older brother George and his sister Sarah, sailed from England in a small, uncomfortable, emigrant ship to see for himself the possibilities in Pennsylvania. As Squire set forth upon this great adventure, wondering and planning in boyish fashion, he little dreamed that his voyage would be recorded in history because of a son, Daniel, to be born to him in America.
We can well imagine the feverish interest of the Boones as they approached Philadelphia and looked upon the crowd wont to gather on the shore whenever white sails were seen. Ships beating up the Delaware River in those days were all-important, as practically everything came to the province by sea. English and Dutch vessels brought news and goods from the Old World and from farther ports, and packets plied regularly between the North and South. There were no railroads, and the four- horse coaches, rocking along between towns on the eastern coast, were slow and uncertain carriers. So Squire's ship was welcomed with the usual interest, and he himself came on shore, finding there a touch of home in the familiar high-crowned Quaker hat and Quaker dress of gray.
In many ways, as reports had said, times were prosperous, especially for those who lived in towns. The young capital itself, laid out in checker-board regularity according to Penn's own plans, was a substantial little community of comfortable homes where Squire found not only English Quakers but also Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Swedish, Dutch, French, and German colonists living free from Old World oppression.
Now and then he saw gayly clad Indians stealing silently along the streets, and from the wharves he watched ships from far parts of the world, parts even as distant as Surinam and the French division of Hispaniola. Trade kept laborers and merchants alert and busy, and made it possible for well-to-do housewives to procure furnishings and table delicacies so fine that even worthies mentioned them in their diaries.
"A most sinful feast!" one of these some years later said of a Philadelphia dinner. ''Everything which could delight the eye or allure the taste; curds and creams, jellies, sweetmeats of various kinds, twenty sorts of tarts, fools, trifles, floating islands, whipped sillabubs, almonds, pears and peaches."
A visiting French prince remembered a certain tea party with equal pleasure. ''The house is small, but well ordered and neat," he wrote; ''the doors and tables of superb, well-polished mahogany; the locks and and irons of polished brass. ... I took some of the excellent tea and would have taken more I think, if the Ambassador had not kindly warned me at the twelfth cup that I must put my spoon across my cup when I wished to bring this warm water question to an end."
In spite of its busy and prosperous air, however, Philadelphia was little more than a village, with the frontier of the great western wilderness distant only a few miles from its outlying fields and orchards. There, in the border settlements, life was far different. Houses were rude, unhewn log cabins, erected in clearings and bounded by dense woodland full of sharp, wild eyes spying upon human intruders. House furnishings and clothing were equally crude, creature comforts few, and, had it not been for the great fireplace built in one end of each cabin, and for the iron pot, hanging from the crane and puffing forth savory odors, these cabins would have seemed little like homes. Even tea and coffee were practically unknown on the frontier or were regarded as ''slops which did not stick by the ribs." One pioneer, born on the border, recorded his earliest recollections of a tea-cup and saucer and of coffee. While traveling as a boy, he spent a night at an inn.
''When supper came on," he says, "a little cup stood in a bigger one with some brownish-looking stuff in it, which was neither milk, hominy nor broth. What to do with these little cups and the spoon belonging to them I could not tell, and I was afraid to ask. ... I therefore watched attentively to see what the big folks would do with their little cups and spoons. I imitated them, and found the taste of the coffee disagreeable beyond anything I ever had tasted in my life. I continued to drink as the rest of the company did, with the tears streaming from my eyes, but when it was to end I was at a loss to know, as the little cups were filled immediately after being emptied. This circumstance distressed me very much, as I durst not say I had had enough. Looking attentively at the grown persons, I saw one man turn his little cup bottom upwards and put his little spoon across it. I observed that after this his cup was not filled again. I followed his example, and to my great satisfaction, the result as to my cup was the same."
Squire had never known luxuries, and boylike preferred the wilds about Philadelphia, where he roamed at will, while Sarah Boone met and married a German. Squire's brother George, confident in the future, returned to England to report to his parents, and, when all could be made ready, to pilot them and the other children across the sea. The elder Boones bravely dismantled their home, bade farewell to old associations, and in October, 1717, after a journey of two months, a courageous journey and perhaps a sad one, they all landed in Philadelphia.
The Boones lingered there only a short time. As they preferred the country, they became a frontier family at once, welcoming the hardships of border life. After brief stays in Abingdon and North Wales, they settled on the edge of the wood in Oley Township, in the beautiful valley of the Schuylkill River, where the elder George Boone lived out his days.
Squire, meanwhile, after his explorations, had chosen to become a backwoodsman in North Wales, a hamlet of Welsh Quakers. The young men welcomed this ''man of rather small stature, fair complexion, and gray eyes," introduced him to their families, and made him feel at home; and in time he fell in love with a certain Sarah Morgan, "a woman something over the common size, strong and active, with black hair and eyes, and raised in the Quaker order." According to Quaker usage, they probably announced that "with Divine permission and Friends' approbation they intended to marry each other," and after it was decided that the young people were "at liberty to accomplish their marriage," they were made man and wife on July 23, 1720, in the little Quaker meetinghouse of Gwynedd Township. Friends and relatives feted them after the fashion of Quaker merrymaking—custom permitting the marriage day to "be characterized by cheerful enjoyment provided that those concerned do not pass the boundary line of Christian simplicity and prudence"—and then they settled down as poor but thrifty "borderers" in a mere cabin, small and rough and bare, and built probably on rented land. Fortunately, "doors and windows of superb mahogany" and "twenty sorts of tarts " were not necessary to contentment.
Early in the morning the border people rose. No eight-hour day was theirs; their work lasted from sunrise to sunset, day in and day out, alike in good times and bad. After the cows had been milked and sent to pasture, and after breakfast had been eaten and the daily chores done, the men farmed, hunted, or pursued a trade in a small way. The women cooked and minded the dairy; mended, spun and wove; made clothes and moccasins; weeded and hoed in the vegetable patch, and all the day had an eye to the children who were quite as lively and mischievous in those times as now. As we look back upon this border life, so wild and fresh, it appears rather pleasant. We forget the days of rain and snow, of tired bodies and aching backs, of illness, of poverty and discouragement. A hard and weary life it was in reality, a life to develop heroes.
Twelve years or so passed in the Boone cabin in North Wales. With much labor the adjacent land had been cleared, a garden-patch had been made to flourish within the inclosure, a loom had been installed in the cabin as Squire had learned his father's trade, and with much thrift and forbearance a tiny sum of money had been laid away for a farm which they hoped some day to purchase. No longer were Squire and Sarah alone, for four children brightened the little cabin and kept their mother busy supplying clothing for small, active bodies and food for good appetites.
About this time they decided to move from North Wales to Oley Township, in the Berks County of to-day, where, with their savings, they were able to buy two hundred and fifty acres of land, situated on a creek and lying about eight miles from the present city of Reading. Grandfather Boone, as well as other members of the family, lived not far away, and there is little doubt but that Friends helped Squire Boone to clear his land and build his log cabin, the kindest welcome to newcomers in a country region.
At last Squire Boone was an independent man, owning his land and his house, which was bare and simple, however, as the Boones were still poor, and life in Oley, as in North Wales, was filled with severity and hardship. Perhaps, as the family sat about the new hearth and heard the wind blowing in their own strange woodland, this second home may have seemed happier than the old one, because of the hard work and self-denial which had made it possible.
Here, in the Pennsylvania wilderness of the Schuylkill Valley, Daniel Boone was born on November 2, 1734. To-day the date of his birth is memorable, yet no one at the time, least of all his parents, dreamed that this boy would make a stir in the world.
Gulliver, Lucile. Daniel Boone. The Macmillan Company, 1916.
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