A Brief History of Joppa Cemetery (Burying Ground Ridge)

Joppa Cemetery has become a popular historical destination for visitors to Mocksville. It is located at 908 Yadkinville Road on the east side of U.S. Highway 601 North in Mocksville, North Carolina. Location coordinates are N35.90914; W80.57750.

The area around today’s Joppa Cemetery was first settled by European migrants in the late 1740’s and early 1750’s. It was originally known as Burying Ground Ridge. In my travels in Europe, I observed that the term “cemetery” was less common, and these places are still frequently called “burying grounds.” Joppa Cemetery holds the graves of many of those early settlers and is considered the oldest cemetery in Davie County.

Until this century, what was considered the earliest marked grave in Joppa Cemetery was that of Squire Boone, who was buried there in 1765. Squire’s wife, Sarah, died in 1777 and was buried beside him. A bronze plaque mounted above their gravestones quotes the text on each of their stones. Squire’s text recites, “Squire Boone departed this life they sixty-ninth year of his age in thay year of our Lord 1765 Geneiary tha 2.” The text on Sarah’s stone is simpler and says, “Sah + Boone departed this life aged 77 years.”

In October 2005, Katherine Weiss wrote an article about Israel Boone’s possible burial location that was published in The Boone Society’s publication the Compass. In it she quotes letters written by James Williamson and Jethro Rumple found in Lyman Draper’s Boone Series. There’s an analysis of a broken stone that was next to the gravestone of Squire Boone, and the broken stone is very similar to Squire’s. Text on the broken stone was ++BoonE and part of a number 5 and then a 6. The conclusion is that the only family member that died in 1756 and would have had a stone similar to his father was Israel.

Once research confirmed the location of the grave of Israel Boone, his descendants and The Boone Society, Inc. placed a bronze plaque in Joppa Cemetery in May 2009 marking Israel’s grave just to the left of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. There are two newspaper articles about this event published by the Davie County Enterprise Record. The one announcing this event was published on April 30, 2009, with the title “Marker at Israel Boone’s Grave to be Dedicated: Daniel’s Less Famous Brother Died Here on June 26, 1756.” A follow up article was published on May 14, 2009, after the installation and dedication of Israel’s new gave marker with the title “There’s a New Oldest Grave at Joppa: Israel Boone Buried Here in 1756.”

In between Israel Boone’s grave marker at left and Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone’s gravestones at right is a large bronze plaque mounted on top of a brick base. It’s referred to as “The Boone Family in Davie County Marker.” Historian James Wall wrote a paragraph about this that can be found in the Martin-Wall History Room at the Davie County Public Library in Mocksville. This paragraph reads as follows:

“The large plaque locating the six Boone families house sites in Davie County was placed there by the late Howell Boone (1922-1988) on the 250th anniversary of Daniel Boone’s birth [1984]. Howell was a descendant of John Boone, Squire Boone’s nephew, who first lived near Hunting Creek and later moved his log house to Boone Farm Road near and behind Center United Methodist Church. Howell Boone came from New York and in retirement lived on his ancestor’s land grant for some ten years. He worked extensively in the Davie County Library researching Boone information, assisting people with general research, speaking to groups, and traveling to Boone family sites in several states.”

I mentioned that the bronze plaque is mounted on a brick base. The first time I visited Joppa Cemetery years ago, I noticed to the right of this bronze plaque is a higher brick structure and encased in it are the gravestones of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. I researched the reason for the encasement. I have already mentioned research that shows documentation of Israel Boone’s gravestone that was still in Joppa Cemetery in the late 19th century. Further into this chapter, I also mention additional gravestones documented as being in Joppa Cemetery during the 19th century that later disappeared.

Concern and recognition of gravestones disappearing was demonstrated by the actions of Dr. James McGuire (1829-1906) who wanted to preserve the gravestones of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. Dr. McGuire was concerned about both stones being in danger of vandalism, theft, or chipping by treasure hunters. He removed their stones from the cemetery and put them in a bank vault for safekeeping at the Bank of Davie, which had recently opened in 1901. Dr. McGuire also drove large iron pipes into the ground to mark the two graves, and this can be seen in an older photograph.

Historian James Wall writes that in the 1920’s Squire and Sarah Boone’s gravestones were removed from the bank vault, returned to the cemetery, and encased in a concrete structure to protect them. There are old photos that show this structure. This old encasement was mostly rock held together with a small amount of concrete, so it continued to be damaged by the weather that included rain and ice, and the stones were still subject to possible theft and vandalism.

In 1972, local historian and preservationist Hugh Larew insisted on replacing this encasement and gave James Wall permission to construct a new encasement for Squire and Sarah Boone’s gravestones using Mr. Larew’s design. In 1972, Jane McGuire provided brick for the encasement from her homeplace built in the mid-1800’s and was located on Jericho Road near Bear Creek. An instructor in brick laying at Davie High School, Henry Crotts, and one of his students (David Miller?) laid the brick. James Wall and his son held the two gravestones in place while the brick was set in place. Hugh Larew installed the copper cover on top, and James Wall purchased the bronze plaque with the original text on the gravestones and had it bolted to the face of the brick encasement.

John Boone (1727-1803), Squire’s nephew, lived and owned land just to the west of Joppa Cemetery and the location is on Boone Farm Road which intersects with U.S. Highway 64. He died in 1803 and is documented as being buried near the grave of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. Until at least the 1880’s, his tombstone was documented as being “alongside” the tombstones of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. Beal Ijames wrote Lyman Draper in 1884 advising him that John Boone is buried in Joppa Cemetery. There was another letter to Lyman Draper in 1887 written by Hinton H. Helper saying that John Boone’s soapstone headstone at Joppa Cemetery could not be read. His gravestone, like so many in this cemetery, later disappeared.

Squire’s oldest daughter, Sarah, married John Wilcoxson, and he is also documented as being buried near Squire and Sarah Boone. Squire Boone, Jr.'s in-laws, Aaron and Rachel Van Cleve are also documented as being buried in Joppa Cemetery. New granite gravestones were installed in 2025 along with SAR granite Patriot markers by the Col. Daniel Boone Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution for John Boone, Aaron Van Cleve, and John Wilcoxson.

I dwell on the Boone graves, because many, including historians, believe that numerous people have worked to preserve this cemetery as the final resting place of the parents of Daniel Boone. In 1938, North Carolina Highway Marker M 3 was first installed here which said, “DANIEL BOONE’S PARENTS – Squire and Sarah Boone are buried here. Daniel Boone, 1734 – 1820, lived many years in this region.”

In 2020, I was putting together a tour of Boone sites in North Carolina for The Boone Society. When at Joppa Cemetery, I noticed that the Boone highway sign needed painting and repair, so I contacted the State to see if they could do maintenance work on it. They advised me that they would have to replace it due to its age and advised that they would keep the old sign. I also made some solicitations to help fund the replacement of  the sign.

In 2022, the new historic highway sign at the front of the cemetery was set in the same location. It now reads, “SQUIRE AND SARAH BOONE – Parents of frontiersman Daniel Boone settled in N.C. ca. 1751, received land grant nearby, 1753. Squire died, 1765, and Sarah, 1777. Buried here.”

There’s another marker in Davie County that refers to Joppa as the site where Squire and Sarah Boone are buried. In northeastern Davie County is the village of Farmington, and there you’ll find a small monument on the southwest corner of the intersection of Farmington Road and NC Highway 801. The Village Improvement Society erected this memorial structure. It is constructed with stacked stones, and on the face of it is a Hampton Rich “Boone Trail Highway” plaque. Below that is another plaque, and the text on the first line says, “Daniel Boone lived 2 miles S.E. [Sugar Tree Creek] His parents are buried 8 miles S. [Joppa Cemetery].”

In addition to the Boone family association, this cemetery is connected to the Presbyterian congregation originally located here. The first known building at Joppa Cemetery was a small, one-room, log meeting house. Historian James Wall wrote that it’s believed to have been in the southeast corner of the cemetery just inside today’s old stone wall marking the original cemetery. (It was actually in the southwest corner as explained below.) First Presbyterian Church of Mocksville traces its founding to this place.

The May 1767 minutes of the Synod of Philadelphia and New York first mention a group of worshipers at the meeting house in Joppa Cemetery. It was a log building. There’s speculation that a congregation was meeting here as early as January 1765, when Squire Boone was buried in the nearby cemetery. The May 1789, Presbyterian Church records refer to the church name for the first time as Joppa, which is a Biblical word meaning beautiful.

In 1792, the congregation received its first permanent pastor, the Reverend J. D. Kilpatrick. A frame church building was built and replaced the original log church in the same location in 1793. The Reverend Samuel Milton Frost, who attended Sunday School as a boy in the Joppa church, later confirmed this in a letter he wrote in 1899 to T. B. Bailey with a description of the church. He recalled it being a framed church with a door at each end, there was a high pulpit with narrow steps, and the backs of the pews were very high.

The church was without a pastor for thirty years and was served irregularly by itinerant ministers and catechists. In November 1827, the Rev. William A. Hall came to serve Joppa and Unity churches.

There’s a large wooden cross in the cemetery that is maintained by First Presbyterian Church of Mocksville, and, annually, they conduct an Easter Sunrise Service at this location. This cross is in front of the gravestone of Joannah Smith who died and was buried here in 1827. In front of her gravestone is a bronze plaque which was more recently installed, and it reads as follows:

“In 1827 Joanna Smith bequeathed $600 so her Church could have a pastor. The unparalleled generosity of dedicated Presbyterians Joannah and husband James Smith, enabled Joppa Presbyterian Church, then located at this site, to call the Rev. William A. Hall as pastor. Without these gifts, Joppa Church might have closed.

The Joppa church members moved from this country church into the town of Mocksville around 1834, and it subsequently became the First Presbyterian Church of Mocksville. The growing community and Rev. Hall’s energetic leadership from 1827-1851 resulted in rapid growth and progress for the church.”

In 1951, the Presbyterian Church deeded the cemetery to Joppa Cemetery, Inc. who is still the owner.  There are many unmarked graves in the old part of the cemetery surrounded by a stone wall. In this area, there are six known and marked Revolutionary War Patriot graves whose names are John Boone, Evan Ellis, Basil Gaither, Isaac Jones, Aaron Van Cleve and John Wilcoxson. There are at least seven graves of Civil War veterans in this area. Quite a few veteran graves are also located in the front and newer part of the cemetery.

Historian Mark Hager is a past professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University and President of the Forks of the Yadkin and Davie County History Museum. He and his students have frequently done maintenance and research at Joppa Cemetery. On June 25, 2009, the newspaper Davie County Enterprise Record published an article “Science Meets History: Radar Used to study Below the Surface at Joppa Cemetery.” This article reports that Hager and his students received help with this project from the Wake Forest University Archeology Department. “Ken Robinson was at Joppa this month with ground-penetrating radar to try to locate where the Joppa Church stood or any unmarked graves.” In 2025, I contacted the Archeology Department at Wake Forest University to find a report about this project, and they responded that they have no record of this project being conducted by them. I then researched this for a record at Lenoir-Rhyne University and found no record.

Since I found no record at either University, I placed a phone call to Historian Mark Hager and had a one-hour conversation with him. He didn’t have the report readily available, so he explained the findings of the study. Historian James Wall previously wrote that Joppa Church built in the late 1700’s was located in the southeast corner of the old part of the cemetery surrounded by stone which is to the back right as you walk through the iron gates. However, the study found that Joppa Church was in the southwest corner of the old part of the cemetery which is at the front right as you walk through the iron gates. The conclusion is that James Wall had his compass settings pointing in the wrong direction, so he mentioned that Joppa Church was in the southeast corner rather than the southwest corner where it actually stood. There were some graves with stones found in the area where the church once stood, and it was concluded that the burials were after the time the church disappeared, which was in the 1830’s.

Another important finding confirmed by this ground-penetrating radar study in 2009 is the location of graves of enslaved people. It was determined that slaves were buried in the northwest corner of the old part of the cemetery which is to the front left as you enter through the iron gates. In that area, the study found many graves, but no gravestones above nor below ground. When the enslaved were buried, oak slabs were used, but no stones were used as grave markers. The wooden slabs have long since deteriorated over time. These unmarked graves were found within the old stone cemetery wall and just north or to the left of Joppa Church. I found this a little fascinating, because I’ve observed at other old cemeteries that the enslaved were usually buried outside the walls or fencing surrounding the cemetery or around the perimeter. Mark Hager recommended that one read M. Ruth Little’s book Sticks and Stones: Three Centuries of North Carolina Gravemarkers. In this book, she illustrates and explains how wood rather than stone was used to mark the graves of the enslaved.

Now I’d like to return to the historic significance of this cemetery that was established around 1750. At that time, funerals and weddings were occasions that drew large crowds. James S. Brawley mentions on pages 57 and 58 of his book The Rowan Story 1753-1973 the following:

“Funerals were public affairs and among the most important social functions. Private burials were illegal, and every planter was required to ‘set apart a Burial Place and fence the same for interring of all Christian Persons whether Bond or Free that shall die on their plantations.’ Considerable publicity was given to the burial of the dead. Invitations were sent to relatives and friends and there was an abundance of things to eat and drink for the entertainment of the guests.”

Given this background, it’s easy to imagine the large number of people and historical figures that visited and were in Joppa Cemetery for a social gathering in its early years, when it was still known as “Burying Ground Ridge.” Consider as an example the death of Squire Boone in 1765. At his funeral would have been his family, other close families, and Rowan County government officials. You can easily determine that one or more hundred could have been there. Squire and Sarah had ten children, and all would have been present except Israel, who died in 1756, and Squire was buried beside him. Eight of his ten children had married by then and would have had their children with them. Three of their children (Daniel, Mary, and Martha) had married into the Bryan family. Other Bryans had worked with and were associated with the Boones, so their families would have attended this event. George Boone married into the Linville family, and Jonathan Boone married into the Carter family, so these well-known families also would have been at this funeral. Squire served in three positions in Rowan County’s colonial government that included the prominent position of Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. Therefore, many past and present government officials were probably there on that day. Many people in attendance later migrated west and became famous. Two examples are Squire Boone, Jr., and his brother Daniel, who became an American icon.

Daniel Boone last visited his mother Sarah Morgan Boone in 1773. He was close to her, especially as a child in Pennsylvania, and it’s well-known that he cried when he left knowing it was probably the last time he’d see her. It was. When her husband Squire died, Sarah went to live with her daughter Mary who was married to William Bryan. Sarah died in 1777 and was buried next to her husband. Her son Daniel returned to North Carolina in the Fall of 1778 and lived only a few miles from his parents’ graves until September 1779. He spent the year hunting the area and is documented as traveling to the nearby town of Salem and to the City of Charleston, South Carolina. I think it’s highly likely that he would have wandered into Joppa Cemetery to visit his parents’ graves, especially since his mother had just died the previous year, when he was absent.

Squire Boone’s funeral is only one example of what would have been a large public affair and social event in this place. Many others occurred involving prominent local, colonial and, later, state officials and businessmen who were laid to rest in this place.

It’s also interesting to note that many of those buried here are not surrounded by graves of their numerous children and grandchildren due to a very important event. At the beginning of the American Revolution and again in 1779, many of the children and grandchildren of those buried here were led by Daniel Boone out of this area of North Carolina and through the Cumberland Gap during America’s first great westward expansion. Among them were the descendants of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone, John Boone, Aaron Van Cleve, and John Wilcoxson, and the names of the families following Daniel Boone were the Boones, Bryans, Grants, Hays, Hunts, Linvilles, Van Cleves, Wilcoxsons and many more.

I’ve focused on the connection to the Boones and that of Revolutionary War Patriots buried in Joppa Cemetery. However, this is a historical cemetery that was established over 275 years ago and is still an active cemetery. Many of the local and prominent families that have lived nearby for centuries are also buried here. Some examples are P. F. Meroney, a nephew of Thomas Jefferson, Marshall Bell, a surgeon in the Confederate army, Thomas and Rufus Brown, heirs to the Brown and Brown tobacco fortune which became R.J. Reynolds, and many more. A volume could be written about the lives and souls of so many buried here, but I’ll have to leave that to others.

As cemeteries go, Joppa is a smaller cemetery when compared to most, since it’s only about 50 yards wide by approximately 150 yards deep. A narrow blacktop drive leads back to an ancient, iron gate that serves as an entrance to the old section surrounded by the stone-stacked walls. The blacktop drive also curves back to the highway to allow additional access. Towering oaks, hickory, maples, and cedars shade this site during the warmer months and help soften the highway sounds drifting from the front of the property. Wandering through this quiet place provides both a sense of history and spiritual peace.

Sources:

Barnhardt, Mike, “Science Meets History: Radar Used to study Below the Surface at Joppa Cemetery,” Davie County Enterprise Record, June 25, 2009.

Barnhardt, Mike, “There’s a New Oldest Grave at Joppa: Israel Boone Buried Here in 1756,” Davie County Enterprise Record, May 14, 2009, pages 1 & 8.

Brawley, James S., The Rowan Story 1753-1953: A Narrative History of Rowan County, North Carolina, Rowan Printing Company, Salisbury, North Carolina, 1953.

Cemetery Census, Davie County North Carolina Cemeteries, Davie County Historical & Genealogical Society, http://cemeterycensus.com/nc/davie/cem089.htm

Daughters of the American Revolution, www.dar.org/library/onlineresearch/ancestorsearch.

Davie County Register of Deeds, Mocksville, NC.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

Heitman, Mary J., History of Joppa Church, Martin-Wall History Room, Davie Public Library, Mocksville, NC.

Little, M. Ruth, Sticks and Stones: Three Centuries of North Carolina Gravemarkers, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapell Hill & London, 1998.

“Marker at Israel Boone’s Grave to be Dedicated: Daniel’s Less Famous Brother Died Here on June 26, 1756,” Davie County Enterprise Record, April 30, 2009.

Martin-Wall History Room, Davie County Public Library, Mocksville, NC.

North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Raleigh, NC, www.ncmarkers.com.

Rowan County Register of Deeds, Salisbury, NC.

Sons of the American Revolution, www.sarpatriots.org/patriots search and cemetery search.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1922.

State of North Carolina, Department of Revenue, Raleigh, North Carolina.

U.S. Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.

Wall, James W., A History of the First Presbyterian Church of Mocksville, North Carolina, Mocksville, NC,1963.

Wall, James W., History of Davie County, Davie County Historical Publishing Association, Mocksville, North Carolina, 1969.

Weiss, Katherine, “Israel Boone’s Burial,” Compass, The Boone Society, Inc., October 2005, Volume 9, Issue 4, page 11.

1938 Highway Marker. Photo by R.A. Crum

2022 Highway Marker. Photo by R.A. Crum

Squire & Sarah Boone graves at right. Photo by R.A. Crum

Israel grave at left. Parent's graves at right. Photo by R.A. Crum

2009 Israel Boone Marker. Photo by R.A. Crum

John Boone gravestone. Photo by R. A. Crum

Wilcoxson & Van Cleve graves. Photo by R. A. Crum

Joanna Smith grave & marker. Photo by R.A. Crum

Wilcoxson & Van Cleve graves. Photo by R.A. Crum

John Boone (1727-1803):Daniel Boone’s Cousin in North Carolina

John Boone was born about 1727 at the family farmhouse in Oley (later Exeter) Township, Philadelphia County (now Berks), Pennsylvania. He was the only child of Benjamin Boone (1706-1762) and Ann Farmer (1701- about 1727).

John’s father, Benjamin Boone, was born in Bradninch, Devon, England on July 16, 1706 and was the son of George and Mary Maugridge Boone. His mother, Ann Farmer, was born in Saffron-Walden, Essex, England in 1701 and was the daughter of John and Mary Wyatt Farmer who were long time Quaker preachers. Their intent to marry was recorded by the Abington, Pennsylvania Friends Meeting on the 3rd day of the 8th month in 1726, and they were married on the 28th day of the 9th month in 1726. (The Society of Friends numbered their months and did not use names for the months.)

John Boone’s mother died in childbirth or shortly thereafter, and it is believed he spent most of his early years in the home of his uncle and aunt, Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone (parents of Daniel Boone). When Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone left Pennsylvania with their family on May 1, 1750, to move to North Carolina, John Boone migrated with them. They all settled in the backcountry in the Forks of the Yadkin and the Bryan Settlement.

In the autumn of 1750, he located and chose land which became his homesite on Hunting Creek. There he erected a cabin and additional farm buildings.

In 1753, John Boone married Rebecca, whose maiden name is thought to be Bryan. There’s no documentation about the location of their marriage nor a record of a marriage bond. John’s uncle Squire Boone was a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas in Rowan County, North Carolina and had the legal authority to perform a wedding ceremony. Therefore, it’s believed that he probably officiated at their wedding ceremony. Their children were Benjamin, Mary, Catherine, Sarah, Rebecca, Nancy, Hannah, John, and Elizabeth.

On December 21, 1753, John Boone received a grant from the Earl of Granville for 630 acres on Hunting Creek in Rowan (now Davie) County, North Carolina. The deed was recorded in Rowan County and can be found in Deed Book 3 on pages 426-428. This grant was later proved in Open Court on October 19, 1756, under oath by James Carter and recorded by Rowan County Clerk of Court Thomas Parker. The record for this is found in Book 2, page 150 for the Minutes of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions for Rowan County, North Carolina.

On page 18 of James W. Wall’s book Davie County: A Brief History, there is a photo of John Boone’s cabin. Below the photo, it mentions that it was built in the mid-1750’s, was located in the Center community, and is no longer standing. This Boone homesite was on the present-day Boone Farm Road and was near a spring and Sukey Creek. The John Boone log house was moved soon after the Revolutionary War. After the sale of part of his property to his son Benjamin, he lived on the rest of his land until his death in 1803.

John Boone performed a variety of services in the Rowan County government. On October 8, 1754, October 19, 1756, and again in 1757, he’s listed as a member of a Grand Jury in Salisbury. This is shown in Book 1, page 51, and Book 2, pages 149 and 193 in the Minutes of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions of Rowan County, North Carolina. On February 4, 1773, he was appointed to serve as a Constable during the year 1773, and this is found in Volume 4, page 9 of the Minutes of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions of Rowan County.

In colonial North Carolina, all free men between the ages of 16 and 60 were considered members of the militia. At the time John Boone migrated with the Boone family to North Carolina in 1750, he was around twenty-three years old. Therefore, he was legally considered a member of the Anson County Militia where he was living and then the Rowan County Militia when that county was formed in 1753. The North Carolina Militia Acts required officers to explain to their men the Militia Act requirements and how often to muster, authorized the first mounted militia, and set the number of times men were to muster. For those not familiar with the term “muster,” it was the act of calling together members to assess the availability of the local militias that might function as a defensive force and to also conduct training.

Early North Carolina militia records have not all been well preserved and at this time are very scarce. However, there is a record of John Boone serving in the militia during the Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761) in North Carolina. In Jo White Linn’s Rowan County Tax Lists, one will find on page 14 the following: ”25 April 1759. The Publick of North Carolina to Morgan Bryan to a Scout Sent Out in the Alarm of Daniel Hossey & Others being killed ---” Among the eleven members of the Militia listed serving under then Lt. Morgan Bryan (Rebecca Bryan Boone’s uncle) are Daniel Boone and his cousin John Boone. During the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), John Boone would have been required to serve in the militia, but again the records are poor and scarce, and no records show John Boone as serving in the militia.

On August 15, 1766, John and Rebecca Boone sold 350 acres to Robert Bell on Hunting Creek in Rowan (now Davie) County, North Carolina. The record of this sale can be found in Book 6 on page 388 of the Rowan County Deeds.

The Moravians are a protestant Christian denomination, and they purchased and settled approximately 100,000 acres in 1752 known as the Wachovia Tract. The towns they established there are now part of modern-day Winston-Salem. They were great at keeping detailed and extensive records about the activities of those living around them. There are a couple entries in Soelle’s Diary about John Boone. On page 791 of Volume 1 of the Moravian Records, one finds the entry saying, “On the Sept. 1771 trip, Soelle went from William Grant’s, fourteen miles to John Buhn (Boone). According to the Grant from Granville to John Boone, 1753, recorded in Rowan County, Boone owned 630 acres on the north side of Hunting Creek.” On page 794 of the same volume, one finds the entry, “From the home of Daniel Lewis, Soelle went to John Boone, already mentioned, who ‘will probably join the Baptists for the sake of Communion.’” John Boone was a member of the Society of Friends or a Quaker, when he lived in Pennsylvania. This entry shows he was about to join the Baptist Church.

In their 1966 biography about Daniel Boone, the Van Noppens provide some biographical information about John Boone on pages 87 and 88. They mention that John Boone owned land on both sides of Hunting Creek and that “John became almost as legendary a figure as Daniel. He is said to be buried beside Squire and Sarah at the Joppa Cemetery.” In their book, the Van Noppens include a paragraph about John Boone as follows:

“John’s strength was proverbial. On one occasion he heard a pig squealing and rushed to find that a large panther had it in his embrace. John killed the panther with a pine knot, after a fierce struggle. At another time his sons were dragging logs from his bottom land, hitching the log to a wagon with a chain. A log caught between two stumps and the boys could not release it. John told them to back the wagon a little, and he picked up the log with one arm and lifted it over the stumps.”

Another paragraph illustrates the physical prowess of John Boone describing the following:

“One day he was expected to join a work party to help clear underbrush from a new tract of land. The other members of the gang arrived first, were assigned their tasks and went to work. John arrived late, was told what his task was, and laying off his coat he began. Pulling up the brush, root and branch, he soon completed his assignment and was at home some time before the others were finished.”

The 1778 Tax List of Rowan County shows John Boone residing in Rowan County. He was living in Captain Reed’s District and was taxed 1,690.10 pounds. The original record can be found in the North Carolina Archives in Raleigh or in the Abstracts published by Jo White Linn.

His documented patriotic service is for providing wheat for the Rowan County Militia. This is verified by the North Carolina Revolutionary War Pay Vouchers, Rowan County, NC#615 and was paid on February 23, 1780.

On October 10, 1783, John Boone purchased from the State of North Carolina an additional 266 acres adjacent to his Granville Grant property lines and “on the waters of Hunting Creek” next to property of James Leach and John Lynch in Rowan (now Davie) County, North Carolina. The record of this purchase is found in Book 10 on page 253 of the Rowan County Deeds. On March 4, 1786, he and his wife Rebecca sold to their oldest son, Benjamin Boone, 288 acres adjacent to Hunting Creek in Rowan (now Davie) County, North Carolina. The record of this transaction is found in Book 13 on page 289 of the Rowan County Deeds.

The 1790 U.S. Census Records show John Boone living in the Salisbury District of Rowan County, North Carolina. He is also shown in Rowan (now Davie) County in the 1800 U.S. Census Records.

The exact day is unknown, but it’s believed John Boone died during the month of July in 1803. He was buried in Joppa Cemetery in what is now Mocksville, Davie County, North Carolina. Until at least the 1880’s, his tombstone was documented as being “alongside’ the tombstones of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. Beal Ijames wrote Lyman Draper in 1884 advising him that John Boone is buried in Joppa Cemetery. There was another letter to Lyman Draper in 1887 written by Hinton H. Helper saying that John Boone’s soapstone headstone at Joppa Cemetery could not be read. Tradition also indicates that John Boone was buried at Joppa Cemetery. His gravestone later disappeared.

In November 2025, the Col. Daniel Boone Chapter-NCSSAR installed a new granite gravestone for John Boone to the right of the graves of Squire Boone and Sarah Morgan Boone. This same Sons of the American Revolution Chapter also installed a granite SAR Patriot marker with John Boone’s headstone in November 2025.

John Boone died intestate (without a will). The records of the Rowan County Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions show that on August 3, 1803, Letters of Administration for the Estate of John Boone, Sr. were issued to his sons Benjamin Boone and John Boone, Jr. On November 6, 1806, John Boone, Jr. was given a deed to the “BOONE HOMESTEAD” by his widowed mother, Rebecca, and brother and sisters, Benjamin, Catherine, Mary, Rebecca, Sarah, Nancy, Elizabeth and Hannah. This is documented in Rowan County Deed Book 21 on page 489.

Sources:

Anson County, North Carolina Deed Records.

Clark, Walter, Editor, The State Records of North Carolina, 16 Volumes, Winston, Goldsboro, State of North Carolina, 1895-1907.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, Acts of the North Carolina General Assembly, 1753, Chapter VII, p. 383.

DAR #A012112

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Fries, Adelaide Lisetta, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, 1752-1771, Edwards & Broughton Printing Company, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1922, Volume 1, pages 791 and 792.

Howell Boone Papers, Martin-Wall History Room, Davie County Public Library, Mocksville, North Carolina.

Linn, Jo White, Rowan County, North Carolina Tax Lists 1757-1800, Annotated Transcriptions, Jo White Linn, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1995.

North Carolina Revolutionary War Pay Vouchers, Rowan County, NC #615 paid 23 Feb 1780.

Entry on August 3, 1803, Records of the Rowan County Court of Common Pleas, Rowan County, North Carolina.

Rowan County Deeds, Rowan County, North Carolina.

Van Noppen, John James and Ina Woestemeyer, Daniel Boone, Backwoodsman: The Green Woods Were His Home, The Appalachian Press, Boone, North Carolina, 1966.

Wall, James W., Davie County: A Brief History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1976, pages 18 and 19.

Wall, James W., History of Davie County in the Forks of the Yadkin, Davie County Historical Publishing Association, Mocksville, North Carolina, 1969, pages 34, 35 and 41.

Wall, James W., Martin, Flossie, and Boone, Howell, The Squire, Daniel, and John Boone Families in Davie County, North Carolina, Self-published and Printed by Davie Printing Company, Mocksville, North Carolina, 1982.

Photo of John Boone Cabin in Wall's Davie County History

Map of John Boone land by Howell Boone

Photo of Joppa Cemetery by RA Crum 2025

Photo of John Boone's grave at Joppa by RA Crum 2025

John Boone's grave at Joppa by RA Crum 2025

Boone Farm Rd at Hwy 64 by RA Crum 2025

Map of Boone Land Grants by RA Crum 2025

Honoring Revolutionary War Patriots at Joppa Cemetery

Most of my articles on this website are either historical or biographical in nature. This article is a little different, because it describes a recent event at Joppa Cemetery in Mocksville, North Carolina.

On September 20th, 2025, an organization to which I belong, the Col. Daniel Boone Chapter of the North Carolina Society of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR), and the Colonel Joseph Winston Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) co-sponsored a Patriot Grave Marking Ceremony at Joppa Cemetery. This ceremony was for Patriots Evan Ellis, Aaron Van Cleve, and John Wilcoxson. This was also an “America 250!” Project for the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Joppa Cemetery, which was originally known as Burying Ground Ridge and established about 1750, is the location of the graves of Daniel Boone’s parents, Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. John Wilcoxson was married to Daniel Boone’s oldest sister, Sarah. Aaron Van Cleve was the father-in-law of Squire Boone, Jr., who married Aaron’s daughter, Jane Van Cleve. Most of the children of John Wilcoxson and Aaron Van Cleve migrated to Kentucky with Daniel Boone and Squire Boone, Jr.

Both the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution honor men and women who provided service and supplies to fight for Independence from Great Britain during the Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783. Not only soldiers but also those providing civilian service and supplies to soldiers are honored, because all that fought and served against the King were committing treason and could be executed for doing so. After doing extensive research, both organizations compiled data about these Patriots and put it on their websites, so all can have access to this information. SAR and DAR markers were then installed on all three Patriot graves and new headstones were installed for John Wilcoxson and Aaron Van Cleve.

Patriot Graves of John Wilcoxson and Aaron Van Cleve with SAR and DAR Patriot Grave markers and new granite headstones. Photo by Robert Alvin Crum 2025.

When many Patriots died and were buried, they may have had a simpler funeral or no funeral, so the SAR and DAR conduct Patriot Grave Marking Ceremonies that resemble a military ceremony. At our Joppa Cemetery ceremony, flags were paraded in by the SAR Color Guard. Mocksville Mayor William Marklin brought greetings to this gathering and led everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance. Prayers were offered, songs were sung, the Patriots’ biographies were read, and the histories about Joppa Cemetery and the early church established there were also read. The SAR and DAR unveiled and formally dedicated the three sets of Patriot markers.

The Color Guard for the Sons of the American Revolution. Photo by Cherie L. Turner copyright 2025.

In addition to the SAR and DAR Chapters, wreaths were then presented by the many organizations attending, which were primarily hereditary societies. Some of those included the National Society Colonial Dames of the 17th Century, National Society Daughters of the American Colonists, North Carolina Daniel Boone Heritage Trail, Order of Founders of the Granville District, Society the Descendants of Washington’s Army at Valley Forge, The Boone Society, and The Jamestowne Society.

There were two additional parts of our ceremony that are also conducted during military funerals. The SAR Honor Guard of six men fired three loud volleys with their flintlock muskets and rifles, and a SAR bugler ended the ceremony by playing Taps.

Honor Guard of the Sons of the American Revolution firing a flintlock musket volley. Photo by Cherie L. Turner copyright 2025.

There were seventy-five people in attendance. We had numerous DAR and SAR Chapters join us to make this a successful and memorable event! SAR Chapters participating were from the states of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Ohio. Patriot Ellis and Wilcoxson descendants came from not only North Carolina but also Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

On April 15, 2023, the SAR and DAR conducted a Patriot Grave Marking Ceremony at Joppa Cemetery for Patriots Basil Gaither and Isacc Jones. We now have five Patriot graves marked in Joppa Cemetery by the SAR and DAR.

There is a sixth grave being marked in Joppa Cemetery, which is that of John Boone (1727-1803). He was the nephew of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone and a first cousin to Daniel Boone. John Boone lived with them in Pennsylvania as a child and moved with them to North Carolina in 1750. He owned land and lived in what is now Davie County, and his property was just west of Joppa Cemetery. Documentation for his patriotic service shows that he gave supplies to the militia. There’s a record showing he served in the Militia in 1759, but no record was found showing Militia service during the Revolutionary War.

Records in the 1880’s show that John Boone’s headstone was still at Joppa, but it disappeared sometime after that. Therefore, the Col. Daniel Boone Chapter-NCSSAR purchased and installed in 2025 a new granite headstone and a SAR Patriot marker for him. The SAR plans to conduct a Patriot Grave Marking Ceremony for John Boone in the Fall of 2026.

The Linville Gorge Wilderness and Its Connection to the Boone and Bryan Families

By Robert Alvin Crum - copyright 12 May 2025

The Linville Gorge Wilderness is also known as “The Grand Canyon of North Carolina” and one of only two wilderness gorges in the Southern United States. It’s maintained by the United States Forest Service, situated inside the Pisgah National Forest northwest of Morganton, North Carolina, and comprises 11,786 acres around the Linville River. The river is about 1,400 feet below the ridge of the gorge. The Cherokee once inhabited this area and called the river Ee-see-oh, which literally translated means “river of many cliffs.”

There are popular tourist attractions in or near this wilderness such as Linville Falls, Wiseman’s View (a rock outcrop near the center with a spectacular view of the gorge), and Linville Caverns. Some landmarks in the Gorge are Shortoff and Hawksbill Mountains and the Chimneys and Sitting Bear. Table Rock Mountain is a prominent and distinctive peak, which the Cherokee called “Attocoa,” and it was a mystic altar for their sacred ceremonies. Wildlife common to the area are bear, deer, fox, grouse, hawks, owls, vultures, wild turkey, copperheads and timber rattlesnakes.

One can park in a parking lot and hike to the river to see the falls, and there is a historical marker labeled “Death on the Long Hunt.” Part of the text reads:

“In 1766, along the banks of this river, William Linville and his son were killed by the Shawnee while on a long hunt. The Shawnee, who were on their way to attack the Cherokee, feared that Linville’s hunting party would discover their presence and alert the nearby Cherokee. Because the Linville party was on an extended hunt, lasting from 6 months to a year, they may have amassed a very valuable stash of fur – another likely reason for the attack. Today, this river carries the Linville name.”

A more detailed description of what happened to the Linvilles that fateful day can be found by examining the Draper Manuscripts. William Linnville (1718-1766) was a wealthy land speculator in the colony of Virginia and had also served there as a Captain in the local militia. He married Eleanor Bryan, the daughter of Morgan and Martha Bryan, and as their son-in-law, migrated with the Bryans and his own family to the colony of North Carolina around 1748. William settled in the Bryan Settlement in the Forks of the Yadkin and was one of the early land speculators there.

In 1766, William’s son, John, and a companion, John Williams, decided to go into the mountains to hunt for meat and hides. William Linville was in poor health but decided to accompany his son and companion to keep camp for them with the hope that the change would help improve his health. They had several horses as pack horses, and after traveling about sixty miles west and into the Blue Ridge Mountains, they set up camp about ten miles below present-day Linville Falls.

Early one morning and just before sunrise, William awakened his two young companions to tell them about his dream in which they would all be killed by Indians. He urged the two younger men to escape before they could be attacked, but William wasn’t well enough to go with them. Just then shots rang out, and William was shot and wounded. He begged the two young men to escape, so they sprang for their guns. More shots were fired by Shawnee, which killed John Linville. John Williams was shot through the thigh which fractured a bone, but he managed to escape into the forest and remained there overnight. The Shawnee scalped the Linvilles, packed up the desirable plunder and left with all but one of the horses.

After the Shawnees departed, John Williams crawled back into camp and found a horse that belonged to William Linville. Even though badly wounded, he managed to climb on to the horse and made the sixty-mile, slow and tortuous ride back to the Bryan Settlement. When he arrived in the Bryan Settlement, he advised the Linvilles and Boones about the attack and death of Captain Linville and his son. John Williams survived and eventually recovered, and Eleanor Bryan Linville gave him Captain Linville’s horse that had returned him to the Bryan Settlement.

Now for the question of what connection does this site have to the Boones? As I mentioned above, Morgan Bryan (1671-1765) was a land speculator in Virginia who brought his large family into North Carolina and settled in the Forks of the Yadkin in the 1740’s in the area became known as the Bryan Settlement. Migrating with him were his granddaughters Rebecca and Martha Bryan (daughters of Joseph Bryan, who was Morgan Bryan’s first born). These Bryan sisters married brothers Daniel and Edward Boone, respectively. While still living in Virginia, William Linville (1718-1766), married Morgan Bryan’s daughter Eleanor Bryan (1722-1794), and he served as a Captain in the Augusta County, Virginia militia. The Linvilles also moved to the Bryan Settlement at about the same time as Morgan Bryan. Squire and Sarah Boone (parents of Daniel Boone) and their family migrated to the Bryan Settlement in 1750. One of their sons and Daniel’s brother, George Boone, married William Linville’s daughter Ann around 1763. Needless to say, these families were not only friends and neighbors but also many were related by marriage. (Please see the Boone – Bryan Chart to better understand these family connections.)

Since Daniel Boone was married to Mrs. Linville’s niece, and his brother George Boone’s father-in-law was Captain Linville, it is believed that both were in the party that went to bury the dead, especially since both were also familiar with the area as hunters.

On page 192 of Draper’s The Life of Daniel Boone, you will find a description of the place where William and John Linville died that fatal day in 1766 as:

“…on a clear and rapid mountain stream, a considerable branch of the Catawba [River] of about fifty miles in length, in Burke County, North Carolina, which has ever since borne the name of Linville River to perpetuate the misfortunes of these fearless border hunters. Their fatal camp, it is believed, was located not far from the bluff of the Short-Off Mountain, on the eastern bank of the river and about ten miles below the Falls, a beautiful cascade of from eighty to one hundred feet descent. This attack was made by a band of Northern Indian warriors.”

Countless times I have driven east from my home in Burnsville and through what is known as the High Country to the Town of Boone, North Carolina. While driving north on the two-lane Highway 221 just south of the Town of Linville, I see a green sign with white lettering showing the distances from Linville and Boone. Both names together on this sign always reminds me about the connection between these two families and that tragic day of the death of Linville father and son in 1766.

Most people don’t know the source nor why the Linville name is so common in our North Carolina mountains in Burke and Avery Counties. The list includes the Town of Linville, Linville River, Linville Falls, Linville Caverns, Linville Mountain, Linville Gorge, Linville Gorge Wilderness, Old Linville Road, and Linville Falls Highway, which is the stretch of Highway 221 that I mentioned above.

I recently had a conversation with a historian who mentioned that she and her husband were married in the Linville Gorge Wilderness, and I commented that it would have been such a beautiful place to be married. I then asked her whether she knew the history behind the name of the Gorge. When she answered, “no,” I told her the story that I just told you. She’d never heard it and seemed fascinated by the history of the place where she was married. There is so much history about the Boones and related families and the places named for them, and, frequently, it’s beautifully hidden in plain sight.

Sources: 

Bryan, Jr., James K., “Morgan Bryan: 1671 – 3 Apr. 1763”, Dictionary of North Carolina  Biography, 6 Volumes, Edited by William S. Powell, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1979-1996.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone,  Stackpole Books, Mechanicsville, PA, 1998.

McMurtry, Ed.D., David Cornelius, Bryan, Ed.M., David Randall, Weiss, Kathryn Horton, Morgan Bryan (1671-1763), A Danish-Born “Irish Immigrant” and Some of His Antecedents and Descendants, Vol. I of Two Volumes, Mil-Mac Publishers, Lexington, KY, 2007.

Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1964.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, VT, 1922.

Weiss, Kathryn H., Daniel Bryan, Nephew of Daniel Boone: His Narrative and Other Stories, Self-published by Kathryn H. Weiss, 2008.

United States Forest Service Interpretive Sign at Linville Falls

Death on the Long Hunt Sign (photo by R.A. Crum)

View of Linville Falls (photo by R.A. Crum)

Linville Falls with Tourists at Interpretive Sign

Chimney View Overlook with Tourists (photo by R.A. Crum)

View of Table Rock Looking East Across the Gorge

Where Did Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone Live in North Carolina?

Detail of Map of Davie County Land Grants by Andrew Lagle-1976 showing Squire Boone’s two 1753 Granville Land Grants. More images shown below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 28 February 2025

Daniel Boone’s parents moved their family to North Carolina in 1750 and purchased two 640 parcels of land in the Granville Tract. The county’s name was Anson, when they settled there in 1750. It became Rowan County in 1753, when Squire was deeded his two land grants. Today, these two locations or tracts are in Davie County. One 640-acre tract is east of the town of Mocksville, and the other is west of Mocksville. After the land was deeded in 1753, Squire and his family settled on the eastern tract, and this article is about this acquisition and their settlement there.

Many write that Squire and Daniel both settled on the western tract, which is known as the “Boone Tract” or “Bear Creek Tract.” This is a myth, and I’ll focus on the origin of this myth in another article. Please note that this article has the same information provided in a previous article I wrote called, “Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone and Family Settle in North Carolina,” but I needed to repeat it here to provide the evidence for my conclusion that they settled and lived on the eastern 640-acre tract.

In the spring of 1749, Squire Boone traveled from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to explore the area before a possible move. He took with him his son and daughter, Daniel and Elizabeth, and Daniel’s lifelong friend, Henry Miller. They traveled along trails that would later be known as the Great Wagon Road and continued south on a part of the trail known as Morgan Bryan’s Wagon Road that’s between today’s Roanoke, Virginia, and the Shallow Ford on the Yadkin River.

Once they reached the east side of the Shallow Ford, they probably stopped at Edward Hughes’ ordinary (tavern) to talk about this new land before crossing the Yadkin River. Squire knew Edward in Pennsylvania, and their families were connected by siblings’ marriages. Once they crossed the Yadkin, they passed through lands owned by the Bryans (who they also knew in Pennsylvania) and probably also discussed prospective land purchases.

While searching for land, it appears that they camped at a site along the Yadkin River that became known as Boone’s Ford (previously known as Alleman’s Ford). It’s located about six miles north of a place now called “The Point” where the South Yadkin River flows into the North Yadkin River. Just above this location on the east side of the river is a fertile bottom land that became known as Boone’s Bottom, and there was a log structure built on the west side of Boone’s Ford, either at this time or in 1750, that became known as Boone’s Fort.

Squire, Daniel, Elizabeth, and Henry Miller returned to Pennsylvania. On April 11, 1750, Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone sold their 158-acre Exeter Township farm, and on May 1, 1950, they left Pennsylvania for North Carolina. They and their large family followed the same route that they used the previous year during their exploratory trip. Some sources say that the Boones stopped in Winchester, Virginia and may have stayed there for two years. However, Lyman Draper documented that it was a brief stay, and there’s additional evidence to the contrary.

Additional documentation showing Squire Boone’s earlier arrival in North Carolina is a land entry in 1750 showing a warrant to measure and lay out 640 acres for Squire Boone lying on Grant’s Creek (alias Lichon Creek) and now known as Elisha Creek. When this land was surveyed, Squire Boone is named as a “chainer” indicating that he was walking the land long before the grant was issued on April 13, 1753.

Additional evidence shows the Boones first settled on the east side of the Yadkin where they are shown as living on land adjacent to a survey completed by James Carter dated February 27, 1752. Carter knew the Boones, since he married a Boone, and his daughter Mary married Jonathan Boone. There’s also documentation in the Draper Manuscripts showing that Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone and their family first lived on the east side of the Yadkin River and near today’s Boone Cave Park. In 1753, they completed the purchase of two separate 640-acre tracts from Lord Granville on the west side of the river in 1753.

When the large area of Rowan County, North Carolina was formed from Anson County in 1753, Squire Boone became a reasonably prominent colonial official. He served on the Vestry of the Anglican Parish of St. Luke, was a civil administrator of a large area of Rowan County and was appointed as one of the first Justices of the Court of Common Pleas. In the Minutes of the Court of Common Pleas, Squire Boone is listed as one of the Justices, and after his name, it’s recorded that, “Squire Boone’s residence is on the Yadkin at Boone’s Ford.”

Squire Boone’s purchases of two 640-acre tracts from Lord Granville were finalized in 1753. One is referred to the Bear Creek tract (west of present-day Mocksville) and the other is referred to as the Dutchman’s Creek tract (east of present-day Mocksville). The two following paragraphs show the initial purchase of the Dutchman’s Creek tract by Squire Boone and then the transfer to his son Squire in 1759.

Rowan County Deed Book 3, page 137 shows on April 30, 1753, the “Land granted from Granville to Squire Boone, Esq., of Rowan County, Province of North Carolina, 640 acres land in Parish of (not given) Rowan County, N. C. lying on the South side of Grant’s Creek otherwise Licking Creek. (3 shillings to every 100 acres).” Signed Granville, by James Innes and Francis Corbin. Witnesses: James Carter and William Haywood. Proved at Court House in Salisbury for Rowan County, January 20, 1756, on oath of James Carter, Esq. Ordered to be registered. Test. Thomas Parker.”

Rowan Deed Book 4, page 196 shows on April 12, 1759, the land gift from “Squire Boone of Rowan County, N. C., and Sarah, his wife, let Squire Boone, Jr., son of said Squire Boone, Sen’r., have for love and affection and for (?) pounds, 640 acres land in Rowan County, lying on South side of Grant’s Creek, otherwise Licking Creek. (This land was granted to Squire Boone, Sen’r., by Granville on April 30th, 1753). Signed Squire Boone and Sarah Boone, Witnesses: Thomas Banfield, Richard Neely and Charles Hunter. Proven, Rowan County Court, October 1759. Let it be registered. Tho’s. Parker, Clerk.”

Squire Boone, Sr. and his family lived on the Dutchman’s Creek tract as verified by a letter dated February 17, 1843, from Daniel Bryan to Lyman Draper. Daniel Bryan writes, “When Dan’l [Boone] was sixteen years old his father Squire Boone Moved to North Carolina and settled on Dutchman’s Creek at the Buffalow Lick, where he died in 1763.”

Daniel Bryan was born in 1758 as the second son of William and Mary Boone Bryan. Mary Boone was Daniel Boone’s younger sister, and William Bryan was the uncle of Rebecca Bryan Boone. Daniel Bryan was born at and lived on his parents’ land at what was known as “The Bend” along the Yadkin River in the Bryan Settlement in North Carolina. Daniel Bryan was also the grandson of Squire Boone, Sr. and Morgan Bryan, Sr. and was also the nephew of Daniel Boone and a first cousin of Rebecca Bryan.

This close relationship with the Boones, as a grandson of Squire Boone, and living nearby as family would make his statements an accurate source about Squire Boone and his family and where they lived. When Draper’s biography about Daniel Boone was published by Ted Fraklin Belue, it also confirms that Squire and family ultimately settled on what many now refer to as the Dutchman Creek property and that Daniel and family settled at Sugartree Creek. Neither lived at the 640-acre “Bear Creek Tract,” and the perpetuation of this myth will be addressed in a subsequent article.

Sources:

Anson County, North Carolina Deed Records.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, Acts of the North Carolina General Assembly, 1753, Chapter VII, p. 383.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.

Edith M. Clark History Room, Rowan County Public Library, Salisbury, North Carolina.

Hammond, Neil O., My Father Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Kentucky, 1999.

Kamper, Ken, An Accurate Summary of the Life of Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone History  Research – Newsletter No. 6, December 2021.

Kamper, Ken, A Researcher’s Understanding on the Boone Family Move to North Carolina, No. PK17.0211, February 2017.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Deeds of Rowan County, North Carolina, 1753 – 1785, Books 1 through 10, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1983.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina, Volume I – 1753-1762, Volume II – 1763-1774, Volume III – 1775-1789, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1977, 1979,1982.

Martin-Wall History Room, Davie County Public Library, Mocksville, North Carolina.

Rowan County Deeds, Salisbury, North Carolina.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1922.

Weiss, Kathryn H., Daniel Bryan, Nephew of Daniel Boone: His Narrative and Other Stories, Self-published by Kathryn H. Weiss, 2008.

Bronze map in Joppa Cemetery with Boone land grants

Detail of Davie County Land Grants by Lagle 1976

Boone Cave Park marker. Photo by R.A. Crum

Yadkin River at Shallow Ford. Photo by R.A. Crum

Yadkin River near Trading Ford. Photo by R.A. Crum

Yadkin River near Boone's Ford. Photo by R.A. Crum

Was Daniel Boone at Fort Dobbs?

“Fort Dobbs Reconstructed” by Robert Alvin Crum copyright 2019. More images below.

By Robert Alvin Crum copyright 23 January 2025

Located in Statesville, North Carolina is a place known as Fort Dobbs State Historic Site. It’s located at 438 Fort Dobbs Road, Statesville, NC 28625. You can learn more about the site and its history by going to www.fortdobbs.org.

The French & Indian War, which began in the North American colonies and was fought between the French and British. It was known as the Seven Years War in Europe, began in 1754, and ended in 1763. As a result of this war, Arthur Dobbs, the Royal Governor of North Carolina ordered the construction of a fort on the colony’s western frontier. Construction began in 1755, was completed in 1756, and was named after the Royal Governor. Its purpose was to serve as a military headquarters which garrisoned approximately fifty North Carolina provincial troops and the supplies necessary to support them. During periods of conflict, settlers could also use it as a safe haven.

Arthur Dobbs became the Royal Governor in 1754 and brought direction and money, when he arrived in the colony of North Carolina. In 1755, Governor Dobbs called for volunteers to march with British General Edward Braddock, and he placed his son Edward Dobbs in charge of the troops to join Braddock. Daniel Boone was among eighty-four men who responded to the call for volunteers. He was a teamster or wagon driver along with many others such as Daniel Morgan, who would go on to fame as a General during the American Revolution, and John Finley, who in 1769 would later pilot Daniel Boone and companions for the first time through the Cumberland Gap.

In 1758, the Anglo-Cherokee War began between the British and the Cherokee. It was then that frequent raids by the Cherokee were launched against the settlers in North Carolina. The only attack at Fort Dobbs was on February 27, 1760, when two provincial soldiers were wounded, one colonial boy was killed, and ten to twelve Cherokee were reported as wounded or killed. The Anglo-Cherokee War ended in the fall of 1761. With the end of the French & Indian War, the North Carolina frontier moved farther west. Therefore, there was no longer a need for Fort Dobbs, so the fort was evacuated by the military, and it slowly deteriorated and passed into history.

Frequently, biographers writing about Daniel Boone have stated that he and his family lived in Fort Dobbs during the French & Indian War. Many of Boone’s biographies contain myths and inaccuracies, and the focus of this article is whether Daniel Boone lived at Fort Dobbs, or, at the very least, was he there?

When I first visited this site years ago, I spotted and photographed the stone D.A.R. marker with the iron Daniel Boone plaque attached to it. It raised the question for me about whether Daniel Boone was here. At that time, the marker was set in an open field in front of an area designated as the location of the original fort. This marker was subsequently moved farther back onto the property, when reconstruction of the fort began. There is an interpretive historical “tablet” by the marker at the current visitor’s center that reads, in part, as follows:

“In 1910, the NSDAR erected a granite monument and later J. Hampton Rich of Mocksville added an iron marker. Rich founded The Boone Trail Highway Association, which placed identical tablets at various sites visited by Daniel Boone. The Fort Dobbs [Hampton Rich] marker is one of only 60 out of the original 358 that are known to exist.”

As I became fascinated by my question about why there was a Daniel Boone iron Hampton Rich marker at Fort Dobbs, I began to dig and research this issue. Fort Dobbs was a military facility used during the French & Indian War and the Anglo Cherokee War. In a separate article, I explored Boone’s service during the French & Indian War and militia service during the Anglo-Cherokee War. This article focuses on his service during the latter, because most biographers indicate that he and his family were at Fort Dobbs during that time.

Generally, colonial governments in the thirteen British colonies were in no position to establish professional armies, so they relied on the ancient British tradition of militia. The colonies enacted laws requiring all able-bodied men from ages 16 to 60 to serve in the local militia, attend training, provide one’s own weapon, ammunition and clothing and be ready when called in the event of an Indian attack or other emergency. The militia was a local institution under the laws of the colony, and the royal governor or general assembly appointed general officers and colonels who commanded larger districts. Each local militia elected their officers. Whenever members of the militia were called, it was usually to serve for only a short time, and they would return home as quickly as possible. This information can be found by reading Maurice Matloff, ed., American Military History, Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army, Washington, DC, 1969, pp. 28 & 29.

Prior to the American Revolution, militia records in North Carolina are scarce and even non-existent in some areas. However, there is documentation that Daniel Boone served in the Rowan County militia in 1759 (Fort Dobbs was in Rowan County at the time). In the Rowan County, North Carolina Tax Lists 1757 – 1800 by Jo Ann White, the Introduction says that “In the Military Collection of the Treasurer’s and Comptroller’s Papers, ‘Frontier and Indian Scouting,’ at the North Carolina State Archives is a list of Rowan County men who fought to defend the area against Indian attacks. Most of the men served only a few days and were paid a few shillings for their service.” On page 13 of this book, there is an entry that states, “25 April 1759. The Publick of North Carolina to Morgan Bryan to a Scout sent Out in the Alarm of Daniel Hossey and Others being killed ---” Lieutenant Morgan Bryan is named at the top of the list followed by William Bryan. Both men were brothers and the uncles to Rebecca Bryan (Daniel Boone’s wife). Daniel Boone’s name is also on this list as a member of the militia called out that day. Even thought there are no militia records showing a group of men such as those commanded by Bryan stopping at the fort, it’s quite possible, since they would have been ”ranging” throughout Rowan County, would have known about the fort, and could have stopped there.

In The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, LL.D. and edited by Ted Franklin Belue, one finds on page 152 a sentence which states, “When this brilliant little engagement happened, Colonel Waddell was stationed at Fort Dobbs, where the Bryans and some of the Boones had taken refuge.” Unfortunately, no footnotes nor references indicate a source for this statement.

In his biography on Boone, Robert Morgan mentions Fort Dobbs on pages 58 and 60 that “Boone later told his son that he had served with Waddell at Fort Dobbs.” When I looked at Mr. Morgan’s footnote, it said, “Boone later told his son Nathan, Hammond, ed., 14.” After reading this, I looked at page 14 in My Father, Daniel Boone: The Interviews with Nathan Boone, which states as follows:

“Nathan Boone: I have often heard my father and mother speak of Fort Dobbs but have no recollection as to whether they forted there or not. Frankly, I do not believe that our family was forced to live in a fort after they settled on the Yadkin River, nor can I recall anything further about the French War.”

It’s great to look at Mr. Hammond’s footnote 7. on page 154, which continues by explaining the following:

“7. Fort Dobbs was located twenty miles east [it should say “west”] of the Boone Homestead, between the south fork of the Yadkin River and the Catawba River, near the present town of Statesville, North Carolina. Lyman Draper believed that during the Indian trouble in 1759 the Boone family moved to Virginia or Maryland instead of seeking protection at this fort. See DM 2C169-70.”

Some insight can be found in Ken Kamper’s article “Lyman Draper and the Draper Manuscript Collection,” The Compass, April 2019, Volume 23, Issue 2, The Boone Society, Inc., pp. 24 & 25 (2019). Mr. Kamper begins this article by explaining how Lyman Draper began in the early nineteenth century his collection of stories and documents about the pioneers and America’s westward expansion, and without his research, much that is known about the Boones and Bryans probably would have been lost. Kamper mentions in this article that in 1998 Ted Franklin Belue assembled Draper’s Manuscript into a biography about the life of Daniel Boone. Kamper continues by saying that the Belue edition was good at educating the public about new materials. However, Kamper adds that Draper had put his manuscript on which this biography is based back on the shelf and continued research for a number of years and that Neal Hammond’s edition of the Draper Manuscripts with Nathan Boone’s interview offers contradictions and adds new light to earlier research and documentation.

As I reviewed more materials on this topic, I read the 1976 biography by Lawrence Elliott, The Long Hunter: A New Life of Daniel Boone and was surprised to read on page 37 the following:

“The Boones ‘forted up’ more than once in those dark days. They went to Fort Dobbs, some miles to the west, a substantial enclosure of oak logs garrisoned by Captain Hugh Waddell and a company of forty-six militiamen. Daniel, having seen his wife and babies safely inside, would then march with the rangers to patrol the mountains west of Salisbury in defense of farther settlements. But the refugees had to remain inside, sometimes for weeks at a time, frightened, cramped, irritable, unable to tend crops or even venture beyond sight of the stockade.”

Fascinated by this paragraph, the next paragraph on page 37 continued by saying, “In February 1760, Fort Dobbs itself was attacked by a strong force of Cherokee, and though they were beaten off by the Rangers, Rebecca had had enough. She was pregnant a third time and persuaded Daniel that they had to leave the Yadkin until the Indian wars ended.”

My thought was “Wow! New information!” I looked for a footnote in the back of the book, but I found none. When the author wrote this part of the story, he appears to provide no documentation. Did he write this for pure entertainment? Normally, I’d contact the author to find the source of these “facts,” but he’s no longer among the living.

Documentation shows that when the Cherokee raids increased, by late 1759 Daniel Boone moved his wife Rebecca and two sons by wagon to Culpepper County, Virginia, and they were accompanied by his sister Elizabeth, her husband William Grant, and their family. Once their families were safe in Virginia, Daniel and his brother-in-law, William Grant, returned to North Carolina to serve in the Rowan County Militia to protect their homes and the settlers that chose to remain. They served under Captain Morgan Bryan who was the uncle of Rebecca Bryan Boone.

A new twist to the story about the Boones living in Fort Dobbs was written by bestselling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin on page 78 of their book Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier. Even though Boone didn’t bring his family back to North Carolina until just before their second daughter Jemima’s birth in late 1762 at Sugar Tree Creek, the Blood and Treasure book states otherwise. The authors say:

“Susannah Boone, the couple’s first daughter was born November 2, 1760. As soon as mother and child were well enough to travel, the family set back off for North Carolina.... Boone did not immediately occupy the homestead upon reaching the valley, and instead joined his remaining family within the walls of Fort Dobbs. Later in life Boone was often happy to discourse on his familiarity with the nooks, crannies, and musket loopholes of the first stockade in which he had ever ‘forted up.’”

Unfortunately, there is no footnote providing a source for this, because it’s a new myth that is contrary to documented facts.

Most of this article has examined whether the Boones lived in Fort Dobbs, but, as I mentioned in the eighth paragraph above, I’d also like to examine whether Daniel could have been there in 1761 at the close of the Anglo-Cherokee War. During that war in 1761, a military campaign against the Cherokee was launched to attack the Cherokee towns from the south by Colonel James Grant. At the same time, Colonel William Byrd, III’s Virginia troops were to attack the Cherokee towns from the north. Grant’s forces wreaked havoc in western North Carolina, but Byrd was frustrated by delays and a lack of supplies, so he resigned his commission. He was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Adam Stephen who requested North Carolina recruits from Colonel Waddell at Fort Dobbs, and the North Carolina Governor ordered troops to join the Virginia Regiment serving along the Holston River. The Carolina Troops camped at the recently constructed Fort Robinson located near the Long Island of the Holston, and the Cherokee signed a treaty at the Long Island with Virginia in November 1761. The Cherokee signed the Treaty of Charleston in December 1761 with South Carolina.

I occasionally have discussions with Mr. Jason Melius, who is the Historical Interpreter at Fort Dobbs State Historic Site. He advised that it appears that Daniel Boone was a teamster or waggoneer and met Waddell’s troops at Fort Dobbs before they made their way to Fort Robinson near the Long Island of the Holtson. Additional evidence about Boone’s involvement can be found in Lyman Draper’s interview in 1851 with Nathan and Olive Boone where Olive advised as follows:

“I often heard Colonel Daniel Boone speak of Byrd’s Expedition in 1761. He always criticized Byrd for his slowness and failure, but I can't recall whether Colonel Boone actually said he was on this expedition. But Nathan and I both feel that his father would not have spoken that way about Colonel Byrd, had he not been an eyewitness.”

Draper immediately responded to Olive’s comment by adding:

“Mr. Haywood says that immediately after the peace of 1761, Daniel Boone and others went hunting in the Holston Valley and East Tennessee, which leads me to think that he was on the campaign with Colonel Byrd. Daniel Boone probably served as one of Colonel Waddell's men and, after being discharged from the Army camp on Holston, went hunting on the way home.”

The Friends of Fort Dobbs meticulously completed in 2019 the reconstruction of this fort used during the French & Indian War according to exact specifications from historical documents. I was privileged to watch the slow and lengthy process of reconstruction over a period of three years.

The completion of this three-story structure on the western frontier of the Colony of North Carolina would have been quite a site, since it would have been unlike anything the settlers would have seen in the area at that time. Before the Cherokee raids, it would have been understandable that settlers in the area might make a day or overnight trip to see Fort Dobbs. The Boones and Bryans could have traveled along Sherril’s Path from the Bryan Settlement to see this large structure. In 1851, Lyman Draper interviewed Daniel’s son Nathan Boone who said his parents were aware of Fort Dobbs but never “forted up” there.

Both Lyman Draper and Rev. John Shane interviewed Daniel Bryan who was Daniel Boone’s nephew and Rebecca Bryan’s first cousin. Daniel Bryan was born in 1758 in the Bryan Settlement and lived just a few, short miles from Daniel and Rebecca Boone’s home at Sugar Tree Creek. He advised that some of the Boone’s and Bryan’s fled to Virginia between 1760 and 1762. However, he explained that as a child, he was “forted up” with the Bryan family in North Carolina, and he says that he remembered a few of the details. The Bryans wouldn’t have traveled twenty miles to “fort up” at Fort Dobbs and would have remained on their own lands to protect them.

I also interviewed on several occasions the Site Manager for Fort Dobbs State Historic Site, Mr. Scott Douglas. He mentioned that the fort was never large enough to house the local population wanting to “fort up” during times of trouble with the Cherokee. When they were at the site, officers and North Carolina provincial soldiers would have lived in the fort, but the local population could only congregate inside during an attack. At best, they would have camped outside of the structure, if they were concerned about staying on their own land during Cherokee attacks. I also interviewed the Site Interpreter, Mr. Jason Melius, and he agrees that Boone probably would have stopped by the fort while serving in the militia and, and as mentioned above, could have been there in 1761, when he served as a waggoner that headed to the Long Island of the Holston where a peace treaty was signed between the Cherokee and British.

What’s the conclusion of my examination of materials to research my question “Was Daniel Boone at Fort Dobbs?” All the secondary sources mentioned state without any documentation that Daniel and Rebecca Boone and their family lived in Fort Dobbs at the time of the Anglo-Cherokee War. Primary sources, including the interview with Nathan and Olive Boone, indicate that Daniel and Rebecca Boone were aware of Fort Dobbs, but never “forted up” there. It’s quite possible the entire family could have taken an approximately twenty-mile trip from their settlement along Sherrill’s Path to Fort Dobbs to see this new, magnificent, three-story fort that was built to protect the frontier. There’s documentation that Daniel was in the North Carolina militia at the beginning of the Anglo-Cherokee War, and in 1761, he was involved with Colonel Waddel’s men, when they headed west to Fort Robinson at the Long Island of the Holston. Even though there’s no paper or document that shows the days he might have been at Fort Dobbs, the evidence shows that Daniel Boone was probably at Fort Dobbs more than once during his military service.

SOURCES:

Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.

Clark, Walter, Editor, The State Records of North Carolina, 16 Volumes, Winston, Goldsboro, State of North Carolina, 1895-1907.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, Acts of the North Carolina General Assembly, 1753, Chapter VII, p. 383.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Fries, Adelaide Lisetta, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, 1752-1771, Vols. 1 & 2, Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina, Reprinted 1968.

Hammond, Neil O., Editor, My Father Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Kentucky, 1999.

Kamper, Ken, “An Accurate Summary of the Life of Daniel Boone,” Daniel Boone History Research – Newsletter No. 6, December 2021.

King, Duane H., Editor, The Memoirs of Lt. Henry Timberlake: The Story of a Soldier, Adventurer, and Emissary to the Cherokees, 1756-1765, Museum of the  Cherokee Indian, Cherokee, NC, 2007.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Deeds of Rowan County, North Carolina, 1753 – 1785, Books 1 through 10, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1983.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina, Volume I – 1753-1762, Volume II – 1763-1774, Volume III – 1775-1789, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1977,      1979, 1982.

Linn, Jo White, Rowan County, North Carolina Tax Lists 1757-1800 Annotated Transcriptions, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1995.

Maas, John R., The French & Indian War in North Carolina: The Spreading Flames of War, The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2013.

Matloff, Maurice, Editor, American Military History, Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army, Washington, DC, 1969.

Melius, Jason, “Defining the Variety of Combatants During the French and Indian War,”  The Fort Dobbs Gazette, Volume XIX, Issue 4, pages 4 and 5, December 2022.

Melius, J., “Militia Activity on the NC Frontier 1755-1766,” June 2022.

Preston, David L., Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of Monongahela and the Road to Revolution, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2015.

Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina,   1964.

Robinson, Blackwell P., The Five Royal Governors of North Carolina 1729-1775, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC 1968.

Saunders, William L., Editor, The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10 Volumes, Printers to the State, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1886-1890.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1922.

Tortora, Daniel J., Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756-1763, The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

U.S Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.

Weiss, Kathryn H., Daniel Bryan, Nephew of Daniel Boone: His Narrative and Other Stories, Self-published by Kathryn H. Weiss, 2008.

Whisker, James Biser, The North Carolina Militia, 1585 – 1783, Heritage House,  Columbia, South Carolina, 2022.

www.fortdobbs.org

DAR Marker at Fort Dobbs photo by R.A. Crum

Daniel Boone Marker at Fort Dobbs photo R.A. Crum

Fort Dobbs photo by Robert Alvin Crum 2019

Fort Dobbs with Reenactors photo by R.A. Crum

Fort Dobbs Provincials & Militia photo by R.A. Crum

Fort Dobbs showing muskets firing. Photo by R.A. Crumo

Provincial Soldiers' Quarters photo by R.A. Crum

Fort Dobbs Officers' Quarters photo by R.A. Crum

Young Rebecca Bryan and Her Marriage to Daniel Boone

Rebecca Boone inscription on her grave monument in Frankfort Cemetery, Frankfort, Kentucky (Photo by Robert Alvin Crum). More images shown below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 29 January 2024

There are literally volumes written about Daniel Boone, but what about his bride Rebecca Bryan? This is the story about her young life and her marriage to Daniel Boone.

Rebecca Bryan was born on January 9, 1739, and her parents were Joseph Bryan and Hester Simpson. She was born in Opequon, Frederick County, Virginia. Rebecca’s sister, Martha Bryan, was also a daughter of Hester Simpson who died about 1740. After his wife, Hester, died, Joseph married Alice Linville about 1740 or 41, and family tradition says that, at an early age, Martha and Rebecca went to live with and were raised by their grandparents Morgan and Martha Strode Bryan.

Rebecca’s father, Joseph Bryan (1720-1805), was the oldest son out of nine children born to Morgan and Martha Strode Bryan. Just like his father, Joseph’s life-long profession was to become a land speculator.

In 1747, Morgan Bryan and his wife, Martha, decided to move with their large extended family to North Carolina. They, along with most of their children and grandchildren, left their lands in Virginia to settle in the backcountry of North Carolina in the Forks of the Yadkin. Their oldest son, Joseph Bryan, and his second wife, Alice Linville, along with their children, stayed behind in Virginia until 1756, so they could tie up the loose ends of the family’s land speculating business. Joseph’s two daughters by his first wife, Martha and Rebecca, were being raised by their grandparents, Morgan and Martha Bryan, so they accompanied their grandparents in 1747 on their first trek into North Carolina. Morgan and Martha also had a daughter, Mary Bryan, who married Thomas Curtis. Since they both died in Virginia before this 1747 migration, their daughter, Mary Curtis, also accompanied her grandparents into North Carolina. It’s believed that Morgan Bryan, Jr. (1728-1804) also stayed in Virginia for a few more years until he settled affairs and later moved south to North Carolina.

When Rebecca arrived in North Carolina at age eight, she and her sister, Martha, lived with their grandparents, Morgan and Martha Bryan, and it was probably at their “mansion house” on the 550-acre tract located at “the Bend” on the Yadkin River. Once her grandmother died in 1762, and her grandfather in 1763, this tract of land was split between her uncles William and Thomas Bryan.

Daniel Boone’s sister, Mary, and William Bryan (Rebecca Bryan’s uncle and son of Morgan Bryan, Sr.) were married in 1755. It was at their wedding that Daniel Boone and Rebecca Bryan first met one another. Olive Boone confirmed this, when Lyman Draper interviewed Nathan and Olive Boone in October 1851, and she added, “… I suppose if there was any ‘shining of eyes,’ it must have been there.” Olive Boone continued her recollection by saying,

“The second time they met was at some place where several young people met to eat cherries. They sat upon a ridge of green turf under the cherry trees, and Daniel Boone was beside Rebecca Bryan and doubtless turning over in his own mind whether she would make him a good companion. At that time, he took out his knife and, taking up one corner of her white apron, began to cut and stab holes through it, to which she said nothing nor offered any resistance. Daniel Boone afterward used to say he did it to try her temper, thinking if it was fiery, she would fly into a passion.”

When Daniel and Rebecca married, it wasn’t in a church where many wedding ceremonies are performed today. Part of that was due to a shortage of churches and clergy in the North Carolina backcountry. Tradition says that they were married in a civil service by Daniel’s father, Squire, who was a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and he was able to do so based on the law that follows:

“For want of men in Holy Orders, both the Members of the Council and Justices of the Peace are empower’d by the Laws of that County to marry all those who will not take One another’s Word; but for the ceremony of Christening their children, they trust that to chance. In 1669, because of the absence of clergymen in the colony, marriage was made a civil contract. By the vestry law of 1715, magistrates were permitted to perform the marriage ceremony, ‘in such parishes where no minister shall be resident,’ and in 1741 the right was confined to the clergy of the Church of England and magistrates.” (See History of the Dividing Line, page 72 and note 39, and Colonial Records, Vol. XXIII, p. 3.)

Rebecca married Daniel on August 14,1756 in Rowan County, North Carolina. The wedding was probably at either Daniel’s parents at what’s referred to as Dutchman’s Creek or at the Bryan’s “mansion house,” but it’s not documented. Olive Boone advised Draper in 1851 that, “When they were married, two other couples were married at the same time.”

At the time of their marriage, there were no images or paintings of the young couple, and photography did not yet exist. In Draper’s “The Life of Daniel Boone,” one can find a physical description of Daniel Boone as follows:

“Behold that young man exhibiting such unusual firmness and energy of character, five feet eight inches in height, with broad chest and shoulders, his form gradually tapering downwards to his extremities; his hair moderately black; blue eyes arched with yellowish eyebrows; his lips thin with a mouth particularly wide; a countenance fair and ruddy with a nose a little bordering on the Roman order.”

There’s also a physical description of Rebecca as follows:

“Rebecca Bryan, whose brow had been fanned by the breezes of seventeen summers, was like Rebecca of old, ‘very fair to look upon,’ with jet Black hair and eyes, complexion rather dark, and something over the common size of her sex, her whole demeanor expressive of her child-like alertness, pleasing in her address, and unaffectedly kind in all her deportment. Never was there a more gentle, affectionate, forbearing creature than this same fair youthful bride of the Yadkin.”

In his interview with Lyman Draper in 1851, Nathan Boone (youngest child of Daniel and Rebecca Boone) advised that, “After he was married, Father lived for a while in a house in my grandfather’s [Squire Boone’s] yard and then settled on a place of his own. Daniel Bryan (nephew of Daniel Boone and first cousin to Rebecca) wrote in a letter to Lyman Draper on February 17, 1843 that, “At about 21 years old he [Daniel] Married Rebecka Bryan Daughter of Joseph Bryan in the Neighborhood of Bryans Settlement & settled himself on a small Creek Called Sugartree four miles from My father where he cleared a small farm on which he lived until they had five Children.”

The farm on which they settled at Sugartree Creek was six miles north of where Daniel’s parents lived on what was known as Dutchman’s Creek. This Sugartree Creek location was only four miles from Rebecca’s grandparents, Morgan and Martha Bryan, and many of her Bryan uncles, aunts and cousins. At the time of their marriage, Daniel and Rebecca “adopted” his brother Israel’s two sons, Jesse and Jonathan, and they lived with them at Sugartree Creek. Daniel and Rebecca enjoyed a long marriage of fifty-seven years, and she gave birth to their ten children.

While living at Sugartree Creek from 1756 to 1767, their first five children were born. However, Susannah, their third child, was born in Virginia in 1760, when the family fled there during the Anglo-Cherokee War. Their fifth child, and my direct ancestor, Lavina, was born at Sugartree Creek in 1766, and then the Boone clan migrated to the Upper Yadkin in 1767. This is confirmed during Reverend John Shane’s interview in 1842 with Daniel Bryan when he said, “Daniel Boone settled within four miles of my father William Bryan’s, where he remained until the growth of his family (having several children in his family) and the scarcity of game, lead him to remove to the head of the Adkin,….” In addition to all the work required to care for her home and family, stories told by her children mention that Rebecca also worked as a midwife, linen maker, leather tanner and sharpshooter.

Sources:

Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.

Boyd, William K., William Byrd’s Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina, The North Carolina Historical Commission, Edwards & Broughton Company, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1929.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Hammond, Neil O., My Father Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Kentucky, 1999.

Kamper, Ken, An Accurate Summary of the Life of Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone History  Research – Newsletter No. 6, December 2021.

Kamper, Ken, A Researcher’s Understanding on the Boone Family Move to North Carolina, No. PK17.0211, February 2017.

Manuscript Collection, The State Historical Society of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri,

Martin-Wall History Room, Davie County Public Library, Mocksville, North Carolina.

Rowan County Register of Deeds, Salisbury, North Carolina.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1922.

U.S. Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.

Weiss, Kathryn H., Daniel Bryan, Nephew of Daniel Boone: His Narrative and Other Stories, Self-published by Kathryn H. Weiss, Forbestown, California, 2008.

Weiss, Katherine, Morgan Bryan, Senior’s “Original Eleven” Anson (Rowan) County North Carolina Land Grants, Katherine Weiss, Forbestown, California, 2006.

Detail of "Rebecca Was a Great Shot" by R.A. Crum

"Rebecca & Daughter Lavina" by R.A. Crum 2024

"Frequently at the Fire" by R.A. Crum 2016

Marble relief of Rebecca Boone in Frankfort, KY

Daniel Boone in the Militia During the Colonial North Carolina Wars

“Militia Fire” by Cherie Louise Turner copyright 2023. Left to right are Robert Alvin Crum, Larry Anderson, and Stephen P. McKee. More images below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 14 December 2024

Many of us have read about Daniel Boone serving as a Captain at the Siege of Boonesborough in 1778 and that he was a Lieutenant Colonel at the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782. This was only part of his militia service while he lived in the Commonwealth of Virginia. A few may also know that in 1799, when he moved to the Spanish Territory (now the State of Missouri), he was awarded the Spanish military title of Commandant. In addition to all that, Danile Boone also served in the militia in North Carolina.

Many, including historians, don’t realize that there was a militia in colonial North Carolina and that Daniel Boone was part of it. When Daniel moved in 1750 with his parents to the colony of North Carolina and turned 16 years of age, he became a member of the North Carolina Militia. How did this happen?

As mentioned in a previous article, Daniel and most of his siblings moved to North Carolina in 1750. It’s documented that Squire Boone’s earlier arrival in North Carolina is a land entry in 1750 showing a warrant to measure and lay out 640 acres for Squire Boone lying on Grant’s Creek (alias Lichon Creek) and now known as Elisha Creek. When this land was surveyed, Squire Boone is named as a “chainer” indicating that he was walking the land long before the deed was issued on April 13, 1753.

Additional evidence shows the Boones first settled on the east side of the Yadkin where they are shown as living on land adjacent to a survey completed by James Carter dated February 27, 1752. Carter knew the Boones, and his daughter Mary married Jonathan Boone (Squire Boone, Sr.’s son). There’s additional documentation in the Draper Manuscripts and the Rowan County Court of Common Pleas Records showing that Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone and their family first lived on the east side of the Yadkin River and near today’s Boone Cave Park.

To understand Daniel’s North Carolina militia service, one must examine and understand the law with respect to militia service in North Carolina. In colonial North Carolina, all free men between the ages of 16 and 60 were considered members of the militia. Shortly after Daniel Boone arrived with his family in North Carolina in 1750, he celebrated his sixteenth birthday on October 22, so at that time he was legally considered a member of the Rowan County Militia where he was living.

There was a series of Militia Acts passed by the colonial legislature. In addition to freemen, the Militia Act of 1746 added servants to the rolls and exempted millers and ferrymen. Regiments were required to muster annually. Their smaller companies were to muster four times a year. The North Carolina militia could act with the militias in the colonies of Virginia and South Carolina, but no others. Officers were to explain to their men the Militia Act requirements and report to the governor annually. This Act also authorized the first mounted militia. The Militia Act of 1749 reduced the number of militia musters to two each year, but when the French & Indian War began in 1754, the colony returned to requiring more militia musters. For those not familiar with the term “muster,” it was the act of calling together members to assess the availability of the local militias that might function as a defensive force and to also conduct training.

The French & Indian War, which began in North America, was known in Europe as the Seven Years War, when it started there two years later. It became a War for Empire between the British and French. As far as the Carolinas were concerned, the French & Indian War began in 1753 and ended in 1761. In 1753, North Carolina Governor Matthew Rowan wrote in a letter to the Earl of Holdernesse as follows:

“three French and five Northward Indians came down to kill some of the Catawba Indians but were met by 13 of the Catawbas who killed two French and three of the northward Indians... this action was within less than two miles of Rowan County Court House during the sitting of the court.”

Arthur Dobbs became the Royal Governor in 1754 and brought direction and money, when he arrived in the colony of North Carolina. In 1755, Governor Dobbs called for volunteers to march with British General Edward Braddock, and he placed his son Edward Dobbs in charge of the troops to join Braddock.

Daniel Boone was among eighty-four men who responded to the call for volunteers. He was a teamster or wagon driver along with many others such as Daniel Morgan, who would go on to fame as a general in the American Revolution, and John Finley, who would later pilot Daniel Boone and companions for the first time in 1769 through the Cumberland Gap.

As a part of the French & Indian War, British General Braddock commanded an army ordered to march on and recapture Fort Duquesne from the French. The fort was located at the present City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Serving under General Braddock was Colonel George Washington, who was in command of Virginia’s militia.

The British and American armies numbered fifteen hundred troops. On July 9, 1755, they were only a few miles south of the French fort, when they were ambushed by three hundred Indians and the French. This became known as the Battle of Monongahela. The British were routed, General Braddock was mortally wounded, and about 1,000 British were killed or wounded. As Daniel Boone saw British soldiers running past him to the rear, he knew to cut his horses loose from his wagon. He climbed on one of the horses and rushed to the rear with the rest of the British.

Daniel’s son, Nathan, recounted his father’s story to Lyman Draper during an interview in 1851 as follows:

“In 1755, my father, Daniel Boone, was on Braddock's campaign during the French and Indian War. He was not a soldier, but served as a teamster, conveying the baggage of the army. When General Braddock's army was defeated near Pittsburgh, he was with the baggage in the rear of the column. When the retreat began, he cut his team loose from the wagon and escaped with his horses. He used to censure Braddock’s conduct, saying he neglected to keep out spies and flank guards. I think that somehow my father was connected with Washington's colonial troops; he often spoke of Washington, whom both he and my mother personally knew.”

On page 255 of his book Braddock’s Defeat, David Preston also explained similar experiences of the wagoners during this battle by saying,

“A Virginia wagoner named Lewin was badly wounded in the arm as Native warriors fired on the train. Wagoners struggle to control their teams, spooked by the sounds of musketry and artillery. Enemy fire was killing and wounding both men and horses and scattering some of the pack horses and cattle. A slow trickle of soldiers and teamsters began flowing back to the ford of the Monongahela throughout the battle. Twenty-year-old Daniel Boone was one of the many who chose survival over their sovereign, cutting a horse out of its harness and escaping the expedition.”

After Daniel Boone returned home to the Bryan Settlement from the Battle of Monongahela (Braddock’s Defeat), he met Rebecca Bryan. They married in Rowan County on August 14,1756 and ultimately settled at Sugartree Creek in the Bryan Settlement. They “adopted” Jesse and Jonathan, children of Israel Boone (1726-1756), and Rebecca gave birth to her first two sons, James and Israel, at Sugartree Creek in 1757 and 1759, respectively.

Within the time frame of the French & Indian War, another conflict was sparked in 1758 in North and South Carolina known as the Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761). It was fought between the British and the Cherokee.

At the beginning of the French & Indian War, the British and Cherokee were allies. However, one thing that caused this relationship to deteriorate was the encroachment by settlers on the Cherokee towns. Secondly, and more importantly, Cherokee warriors had been traveling from their towns through Virginia to go back and forth to engage in battles with the French. The Virginia militia alleged that Cherokee warriors were stealing their horses, so the militia attacked the Cherokee, which sparked the Anglo-Cherokee War. This led the Cherokee to retaliate by raiding the settlements and towns along the Yadkin and Catawba Rivers.

The conflict raged, and the Cherokee raids increased. By late 1759 many of the settlers in the Bryan Settlement left to find refuge. Daniel Boone moved his wife Rebecca and two sons by wagon to Culpepper County, Virginia, and they were accompanied by his sister Elizabeth and her family. Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone moved farther north to Pennsylvania along with their younger children Squire and Hannah.

In 1756, there were about 1,531 taxable people in Rowan County. There was less than 800 three years later as a result of those fleeing from Cherokee attacks.

Once their families were safe in Virginia, Daniel and his brother-in-law, William Grant, returned to North Carolina to serve in the Rowan County Militia to protect their homes and the settlers that chose to remain. They served under Captain Morgan Bryan who was the uncle of Rebecca Bryan Boone.

Existing records for the militia in North Carolina at this time are very scarce. However, in Jo White Linn’s Rowan County Tax Lists one will find on page 14 as follows: ”25 April 1759. The Publick of North Carolina to Morgan Bryan to a Scout Sent Out in the Alarm of Daniel Hossey & Others being killed ---” Among the eleven members of the Militia listed serving under then Lt. Morgan Bryan are William Bryan (his brother and Daniel’s brother-in-law), John Boone (Daniel’s cousin or brother), and William Grant (Daniel’s brother-in-law). Ms. Linn shows a second entry on that same page that says, “A Scout sent out by the Order of Col. Alexdr. Ozburn & Major Dunn” and shows listed below it “Morgan Bryan, Capt.” and a list of 28 men below him, but none are members of the Boone or Bryan families. In the same Rowan County Tax Lists, Ms. Linn shows on page 13 this entry, “May 25th 1759. The Publick of North Carolina to Morgan Bryan to Scouts Sent Out on the Alarm of William Pincher’s being Killed by the Indians.” Morgan Bryan is shown as the Captain, and there are 43 men serving under him but no members of the Boone or Bryan families. In the Abstract of the Records of the Rowan County Court of Common Pleas, Volume II, entry 279 dated 19 Oct. 1759, one finds “Capn. Morgan Bryan, Lieutenant Roger Turner & Enseyn Thomas Bryan (Morgan’s younger brother) Qualified to their Severall Commissions According to Law &c.”

In 1760, the Cherokee continued their raids as far east as the Moravian settlements that lie to the east of the Yadkin, attacked Fort Dobbs, and continued to raid settlements in both North and South Carolina. British Colonel Archibald Montgomery with 1,200 soldiers razed the Southern Cherokee Towns in 1760. Later that same year, the Overhill Cherokee captured Fort Loudon and defeated the British settlers.

In 1761, a military campaign against the Cherokee was planned to attack the Cherokee towns from two directions. Colonel James Grant arrived in Charles Town with a force of 340 men supported by South Carolina provincials. His force was to march through the Low Country and into the Cherokee Middle Towns. Simultaneously, Colonel William Byrd III’s Virginia troops were to attack from the north the Cherokee Overhill Towns. They were to move along the Holston River through southeastern Virginia and into what is today’s eastern Tennessee. While Grant’s forces raided and wreaked havoc in western North Carolina, Byrd was frustrated by delays and a lack of supplies. Byrd resigned his commission and was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Adam Stephen. He requested North Carolina recruits from Colonel Waddell at Fort Dobbs, and the North Carolina Governor ordered troops to join the Virginia Regiment serving along the Holston.

Colonel Stephen was impressed by the Carolina companies, even though they were raw troops, and many were just recently recruited. The Carolina troops camped at the recently constructed Fort Robinson located near the Long Island of the Holston. (This is in present day Kingsport, Tennessee.) These soldiers saw no combat, since, in November 1761, the Cherokee signed the Treaty of the Long Island of the Holston with Virginia, and in December 1761, the Cherokee signed with South Carolina the Treaty of Charleston. Once the treaty was signed with Virginia, Daniel and others were discharged from service.

In another part of the conversation Lyman Draper had in 1851 with Nathan and Olive Boone, Olive advised as follows:

“I often heard Colonel Daniel Boone speak of Byrd’s Expedition in 1761. He always criticized Byrd for his slowness and failure, but I can't recall whether Colonel Boone actually said he was on this expedition. But Nathan and I both feel that his father would not have spoken that way about Colonel Byrd, had he not been an eyewitness.”

Draper immediately responded to Olive’s comment by adding:

“Mr. Haywood says that immediately after the peace of 1761, Daniel Boone and others went hunting in the Holston Valley and East Tennessee, which leads me to think that he was on the campaign with Colonel Byrd. Daniel Boone probably served as one of Colonel Waddell's men and, after being discharged from the Army camp on Holston, went hunting on the way home.”

In his Annals of Tennessee, J.G.M. Ramsey mentions on page 66 that now that the Cherokee were at peace in 1761 with the whites, “the hunters began with safety to penetrate deeper and further into the wilderness of Tennessee.” Ramsey continues on page 67 by saying that, “At the head of one of the companies that visited the West this year ‘came Daniel Boon, from the Yadkin, in North Carolina, and traveled with them as low as the place where Abingdon now stands, and there left them.’”

The treaties in 1761 ended in the Carolinas the Anglo-Cherokee and the French & Indian Wars. Daniel and his brother-in-law, William Grant, subsequently traveled to Virginia to retrieve their families and return them to their homes in the Forks of the Yadkin. Daniel Boone would have been required to continue his service with the North Carolina Militia in Rowan County, but the records are scant. Once Daniel Boone migrates in 1773 into Fincastle County, Virginia, one finds records of his militia service there where he rises to the rank of Lieutenant and then Captain and is appointed to command the defense of three forts during Lord Dunmore’s War.

Sources:

Anson County, North Carolina Deed Records.

Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.

Clark, Walter, Editor, The State Records of North Carolina, 16 Volumes, Winston, Goldsboro, State of North Carolina, 1895-1907.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, Acts of the North Carolina General Assembly, 1753, Chapter VII, p. 383.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Fries, Adelaide Lisetta, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, 1752-1771, Vols. 1 & 2, Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina, Reprinted 1968.

Hammond, Neil O., Editor, My Father Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Kentucky, 1999.

Kamper, Ken, An Accurate Summary of the Life of Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone History Research – Newsletter No. 6, December 2021.

Kamper, Ken, A Researcher’s Understanding on the Boone Family Move to North Carolina, No. PK17.0211, February 2017.

King, Duane H., Editor, The Memoirs of Lt. Henry Timberlake: The Story of a Soldier, Adventurer, and Emissary to the Cherokees, 1756-1765, Museum of the  Cherokee Indian, Cherokee, NC, 2007.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Deeds of Rowan County, North Carolina, 1753 – 1785, Books 1 through 10, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1983.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina, Volume I – 1753-1762, Volume II – 1763-1774, Volume III – 1775-1789, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1977, 1979, 1982.

Linn, Jo White, Rowan County, North Carolina Tax Lists 1757-1800 Annotated     Transcriptions, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1995.

Maas, John R., The French & Indian War in North Carolina: The Spreading Flames of War, The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2013.

Melius, Jason, “Defining the Variety of Combatants During the French and Indian War,” The Fort Dobbs Gazette, Volume XIX, Issue 4, pages and 5, December 2022.

Melius, J., “Militia Activity on the NC Frontier 1755-1766,” June 2022.

Preston, David L., Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of Monongahela and the Road to Revolution, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2015.

Ramsey, J.G.M., The Annuals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century, Walker & Jones, Charleston, SC, 1853.

Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1964.

Robinson, Blackwell P., The Five Royal Governors of North Carolina 1729-1775, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC 1968.

Saunders, William L., Editor, The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10 Volumes, Printers to the State, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1886-1890.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1922.

Tortora, Daniel J., Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756-1763, The University of North Carolina Press, 2015.

U.S Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.

Whisker, James Biser, The North Carolina Militia, 1585 – 1783, Heritage House, Columbia, South Carolina, 2022.

"War for Empire!" Robert Alvin Crum 2016

"Colonial Gun Cleaning" Robert A. Crum 2015

"Patiently Waiting" Robert Alvin Crum 2016

"Soldiers of the War for Empire" Robert A. Crum 2016

The Mysterious Symbols on Squire Boone’s Headstone - Did Daniel Boone Carve Them?

Above are Masonic images on Squire Boone’s headstone which are (l to r) a Compass and Square, a Point in a Circle, and the letter “G.” More images below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 23 November 2024

Before I moved into the “High Country” of the North Carolina mountains in 2017, I lived in Salisbury, North Carolina, which is just a short drive from Joppa Cemetery in Mocksville. I frequently went to Mocksville and Davie County to do research about my Boone and Bryan ancestors. Whenever I was in the area, I would leave flowers, coins or flags at the graves of my ancestors Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. I also photographed and even completed a large painting of the gravesite. The text on Squire’s headstone always fascinated me, and what I found is the subject of this article.

The cemetery was originally known as Burying Ground Ridge, and the area around today’s Joppa Cemetery was settled in the early 1750’s. Joppa Cemetery is believed to hold the graves of many of those early settlers. Until recently, the earliest marked grave was that of Squire Boone, who was buried there in 1765. Squire’s wife, Sarah, died in 1777 and was buried beside him. More recent research confirmed the location of the grave of their oldest son, Israel, who died in 1756. He’s buried to the left of his parents, and his grave was marked in May 2009 by his descendants and The Boone Society.

Squire Boone died on January 2, 1765, and was buried in Joppa Cemetery in what is now Mocksville, North Carolina. He was sixty-nine years old, and his gravestone reads:

SQUIRE BOONE

DEPARTED

THIS LIFE IN

THEY SIXTY

NINTH YEAR

OF HIS AGE IN

THAY YEAR

OF OUR LORD

1765 GENEI

ARY THA 2

O

In the biography written in 2007 about Daniel Boone, Robert Morgan writes on page 81:

“The inscription may have been cut by Daniel himself, for the imaginative spelling resembles that in many of the documents in Daniel's handwriting. The symbol of the point within the circle carved in the stone suggests that Squire was indeed a Freemason. In those days the sign was most often intended to show the duty of the individual brother to ‘God and man by means of the circumference.’ But it was also a sign often to taken to mean ‘the Divine Spirit indwelling creation and abiding in the nature of man.’ It is possible that the sign was used to illustrate Tertullian's definition of God as a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. According to A Dictionary of Freemasonry, it is a symbol of the creation of the world.”

After reading this entry by Robert Morgan, I returned to Squire Boone’s grave to give his gravestone closer examination. This one symbol he explained appearing in the lower right corner wasn’t the only Freemasonry symbol. I found Masonic symbols throughout the text on Squire Boone’s gravestone! I will go into more detail about all the Masonic symbols I found later in this article, but first I’d like to explore why they might be there in the first place.

Robert Morgan also wrote in his Boone biography on pages 26 & 27 the following:

“There is reason to believe, based on symbols carved on his tombstone in North Carolina, that Squire, like his son Daniel later, had been initiated into the society of Freemasons. Leaders such as Benjamin Franklin were known to be enthusiastic Masons. Formed in England early in the eighteenth century, the secret society was devoted to fellowship, ceremony, charity, and service to the community. Joining the Freemasons could have made Squire feel even more independent of the Quaker Meeting.”

“Freemasonry offered a fresh way of looking at society and mankind – liberal, rational, committed to a useful, moral life, not based on revelation, class, monarchy. Jews and even African Americans and Native Americans might be initiated into lodges. It seems likely the Boones’ affiliation with Masonry strengthened their sense of belonging to the fraternity of all men, whether white or Indian, American or British, and helps explain Daniel's conduct later in the complex, dangerous time of the American Revolution.”

Robert Morgan continues in his Boone biography on page 60 by saying:

“Though Boone may have been initiated as a Freemason in 1755, his return to Virginia in 1760 also provided an opportunity for joining the brotherhood. An important lodge had already been established in nearby Fredericksburg, and there are rumors that the Boones met George Washington in Fredericksburg also. It is possible his father, Squire, became a Freemason at this time also, or renewed his Masonic connections begun earlier in Pennsylvania.”

Historian Neal O. Hammond edited a book that includes Lyman Draper’s interviews of Nathan Boone, Daniel Boone’s youngest son. The title of the book is My Father, Daniel Boone, and Nathan Boone tells Draper on page 14 that my father “often spoke of Washington, whom both he and my mother personally knew.” Nathan continues saying that “…it is more likely they met in Fredericksburg in 1762.”

There’s evidence that George Washington was a Mason and that he attended the lodge in Fredericksburg. Why was Daniel Boone in Fredericksburg in 1762? Did he meet George Washington at the lodge there? There is no clarification about this detail by Nathan Boone. However, on page 139 in Hammond’s book about Draper’s interview, Nathan Boone recounts his father’s funeral in 1820 and says, “There were no military or Masonic honors, the latter of he was a member, as there were then but very few in that region of the country.” Nathan Boone advises that his father was a Mason.

Dr. John W. Bizzack published an article online entitled Unravelling Tall Tales: A 21st Century Investigation into the Disputable Masonic Claims that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett Were Freemasons. He begins his article by saying that there has been a longstanding belief that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett were Freemasons. He adds that Daniel Boone’s name appears on the “Famous Masons” list and generations of Masons have defended the listing “without regard to the fragile and unreliable speculation on which those claims are based.” Dr. Bizzack continues by saying the beginning of the belief that Daniel Boone was a Freemason began at Boone’s reinternment in 1845 in Frankfort, Kentucky, because “Freemasons, along with a reported 25,000 other people, attended the ceremony.”

Dr. Bizzack also mentions in his article that John Filson interviewed Daniel Boone and published in 1784 the first biography about Boone. Bizzack mentions that John Filson was a Freemason at Christen Lodge No. 84 in Wilmington, Delaware. However, Bizzack finds it curious that Filson never mentions in his writing that Boone was a “brother Mason.”

Also mentioned as an authority in Dr. Bizzack’s article is J. Winston Coleman who is “a highly respected Kentucky historian,” and he was a member of the Masonic Lexington Lodge No. 1. Bizzack says that “Coleman extensively researched about Freemasonry in Kentucky” and wrote, “an Authentic Account of Masonry in Lexington and Fayette County, Kentucky 1788 - 1933.” Bizzack emphatically states, “There are no references or notations about Daniel Boone being a Mason in any of Coleman’s writings.” Bizzack concludes. “The writings of Boone’s exploits and life certainly suggest he conducted himself in ways compatible with Masonic values. But the issue of whether Boone was a member of the Craft remains undocumented and unproven.”

I began my search for documentation that both Squire and Daniel Boone were Freemasons after reading Robert Morgan’s statement mentioned above that they were both Freemasons. Daniel Boone’s son, Nathan, said he was a Mason, which should be pretty good evidence that his father was a Mason; however, I’ve not yet found any other documentation or evidence confirming this.

As part of my research, I also photographed and completed a tracing of Squire Boone’s gravestone to examine whether and how many masonic symbols might appear there. When I compare my photo and my tracing to the headstone tracing that’s between pages 38 and 39 in Spraker’s The Boone Family, there are a few more letters there in the book. These few additional letters have no bearing on my analysis of the masonic symbols.

As I mentioned above, the symbol Robert Morgan and others notice and on which they focus is the point in a circle at the lower right-hand corner. However, if you examine the stone in person, every “O” in the text has a point in the center. It is a little difficult to see in a photograph, but it is clear on my tracing. There is also a “Y” in the word “year,” and for some unknown reason, there is a point in a circle superimposed over it. On the headstone, there are carved six symbols of the point in a circle.

The most common masonic symbol is the square and compass, and it’s used worldwide by Freemasons and Masonic lodges. In Masonry, the square is an emblem of morality, and the compass represents the relationship between the individual and society. The text on Squire’s headstone has seven “A’s,” and they all are carved into the shape of a masonic square and compass.

 Another possible masonic symbol on this headstone is the letter “G.” It stands for “geometry,” and masons frequently place it in the center of their square and compass symbol. Geometry is the basis for stonemasonry, and, symbolically, it is the basis for Freemasonry. There are only two “G’s” on this headstone, and I would not consider this as a masonic symbol, if it only appeared in the word “age.” It piqued my curiosity, when I saw it in the month of Squire’s death which is spelled “Geneiary.” There was not a standardization of spelling in the eighteenth century since Webster’s Dictionary was not yet in existence. One might argue that the stone carver was spelling phonetically, but a “G’ at the beginning of a word has a harsh sound, and months like June and July have a soft sound. So why didn’t this carver use a “J” rather than a “G?” Is the “G” on this headstone a masonic symbol as appears to be the case with the “O” and “A?” Unfortunately, we have no way to confirm this suspicion.

Dr. Bizzack mentions only the one point in a circle in the lower right corner but appears to dismiss it as a possible masonic symbol but also suggests that it might be a Quaker symbol. I’m a little surprised by the latter statement, since Squire was expelled by the Quakers from the Friend’s Meeting in Pennsylvania before he migrated to North Carolina in 1750. Why would a possible Quaker symbol be carved in his headstone at the time of his death fifteen years later in 1765?

Dr. Bizzack also mentions the letter “A” and says, “A closer look at the letter ‘A’ is merely the letter “A’ and not a Masonic symbol.” As a visual artist, carver, and during my studies in geometry, I learned that “the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” When closely examining the seven “A’s” the headstone, where the “A” should be completed using a straight horizontal line, all are drawn as a right angle appearing to be the square portion of the masonic square and compass symbol. Why wouldn’t the stone carver take the easier route of carving a straight line seven times rather than carving a more complicated right angle? These seven “A’s” are clearly the symbol of a square and compass.

It's possible that Daniel Boone was a Mason based on his son’s statement. Authors disagree, and Dr. Bizzack reminds us that there’s no documentation. The question also remains about Daniel’s father, Squire. Was he a Mason? It’s possible given his political connections, but, again, there’s no documentation to be found.

However, the big question is why are there masonic symbols on Squire Boone’s headstone? Without analyzing all the letters, there’s no question that the “A’s” and the “O’s” are Masonic symbols. It’s understandable to conclude that they’re on the headstone, because Squire was a Mason, or the carver was or both. At the moment, there’s no documentation, so my hope is that the reason isn’t lost to history, and maybe one day we’ll know.

The final question is who carved Squire Boone’s headstone that included Masonic symbols? Many claim it was his son Daniel. Again, there’s no documentation that he did so.

I looked at one more possibility about who might have carved this headstone. Squire Boone, Jr. was twenty-one years of age at the time of his father’s death. There are existing examples of stone carvings in other locations by Squire Boone, Jr., so I examined and compared the text on them to Squire Boone’s headstone. One is in Richmond, Kentucky, and is called the “Squire Boone Rock.” On it is a carving that says, “1770 Squire Boone.” Tradition says that Squire carved this to let his brother Daniel know that he had returned to the vicinity. When I compared the text, I saw no similarities to his father’s headstone. Another place with examples of Squire Boone, Jr.’s stone carving is in Harrison County, Indiana where Squire lived his final years, died and was buried. There are stones carved by Squire Boone, Jr. in his reconstructed Grist Mill in Harrison County. One has text and the date 1809, but the text on this stone also doesn’t resemble that on his father’s headstone. Therefore, it doesn’t look like the headstone carving was by the hand of this son either.

Examination of the text on Squire Boone’s headstone in Joppa Cemetery does reveal masonic symbols. It’s possible that he and/or the carver were Masons. However, after my research and examination, there doesn’t appear to be hard evidence that Squire was a Mason nor the identity of who carved this headstone. Therefore, the mystery continues about why masonic symbols appear on the headstone of Squire Boone.

Sources:

Bizzack, John W., Unravelling Tall Tales: A 21st Century Investigation into Disputable Masonic Claims that Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett Were Freemasons,    https://thecraftsman.org/unraveling-tall-tales/

Cemetery Census, Davie County North Carolina Cemeteries, Davie County Historical & Genealogical Society, http://cemeterycensus.com/nc/davie/cem089.htm

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

Hammond, Neal O., Editor, My Father Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1999.

Heitman, Mary J., History of Joppa Church, Martin-Wall History Room, Davie Public Library, Mocksville, NC.

Lilley, George H., The Meaning Behind 15 Common Masonic Symbols, https://www.ghlilley.com/blogs/news/freemason-symbols?

Masons of California, Freemasonry Symbols: An Introduction to the Symbols, Signs, and Emblems of Masons and Masonic Lodges,         https://freemason.org/freemasonry-symbols/

Martin-Wall History Room, Davie County Public Library, Mocksville, NC.

Morgan, Robert, Boone: A Biography, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC,  2007.

Sons of the American Revolution, www.sarpatriots.org/patriotssearch and cemetery search.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, VT, 1922.

U.S. Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.

Tracing of text on Squire Boone's headstone by Robert Alvin Crum 2024

Squire Boone's Headstone - photo by Robert Alvin Crum

Tracing of Squire Boone's headstone shown in Spraker's 1922 book.

The Bryan Settlement

Above is a detail of an antique map of the Moravian’s Wachovia Tract showing the Bryant’s Settlement to the southwest. More images below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 22 May 2024

Historians provide memories of people, places, and events, and without their stories, so much would be lost in time. Around 1747, land speculators and early settlers were moving into the western part of the British Colony of North Carolina, and they established a settlement in the Forks of the Yadkin on both sides of a prominent crossing known as the Shallow Ford. Their initial land grants spanned thousands of acres in what are now the counties of Forsyth, Yadkin, and Davie. Dr. Robert Ramsey wrote in Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762 that, “The most prominent of settlers in northwestern Carolina before 1752 was Morgan Bryan,” and this place that was almost lost to history was named after him and called the “Bryan Settlement.”

Most of these early land speculators and settlers came from the British Colonies of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland. They were looking for more and cheaper land that wasn’t available in the colonies in which they lived. At this time, they couldn’t move west, because the land to the west of the mountains was claimed by the Empire of France. Therefore, they moved south to western North Carolina where the Earl of Granville was selling off large tracts of land cheaper than what could be found in other British colonies.

It’s almost impossible to find all the names of the first settlers of the Bryan Settlement, but the families among them include Morgan Bryan, James Carter, Samuel Davis, George Forbush, Edward Hughes, Jonathan Hunt, William Linnville, Squire Boone, and more. The names of Morgan and Martha Bryan’s children whose families also migrated into North Carolina with them in 1747 were Eleanor, Samuel, John, William, James, and Thomas, and they also brought with them granddaughters Martha Bryan, Rebecca Bryan, and Mary Curtis.

They migrated out of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and headed south. It was a rocky trail through Virginia, and the Bryans had to clear sections as they went. For a brief time, this was known as the Bryan Road in Virginia. Later, it was referred to as the Carolina Road but eventually became known as the Great Wagon Road. They followed the road out of Virginia and into North Carolina where it wound through present day Stokes and Forsyth Counties. The road curved southwest along a ridge above the Yadkin River to the east of the Shallow Ford. There, Edward Hughes established a tavern where he could provide service to all those following the Great Wagon Road and would frequently stop before fording the Yadkin. The Bryans crossed the Yadkin River from the east side to the west at the Shallow Ford and entered this land to be among the first white settlers. Many of the children of these early settlers would marry and continue to expand their land holdings.

Morgan Bryan initially bought eleven tracts of land totaling 3,838½ acres, and most were later sold to his children. Eight of these tracts were in the Forks of the Yadkin, but three were on the north side of the Upper Yadkin River at Mulberry Fields and Reddy’s River. The grants and indentures are dated 1752, and Morgan made the first five sales to his sons in 1753. Most of Morgan’s children began buying more land where they chose to build their homes.

In 1750, Squire and Sarah Boone also brought their extended family to North Carolina. Squire’s two 640-acre Granville Land grants were perfected in 1753. The Boone children would intermarry with the Bryans, Carters, Linvilles, and other families, and they too would purchase and settle on lands in the Bryan Settlement.

Many of these first families were Quakers or members of the Society of Friends in Pennsylvania, but when they moved to North Carolina, most abandoned that faith and some even declared themselves to be members of the official church of state, the Anglican Church. (Also referred to as the Church of England.) Some of the Boones became Baptists, and a few of the Bryans became active with the Moravians.

In 1752, Bishop Spangenburg led the Moravians into the Colony of North Carolina in search of land to establish a large community. He was unable to purchase some land he wanted on the Upper Yadkin River, because Morgan Bryan had already surveyed and acquired it three to four years earlier. As the Moravians moved east in search of additional land, they found the Bryan Settlement already occupied the west side of the Yadkin River. The Moravians had to cross the Shallow Ford to acquire land to the east of the Yadkin River, and it became known as the Wachovia Tract. Today, this is the location of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The 1750’s saw rapid population growth in the Settlement as more families arrived from the northeast. The Bryan and Boone families moved into North Carolina at a peaceful time with the hopes of farming, hunting, and even earning a livelihood as land speculators. They also were heavily involved in the North Carolina colonial government of Rowan County. However, things quickly changed in 1754, when conflict began with the French and Indian War, but violence escalated in the Carolinas with the Cherokee War from 1758 to 1761. Many of the Boones left and took shelter at this time in Virginia and points farther north. The Bryans stayed, and Morgan Bryan, Jr. served as the militia captain while brother Thomas was his ensign. Bryan brothers Samuel, John, William, and James also served in the militia during this Cherokee war.

After the French & Indian War, the land west of the mountains was acquired by the British from the French. The British colonists, especially many in the Bryan Settlement, began to turn their attentions to new land on the west side of the mountains.

The parents who led their children into the Bryan Settlement began to die off and were buried there. Morgan Bryan died in 1763, and his wife Martha died the previous year in 1762. Squire Boone died in 1765, and his wife Sarah died in 1777.

Much like their parents, the Boones, Bryans, and related families began moving west to speculate on the purchase of new lands. In 1775, the Boones and related families made a successful attempt to settle at and helped establish Fort Boonesborough. At the same time, the four Bryan brothers, Joseph, Morgan, William, and James, established Bryan’s Station near present day Lexington, Kentucky. The Bryans would frequently travel back and forth between Bryan Station and the Bryan Settlement.

There is an entry in the Moravian’s Salem Diary of 1779 on October 3 that states, “Six more families passed on their way to Kentok; it is unbelievable that such a crowd of people as are going thither will be able to support themselves. Several hundred went with the Bryants recently.” (The Moravians usually spelled the Bryan name with a “t” on the end.) In the fall of 1779, Daniel Boone also led another large migration out of the Bryan Settlement and into Kentucky.

Most of the Boones, Bryans, and related families led America’s first great migration west. By the end of the 18th century, the large area they once inhabited that was known as the Bryan Settlement faded into history.

Sources:

Anson County, North Carolina Deed Records, Wadesboro, North Carolina.

Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.

Bryan, Jr., John K., “Morgan Bryan,” Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 Volumes edited by William S. Powell, The University of North Carolina Press, copyright 1979 – 1996.

Clark, Walter, ed., The State Records of North Carolina, 16 Volumes, Winston, Goldsboro: State of North Carolina, 1895-1907.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, Acts of the North Carolina General Assembly, 1753, Chapter VII, p. 383.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Fries, Adelaide Lisetta, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, 1752-1771, Vol. 1, Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, State Department of  Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina, Reprinted 1968.

Hammond, Neil O., My Father Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Kentucky, 1999.

Kamper, Ken, A Researcher’s Understanding on the Boone Family Move to North Carolina, No. PK17.0211, February 2017.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Deeds of Rowan County, North Carolina, 1753 – 1785, Books 1 through 10, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1983.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina, Volume I – 1753-1762, Volume II – 1763-1774,  Volume III – 1775-1789, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1977,      1979, 1982.

Manuscript Collection, The State Historical Society of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri.

McMurtry, David C., Seven Sons and Two Daughters of Morgan Bryan (1671-1763): “Irish Immigrant” and Some of Their Descendants, Mil-Mac Publishers,     Lexington, Kentucky, 2009.

McMurtry, David C., Bryan, David Randall, and Weiss, Katherine, Morgan Bryan (1671-1763: A Danish Born “Irish Immigrant” and Some of His Antecedents and      Descendants, Mil-Mac Publishers, Lexington, Kentucky, 2007.

Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1964.

Rowan County Deeds, Rowan County Records, Salisbury, North Carolina.

Rowan County Wills, Rowan County Records, Salisbury, North Carolina.

Saunders, William L., ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10 Volumes, Printers to the State, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1886-1890.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1922.

Stimson, R. Kyle, The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road in Forsyth County, N.C. 1750 – 1770: Historic Roads of Forsyth County – Volume One, copyright 1999 by R. Kyle Stimson.

Surry County Deeds, Surry County Records, Mt. Airy, North Carolina.

U.S Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.

Weiss, Kathryn H., Daniel Bryan, Nephew of Daniel Boone: His Narrative and Other Stories, Self-published by Kathryn H. Weiss, Forbestown, California, 2008.

Weiss, Katherine, Morgan Bryan, Senior’s “Original Eleven” Anson (Rowan) County North Carolina Land Grants, Katherine Weiss, Forbestown, California, 2006.

"Blue Wagon" oil painting on panel by Robert Alvin Crum copyright 2014

"Born on the Bryan Settlements and the Forks of the Yadkin" oil by Robert Alvin Crum copyright 2016

Israel Boone (1726-1756) Daniel Boone’s Brother

Above is the grave marker for Israel Boone located to the left of his father’s grave in Joppa Cemetery. Photo by Robert Alvin Crum 2024. More photos below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 28 April 2024

As I mentioned in a previous article, Squire Boone was born in Devonshire, England in 1696 to a family who belonged to the Society of Friends or what we commonly refer to as Quakers. For both economic and religious reasons, Squire, his parents, and siblings migrated in 1717 to the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. His future wife Sarah Morgan was born in Pennsylvania in 1700, and her parents were also Quakers. In 1720, Squire Boone married Sarah Morgan in the Gwynedd Meeting (Society of Friends).

Squire and Sarah had eleven children who were all born in the British Colony of Pennsylvania. Daniel was born as their sixth child, and his oldest brother, Israel, was born on May 20, 1726.

Squire and Sarah’s oldest daughter, Sarah, married a non-Quaker, John Wilcoxson, in 1742 (referred to as marrying a worldling outside the Quaker Meeting). The Society of Friends required Squire to repent for her behavior, which he did, so he could remain a Quaker.

Records of the Exeter Monthly Meeting held on “the 28th Day of the 11th Month of 1747,” states that “Israel Boone, Son of Squire Boone of Exeter, having been Educated and brought up amongst Friends, and as a Member of this Meeting, hath married a Wife who is not in Unity with Friends….” Since Israel, their second child, also married a worldling, Squire was again required to repent for his son’s behavior. When Squire refused, the Society of Friends expelled him from the Friends Meeting, so Squire was no longer a Quaker. However, his wife was able to maintain her standing as a Quaker the rest of her life.

In the spring of 1750, Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone left Pennsylvania with their children and large extended family. That same year, in 1750, the Boones settled on the east side of the Yadkin River in what is now Davidson County at or near Boone Cave Park. They resided there until lands could be purchased on the west side of the Yadkin River. Then they all moved into what is now Davie County.

As mentioned above, Israel Boone married in Pennsylvania, and some sources say his wife’s name was Martha Farmer. They had two sons, Jesse (1748-1829) and Jonathan (1750-1826), and two daughters Elizabeth and Jemima, according to some sources. As part of the extended Squire Boone family, they also migrated to North Carolina. There is no known record of Israel Boone owning land in what is now Davie County; however, The Rowan County Minutes in January 1765 quote a road overseer as saying, “from the South Yadkin to Israel Boons old Place.” It’s also possible that Israel and his family lived on one of his father’s 640-acre tracts.

The French & Indian War erupted in 1754, and North Carolina Governor Arthur Dobbs gave his son, Edward Brice Dobbs, a provincial commission as Captain. This son was also a lieutenant in the 7th Royal Fusiliers. As participants in this war, Captain Dobbs was the last to arrive with his North Carolina ranger company at Fort Cumberland on May 30. Daniel Boone was one of the teamsters in Captain Dobbs’ company. When The Battle of the Monongahela began on July 9, 1755, Daniel Boone had crossed the river with his wagon and was huddled in a tight formation with the other waggoners. They were enveloped in the battle, and as they tried to control their teams of horses spooked by musket and canon fire, they realized the British had lost the battle to the French. Boone and the other waggoners cut their harnesses from their horses and escaped from what would have been certain death.

Daniel Boone returned from the battle to North Carolina during the summer of 1755 to find that Israel Boone was suffering from the disease known then as consumption. Today, we refer to this disease as tuberculosis. Another disease that afflicted both settlers and Natives in North Carolina was smallpox. Daniel survived this disease as a child that left his face scarred for life. As mentioned in a previous article, in 1738, the Cherokee suffered from a smallpox epidemic that killed half of their population, and in 1759, a smallpox epidemic killed half of the Catawba Nation.

As mentioned, the Boones lived in what today is Davie County on the west side of the Yadkin River, and east of them on the other side of the Yadkin was the Wachovia Tract where the Moravians established in 1753 a small community they called Bethabara, which means “house of passage.” Fifteen Moravians from Pennsylvania first settled this village. It became a bustling trade center but was only intended to be used until Salem could be established. When that occurred in 1766, many of the Moravian settlers moved to Salem.

It was well-known that the Moravians could treat the ill and those afflicted with disease. Therefore, it wasn’t unusual that in 1755 Sarah Morgan Boone took her son Israel to Bethabara and left him for treatment of consumption. In the Moravian Records the Bethabara Diary dated 1755 states that on August 26, “A consumptive came with his mother, and asked to remain two weeks for treatment, and we could not refuse. We lodged him in the old house.”

There’s another entry in the 1755 Bethabara Diary which states on September 1, “The consumptive was taken home by his brother, who came for him last evening. He, - Mr. Boone, - returned on the 6th, accompanied by his father, who remained overnight. On the 15th his brother came for him once more, and he left, there being small hope of his recovery.” A few weeks later, his father and brother (probably Daniel) spent the night to see Israel and took him home, when the doctor said there was little hope for recovery.

Lyman Draper interviewed Samuel Boone, Israel’s brother, who said that Israel died on June 26, 1756, and was buried near present-day Mocksville. Draper also wrote that Israel had two sons and two daughters and that the daughters contracted consumption from their mother and died at an early age. After Israel’s death, the two sons, Jesse and Jonathan were cared for and raised by Daniel and Rebecca Boone.

The “sick house” and the “stranger’s house” have been reconstructed at Bethabara Historic Park. They are believed to be the locations where the Boone’s stayed when here in 1755.

Originally known as Burying Ground Ridge, the area around today’s Joppa Cemetery was settled in the early 1750’s. The cemetery is believed to hold the graves of many of those early settlers. For many years, it was believed that the oldest marked grave in Joppa Cemetery (Burying Ground Ridge) was that of Squire Boone (1696-1765).

In October 2005, Katherine Weiss wrote an article about Israel Boone’s possible burial location. In it, she quotes letters from Lyman Draper’s Boone Series written by James Williamson and Jethro Rumple. There’s an analysis of a broken stone that was next to the gravestone of Squire Boone, and the broken stone is very similar to Squire’s. Text on the broken stone was ++BoonE and part of a number 5 and then a 6. The conclusion is that the only family member that died in 1756 and would have had stone similar to his father was Israel.

After research to confirm the location of the grave of Israel Boone, his descendants and The Boone Society, Inc. placed a bronze plaque in Joppa Cemetery in May 2009 marking Israel’s grave just to the left of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. The text on the plaque marking his grave reads as follows:

ISRAEL BOONE

Born May 20 (N.S.), 1726 Bucks County, PA

Died June 26, 1756, Davie County, NC

A few feet to the right, Israel Boone rests for eternity. Israel was the 2nd

Of 11 children born to Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone and their only child

to be buried in North Carolina.

Israel married in 1747 while in Pennsylvania. The name of his wife and

the location of her burial have never been proven. To them were born 4

Children, Jesse, Jonathan, Elizabeth, and Sarah (Sallie).

IN GRATEFUL MEMORY

BY DESCENDANTS OF ISRAEL, HIS WIFE AND THE BOONE SOCIETY

MAY 2009

If you’d like to visit Bethabara Historic Site to follow in the Boones’ footsteps, it is now owned by the City of Winston-Salem. Admission to the park grounds, gardens and trails are free and open year-round. There is a visitor center open from April to mid-December, and tours can be scheduled for a fee of the 1788 Gemeinhaus (Moravian Church) and other historic buildings which includes the 1754 Colonial Village.

This site encompasses 183 acres that includes more than ten miles of hiking trails. This site also includes two historic gardens begun in 1761. One is a European Medicinal Garden, and the other is a Community Garden. The 1754 village has been reconstructed, and the Palisade Fort (1756-1763) built and used during the French and Indian War has been reconstructed. Some historians believe that some of the Boones and Bryans may have “forted up” here during the French and Indian War, but there isn’t documentation to confirm this.

Sources:

Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Faragher, John Mack, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., New York, NY, 1992.

findagrave.com/memorial/8117530/Israel-boone.

Fries, Adelaide Lisetta, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, 1752-1771, Vol. 1, Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC, Reprinted 1968.

historicbethabara.org.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina, Volume I – 1753-1762, Volume II – 1763-1774, Volume III – 1775-1789, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1977, 1979, 1982.

Preston, David L., Braddock’s Defeat: the Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2015.

Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1964.

Rumple, Rev. Jethro, A History of Rowan County, North Carolina: Containing Sketches  of Prominent Families and Distinguished Men, Published by J.J. Bruner,         Salisbury, North Carolina, 1881.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, VT, 1922.

U.S. Quaker Meeting Records 1681 – 1935.

Weiss, Katherine, “Israel Boone’s Burial,” page 11, The Compass, The Boone Society,   Inc., October 2005.

Part of the 1754 Reconstructed Bethabara. Photo by Robert Alvin Crum

Israel Boone's Grave at left - photo by Robert Alvin Crum

Reconstructed "Sick House" at Bethabara. Photo by Robert Alvin Crum

Arrival in the Land of the Native Americans in North Carolina

“Cherokee and Shawnee at Fort Dobbs Reconstructed” Photo by Robert Alvin Crum 2020. More images below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 30 March 2024

I previously wrote two articles about the Boone and Bryan families’ migration to the backcountry of the colony of North Carolina. The Bryan family, which included Daniel Boone’s future wife Rebecca Bryan, arrived around 1748, and the Boone family, which included a young Daniel Boone, arrived in 1750. Even though they found plenty of land upon which to settle, they were not alone.

The Native Americans or Indians had lived in North Carolina for thousands of years, and this article briefly summarizes when they lived in the backcountry of the colony of North Carolina. E. Lawrence Lee in The Indian Wars in North Carolina, 1663-1763 writes that, “When Europeans first arrived in North Carolina there were only three important tribes, or nations, in the region. In the order of their size, they were the Cherokee of the western mountains, the largest, the Catawba Nation of the Piedmont Plateau, and the Tuscarora of the Coastal Plain.”

The Boones and Bryans were among the first white settlers in the backcountry of North Carolina; however, the Spanish had explored the Carolinas two centuries earlier. In 1540, DeSoto and his army left what is now northwest Florida and marched through the southeast to the Mississippi River. They traveled through the Carolinas and were at a location called Xualla, which was a place between two rivers with the mountains in sight. They met with the Suara tribe, and this was probably the first contact in the area between Europeans and Indians. Twenty-six years later, another Spanish explorer, Juan Pardo, explored locations similar to DeSoto, and upon reaching Xualla (Joara), established a fort at that site. Explorations by the Spanish led to trade with the natives but no permanent settlements.

In the 1670’s, a German doctor, John Lederer, explored the Virginia and Carolina piedmont. As he descended from the Blue Ridge mountains and headed east, he wrote that he “descended broad savannahs, flowery meads, where herds of red deer were feeding. The grass which sprang from the limestone soil was so high. They could tie it across their saddles. Since the Indians burned their land over every autumn to make their game preserve, it was only lightly wooded with occasional groves of oak or maple.” In June 1670, he found the Suara Indians in the Yadkin River Valley and their camp on the Yadkin near the Trading Ford.

Subsequently, John Lawson traveled and extensively explored the Carolina backcountry in 1701. Lawson wrote that, “We reached the fertile and pleasant banks of the Sapona River…. This most pleasant river is beautiful with a numerous train of swans and other sorts of waterfowl, not common though extraordinary to the eye.” In his History of Rowan County North Carolina, Jethro Rumple writes that he believes that the Sapona River is actually the Yadkin River and that the Sapona town mentioned in other parts of Lawson’s accounts is an Indian village located near the Trading Ford.

Around 1703, the Sapona united with other tribes, left the Carolinas, and moved north into Virginia about ten miles north of the Roanoke River. After living there two or three decades, they returned to the Carolinas and lived among the Catawba.

When the Boones and Bryans moved into the North Carolina backcountry, Indians belonging to the Catawba Nation were those living closest to them. The Catawba towns were in the North and South Carolina Piedmont and were located along the Catawba and Wateree Rivers and Sugar and Twelve Mile Creeks. The land along the Yadkin settled by the Boones and Bryans was the hunting land of the Catawba Nation, and the Catawba frequently visited the settlers living along the Yadkin River and in the Bryan Settlement. There were times they even made camp near them and would barter and trade with the settlers.

In the early years, when the Boone and Bryans settled along the Yadkin, relations were usually peaceful, especially with the Catawba. However, there were times that violence erupted with the Indians. One example is when Christopher Gist returned to his home along the Yadkin River after his 1750 -1751 explorations of the Ohio Valley and the area that’s now Kentucky. He noted in his journal that on May 18, 1751, he arrived home and found his family gone. After learning Indians had killed five people nearby, he headed north and found his wife and family in Roanoke, Virginia.

Another incident was in July 1753, shortly after Rowan County was formed. A party of “Northern Indians” invaded and massacred sixteen whites and took ten captives at a settlement on Buffalo Creek in western North Carolina. The militia was called out and dispatched, and Catawba Indians assisted by searching for the raiding party, but without success.

King Hagler (circa 1700-1763) became Chief of the Catawba in 1750 and was very astute and adept at negotiating with the white settlers and other tribal nations. However, several tragedies plagued the Catawba Nation. One devastating event was a smallpox epidemic in 1759 where half of the Catawba Nation died. King Hagler was forced into treaty negotiations to preserve the ancient lands of his nation, and in 1756, he negotiated a defense treaty with the colony of Virginia. He worked to maintain the location of Cofitachique and his home at Pine Tree Hill. In 1760 he began the three-year negotiations for the Treaty of Pine Tree Hill. He was willing to move his home and the Catawba Nation north seventy miles and give up his land base of 55,000 squire miles, since he knew it was already lost to illegal white settlement in North and South Carolina. By doing this, he retained much of his ancestral land which was a two million tract of land centered at the Old Waxhaw Fields.

Legend has it that the Shawnees living to the north invaded the Catawba towns, and in 1763, they killed their honored chief, Hagler. This occurred only a couple months before Chief Hagler was to attend the Treaty of Augusta in Georgia. With Hagler out of the way, the Carolina colonies had a much easier time negotiating in Augusta. After brief negotiations, the Catawba land base was cut down to fifteen square miles.

The Cherokee Nation was the most powerful tribe in the South. Their towns were in the mountains just to the west of the Boone and Bryan settlements. The land under their control roughly included what is now western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, northwestern South Carolina, and northern Georgia.

The English quickly dominated coastal Carolina tribes. However, authors in Native Carolinians: The Indians of North Carolina write that the Cherokee maintained their independence from the British during the colonial period for two reasons. First, they were a large population who lived in a remote and defensible area of the mountains. Secondly, the Cherokee also traded with the Spanish in Florida and the French to the west of their Nation, so they did not have to rely on trade goods from the British. In the early years, the Cherokee were able to play one European power against another.

One problem that resulted from exposure to white settlers was decimation by disease. In 1738, the Cherokee suffered from a smallpox epidemic that killed half their population.

An alliance was formed between the Cherokee and British from 1730 to 1753. In doing so, the Cherokee hoped to gain protection from Indians allied with the French, and the British wanted to monopolize the Cherokee deer hide trade. The Cherokee eventually became dependent on the trade goods such as metal tools and guns and ammunition provided by the British. Simultaneously, the European demand for deer hides continued to accelerate. Traders increased the price of their goods, so the Cherokee had to provide more skins which meant they had to abandon their attitude toward killing deer and could no longer keep their world in balance. In Theda Perdue’s book The Cherokee, she writes that the Cherokee sold 50,000 deer skins to traders in 1708. That number increased dramatically in 1735 when the Cherokee sold 1,000,000 hides to traders.

Initially, the Catawba and Cherokee established good relationships with white settlers and even became their allies during times of war. However, this would change with the Cherokee due to incitement by the whites, and this topic will be addressed in a future article. The conflicts that arose in this land that initially appeared peaceful to the Boones and Bryans erupted into conflict that included the French & Indian War (1754-1763), the Anglo-Cherokee War (1758-1761), the American Revolution (1775-1783), and the Cherokee War of 1776.

Sources:

Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.

Blumer, Thomas J., Catawba Nation: Treasures in History, The History Press, Charleston, South Carolina, 2007.

Brawley, James S., The Rowan Story 1753-1953, Rowan Printing Company, Salisbury, North Carolina, 1953.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Harris, Frances Latham, Lawson’s History of North Carolina, Garrett & Massie, Inc., Richmond, Virginia, 1952.

Johnson, J. Stoddard, First Explorations of Kentucky, John P. Morgan, Louisville, Kentucky, 1898.

Lee, E. Lawrence, Indian Wars in North Carolina 1663-1763, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1968.

Perdue, Theda, The Cherokee, Series: Indians of North America, Chelsea House Publishers, New York & Philadelphia, 1989.

Perdue, Theda and Oakley, Christopher Arris, Native Carolinians: The Indians of North Carolina, North Carolina Department of Public Resources, Offices of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina, 2010.

Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1964.

Rights, Douglas L., The American Indian in North Carolina, John F. Blair, Publisher, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1957.

Rumple, Rev. Jethro, A History of Rowan County, North Carolina: Containing Sketches  of Prominent Families and Distinguished Men, Published by J.J. Bruner,         Salisbury, North Carolina, 1881.

"Attakullkulla" by Robert A. Crum 2015

"Red Paint-Cherokee" by Robert A. Crum 2019

"Little Carpenter's Lament" by Robert A. Crum 2017

"Cherokee Warrior" by Robert A. Crum 2016

1750 - Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone and Family Settle in North Carolina

View of the Yadkin River from Boone Cave Park. Photo by Robert Alvin Crum - copyright 2018. More images below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 26 February 2024

Squire Boone was born in Devonshire, England in 1696 to a family who belonged to the Society of Friends or what we commonly refer to as Quakers. For both economic and religious reasons, Squire’s parents and siblings migrated in 1717 to the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. His future wife Sarah Morgan was born in Pennsylvania in 1700, and her parents were also Quakers. In 1720, Squire Boone married Sarah Morgan in the Gwynedd Meeting (Society of Friends).

Squire and Sarah had eleven children who were all born in the British Colony of Pennsylvania. Daniel was born as their sixth child, and all their children were educated, including the girls (which was common for Quakers). Daniel was one that had little formal education in a schoolhouse, but beginning at age fourteen, his older brother Samuel’s wife, Sarah Day, taught Daniel to read and write.

Squire and Sarah’s oldest daughter, Sarah, married a non-Quaker, John Wilcoxson, in 1742 (referred to as marrying a worldling outside the Quaker Meeting). The Society of Friends required Squire to repent for her behavior, which he did, so he could remain a Quaker. Subsequently, their second child, Israel, also married a worldling in 1747, and Squire was again required to repent for his son’s behavior. When Squire refused, the Society of Friends expelled him from the Friends Meeting, so Squire was no longer a Quaker. His wife was able to maintain her standing as a Quaker the rest of her life.

Squire’s expulsion from the Friends Meeting probably influenced his interest in moving south, especially since it would have affected his ability to conduct his many businesses. Another important reason for the move was his interest in acquiring additional land that was cheaper. As you can read in Dr. Robert Ramsey’s Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, there were many Pennsylvania Quaker families who began migrating to the North Carolina backcountry in what became the Bryan Settlement, because they could buy cheaper land and even become land speculators.

In the spring of 1749, Squire Boone traveled from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to explore the area before a possible move. He took with him his son and daughter, Daniel and Elizabeth, and Daniel’s lifelong friend, Henry Miller. They traveled along trails that would later be known as the Great Wagon Road and continued south on a part of the trail known as Morgan Bryan’s Wagon Road that’s between today’s Roanoke, Virginia, and the Shallow Ford on the Yadkin River.

Once they reached the east side of the Shallow Ford, they probably stopped at Edward Hughes’ ordinary (tavern) before crossing the Yadkin River to talk about this new land. Squire knew Edward in Pennsylvania, and their families were connected by siblings’ marriages. Once they crossed the Yadkin, they passed through lands owned by the Bryans (who they also knew in Pennsylvania) and probably also discussed prospective land purchases.

While searching for land, it appears that they camped at a site along the Yadkin River that became known as Boone’s Ford (previously known as Alleman’s Ford). It’s located about six miles north of a place now called “The Point” where the South Yadkin River flows into the North Yadkin River. Just above this location on the east side of the river is a fertile bottom land that became known as Boone’s Bottom, and there was a log structure built on the west side of Boone’s Ford, either at this time or in 1750, that became known as Boone’s Fort.

Squire, Daniel, Elizabeth, and Henry Miller returned to Pennsylvania. On April 11, 1750, Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone sold their 158-acre Exeter Township farm, and on May 1, 1950, they left Pennsylvania for North Carolina. They and their large family followed the same route that they used the previous year during their exploratory trip. Some sources say that the Boones stopped in Winchester, Virginia and may have stayed there for two years. However, Lyman Draper documented that it was a brief stay, and there’s additional evidence to the contrary.

Additional documentation showing Squire Boone’s earlier arrival in North Carolina is a land entry in 1750 showing a warrant to measure and lay out 640 acres for Squire Boone lying on Grant’s Creek (alias Lichon Creek) and now known as Elisha Creek. When this land was surveyed, Squire Boone is named as a “chainer” indicating that he was walking the land long before the grant was issued on April 13, 1753.

Additional evidence shows the Boones first settled on the east side of the Yadkin where they are shown as living on land adjacent to a survey completed by James Carter dated February 27, 1752. Carter knew the Boones, since he married a Boone, and his daughter Mary married Jonathan Boone. There’s also documentation in the Draper Manuscripts showing that Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone and their family first lived on the east side of the Yadkin River and near today’s Boone Cave Park. In 1753, they completed the purchase of two separate 640-acre tracts from Lord Granville on the west side of the river in 1753.

When the large area of Rowan County, North Carolina was formed from Anson County in 1753, Squire Boone became a reasonably prominent colonial official. He served on the Vestry of the Anglican Parish of St. Luke, was a civil administrator of a large area of Rowan County and was appointed as one of the first Justices of the Court of Common Pleas. In the Minutes of the Court of Common Pleas, Squire Boone is listed as one of the Justices, and after his name, it’s recorded that, “Squire Boone’s residence is on the Yadkin at Boone’s Ford.”

Squire Boone’s purchases of two 640-acre tracts from Lord Granville were finalized in 1753. One is referred to the Bear Creek tract (west of present-day Mocksville) and the other is referred to as the Dutchman’s Creek tract (east of present-day Mocksville). The two following paragraphs show the initial purchase of the Dutchman’s Creek tract by Squire Boone and then the transfer to his son Squire in 1759.

Rowan County Deed Book 3, page 137 shows on April 30, 1753, the “Land granted from Granville to Squire Boone, Esq., of Rowan County, Province of North Carolina, 640 acres land in Parish of (not given) Rowan County, N. C. lying on the South side of Grant’s Creek otherwise Licking Creek. (3 shillings to every 100 acres).” Signed Granville, by James Innes and Francis Corbin. Witnesses: James Carter and William Haywood. Proved at Court House in Salisbury for Rowan County, January 20, 1756, on oath of James Carter, Esq. Ordered to be registered. Test. Thomas Parker.”

Rowan Deed Book 4, page 196 shows on April 12, 1759, the land gift from “Squire Boone of Rowan County, N. C., and Sarah, his wife, let Squire Boone, Jr., son of said Squire Boone, Sen’r., have for love and affection and for (?) pounds, 640 acres land in Rowan County, lying on South side of Grant’s Creek, otherwise Licking Creek. (This land was granted to Squire Boone, Sen’r., by Granville on April 30th, 1753). Signed Squire Boone and Sarah Boone, Witnesses: Thomas Banfield, Richard Neely and Charles Hunter. Proven, Rowan County Court, October 1759. Let it be registered. Tho’s. Parker, Clerk.”

Squire Boone, Sr. and his family lived on the Dutchman’s Creek tract as verified by a letter dated February 17, 1843, from Daniel Bryan to Lyman Draper. Daniel Bryan writes, “When Dan’l [Boone] was sixteen years old his father Squire Boone Moved to North Carolina and settled on Dutchman’s Creek at the Buffalow Lick, where he died in 1763.”

Daniel Bryan was born in 1758 as the second son of William and Mary Boone Bryan. Mary Boone was Daniel Boone’s younger sister, and William Bryan was the uncle of Rebecca Bryan Boone. Daniel Bryan was born at and lived on his parents’ land at what was known as “The Bend” along the Yadkin River in the Bryan Settlement in North Carolina. Daniel Bryan was also the grandson of Squire Boone, Sr. and Morgan Bryan, Sr. and was also the nephew of Daniel Boone and a first cousin of Rebecca Bryan. This close relationship to the Boones and living nearby as family would make his statements an accurate source about his family and where they lived.

Daniel lived with his parents at the Dutchman’s Creek site until he married Rebecca Bryan, although there are some accounts that Daniel also lived with Morgan Bryan, Rebecca’s uncle, at times before marrying Rebecca. After they were married in 1756, Daniel and Rebecca moved to the Sugartree Creek site and lived there until they moved farther up the Yadkin in 1767.

Sources:

Anson County, North Carolina Deed Records.

Belue, Ted Franklin, Editor, The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman C. Draper, Stackpole     Books, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, 1998.

Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, Acts of the North Carolina General Assembly, 1753, Chapter VII, p. 383.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.

Hammond, Neil O., My Father Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, Kentucky, 1999.

Kamper, Ken, An Accurate Summary of the Life of Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone History  Research – Newsletter No. 6, December 2021.

Kamper, Ken, A Researcher’s Understanding on the Boone Family Move to North Carolina, No. PK17.0211, February 2017.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Deeds of Rowan County, North Carolina, 1753 – 1785, Books 1 through 10, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1983.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina, Volume I – 1753-1762, Volume II – 1763-1774,  Volume III – 1775-1789, Salisbury, North Carolina, Privately published, 1977, 1979, 1982.

Manuscript Collection, The State Historical Society of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri.

Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina,   1964.

Rowan County Deeds, Salisbury, North Carolina.

Spraker, Hazel Atterbury, The Boone Family, The Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, 1922.

U.S Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.

Weiss, Kathryn H., Daniel Bryan, Nephew of Daniel Boone: His Narrative and Other Stories, Self-published by Kathryn H. Weiss, 2008.

Highway Marker for the Boone Tract

"Were Dutchman's Creek Enters the Yadkin" by Robert Alvin Crum 2016

Boone Marker in Farmington Stating D. Boone lived 2 miles SE

1748 - Morgan Bryan’s Family Settles in North Carolina

View of the Shallow Ford on the west side of the Yadkin River looking east. Photo by Robert Alvin Crum - copyright 2018. More images below.

Robert Alvin Crum copyright 9 February 2024

Much has been written about Daniel Boone, whose stories, and even myths, seem to have become a part of the early American experience. The same cannot be said about his wife, Rebecca, and her family. However, my curiosity got the best of me while reading Dr. Robert Ramsey’s book Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762 where he writes, “The most prominent of settlers in northwestern Carolina before 1752 was Morgan Bryan.”

 Who was Morgan Bryan? He was a land speculator and the grandfather of Rebecca Bryan and Martha Bryan. They were part of the Bryan migration from the Shenandoah Valley into the Forks of the Yadkin in the autumn of 1748. The questions I began to ask included, “What led them to the North Carolina colonial backcountry, and why was the area they settled known as ‘The Bryan Settlement’?”

Morgan Bryan and Alexander Ross became land speculators in Virginia. In 1730, they presented a proposal to Virginia Governor William Gooch to recruit hard-working Quaker farmers to settle the western frontier of Virginia. The Governor hoped this settlement might stabilize the frontier where Indians were unhappy with hunters and traders invading tribal lands in violation of colonial and Indian law. Bryan and Ross acquired 100,000 acres south of the Potomac River and bounded on two sides by Opequon Creek near present day Winchester, Virginia. In 1734, Bryan also bought and settled on a tract of land on a branch of Opequon Creek that's now located in Berkeley County, West Virginia.

Morgan Bryan (1671-1763) and his wife, Martha Strode Bryan (1697-1762), decided in 1748 to move with their large extended family to North Carolina. Morgan and Martha Bryan along with most of their children and grandchildren left their lands in Virginia in 1748 to settle in the backcountry of North Carolina in the Forks of the Yadkin. Their oldest son, Joseph Bryan (1719-1805), and his second wife, Alice Linville, along with their children, stayed behind in Virginia until 1756, so they could tie up the loose ends of the family’s business. Joseph had two daughters, Martha and Rebecca, by his first wife, who died shortly after the second daughter’s birth. They accompanied their grandparents, Morgan and Martha Bryan, on their first trek into North Carolina. Morgan and Martha also had a daughter, Mary Bryan, who married Thomas Curtis. Since they both died in Virginia before this 1748 migration, their daughter, Mary Curtis, also accompanied her grandparents into North Carolina. It’s believed that Morgan Bryan, Jr. (1728-1804) also stayed in Virginia for a few more years until he settled affairs and later moved south to North Carolina.

The names of Morgan and Martha Bryan’s children whose families also migrated into North Carolina with them in 1748 were Eleanor, Samuel, John, William, James, and Thomas. They migrated out of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and headed south. It was a rocky trail through Virginia, and the Bryans had to clear sections as they went. For a short time, this was known as the Bryan Road in Virginia. At one time, it was referred to as the Carolina Road but later became known as the Great Wagon Road.

They followed the road out of Virginia and into North Carolina where it wound through present day Stokes and Forsyth Counties. Before reaching their destination, they could see what the Suara Indians called “Jameokee” which means “Great Guide.” It’s a landmark that we now call Pilot Mountain. The road curved southwest along a ridge above the Yadkin River to the east of the Shallow Ford. They crossed the Yadkin River from the east side to the west at the Shallow Ford and entered this land to be among the first white settlers. The Bryans were wealthy enough to own enslaved people and brought them along when migrating into the North Carolina backcountry. Today, the east side of the Shallow Ford is being preserved as the Shallow Ford State Historic Site. The point where the Bryans entered on the west side of the Yadkin is owned privately.

Author George Raynor also wrote in Patriots and Tories in Piedmont North Carolina that “If the North Carolina frontier of the mid-18th century had leading families, the Bryans were certainly among them.” Mr. Raynor continued by saying that the Bryan family “was later to expand its lands into thousands of acres in scattered tracts known as the ‘Bryan settlements’.”

Morgan Bryan initially bought eleven tracts of land totaling 3,838½ acres, and most were later sold to his children. Eight of these tracts were in the Forks of the Yadkin, but three were on the north side of the Upper Yadkin River at Mulberry Fields and Reddy’s River. These three tracts of land are in what is now Wilkes County in the vicinity of present-day North Wilkesboro. Bryan’s eight original Granville land grants were surveyed in the years 1748, 1749,1750 and 1751. The grants and indentures are dated 1752, and Morgan made the first five sales to his sons in 1753. Most of Morgan’s children began buying more land where they chose to build their homes. The Bryan Settlement encompasses areas around the North Carolina towns of Advance, Farmington, Huntsville, Lewisville and Mocksville and the areas of western Forsyth County, eastern Yadkin County and most of Davie County. The Shallow Ford was in the middle of the Bryan Settlement. Edward Hughes owned the land directly on each side of this ford, which was an important crossing for the Great Wagon Road. In addition to Edward Hughes, the original families who migrated into the Bryan Settlement were headed by Squire Boone, Morgan Bryan, James Carter, Samuel Davis, George Forbush, and William Linville. Many of the children of these men intermarried both in Virginia before arriving and some after arriving in the Bryan Settlement.

In his book Carolina Cradle, Dr. Ramsey also mentions that “Any description of the early Bryan Settlement would hardly be complete without reference to Squire Boone, father of Daniel, who settled near the Yadkin with his family in 1750.” It appears that Squire Boone and his wife Sarah Morgan Boone knew the Bryans when they all lived in Pennsylvania, so it’s not surprising that the Boones followed the Bryans into the Forks of the Yadkin and the area known as the Bryan Settlement. Two of Morgan Bryan's granddaughters who were sisters, Rebecca and Martha, later married Daniel and Edward Boone, respectively, in North Carolina. Daniel Boone’s younger sister, Mary, also married Morgan's son William in 1753.

In 1752, the Moravians led by Bishop Spangenburg were in the Colony of North Carolina in search of land to establish a large community. In his diary he wrote,

“… They have a pleasant situation and a rich soil. Morgan Bryant has taken them up, but no one lives on them. Our land, which is opposite, is not far from the tract we have already taken on the Atkin; Morgan Bryant owns the land lying between, on which Mr. Owens lives. If we could buy this plantation, and the Mulberry Fields, we would have the land for 10 miles on both sides of the Atkin, for we have taken up a piece of the same side of the river with the Mulberry Fields, touching that on which Mr. Owens lives.”

Bishop Spangenburg was unable to purchase some of the land he wanted on the Upper Yadkin River, because Morgan Bryan had already surveyed and acquired it three to four years earlier. As the Moravians moved east in search of additional land, they found the Bryan Settlement on the west side of the Yadkin River. They had to cross the Shallow Ford to acquire land on the east side of the Yadkin River that became known as the Wachovia Tract. Today, this is the location of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

The Bryan and Boone families moved into North Carolina at a peaceful time with the hopes of farming, hunting, and even earning a livelihood as land speculators. They also were heavily involved in the North Carolina colonial government of Rowan County.

However, things quickly changed in 1755. Conflict began with the French and Indian War in 1755, subsequent wars with the Cherokee, and continued through the end of the American Revolution in 1783. The Boones and Bryans were caught up in all these conflicts. The men in both families fought with the militia, and Bryans served on both sides of the Revolution with one Bryan even being commissioned by the Royal Governor as a Colonel. Family members not fighting tried to avoid all wars by either fleeing to Virginia and Maryland or looking for protection by “forting up” on their land or at such places as Fort Dobbs and Bethabara in the Moravian Settlements. (Also known as the Moravian Tract.)

Many of the families in the Bryan Settlement intermarried and began to raise their children, and those that aged here are also buried here. Morgan Bryan died in Rowan County in 1763, and his wife, Martha, died the previous year in 1762.

Morgan Bryan’s will was filed in Rowan County, and his sons William and John administered his estate. His son Thomas inherited Morgan Bryan’s “Mansion House and Plantation,” which was a 565-acre tract located adjacent to the Yadkin River at a place known as “The Bend.” In 1764, Thomas sold to William 56 acres of this tract as “being part of a Tract of Land Granted…unto Morgan Bryan and by sd Morgan Bryan made over to sd Thomas Bryan and Known by the Name of sd Morgan Bryan’s Mansion Plantation Tract.” In 1772, Thomas sold William another 83 acres, so now William owned 189 acres of the old home place, and Thomas owned 376 acres.

This discussion about the location of the Mansion House may be important in the current disagreement about where Morgan and Martha Bryan were buried, because the headstones were removed from their graves. Some believe they’re probably buried at Morgan Bryan’s 510-acre Deep Creek property, because some believe the Mansion House was at that location. However, this tract was sold to youngest son Thomas in 1758, and I know of no evidence showing it was the location of Morgan Bryan’s Mansion House. In the previous paragraph, I’ve provided evidence that the Mansion House was at “The Bend” along the Yadkin; however, I know of no current evidence that they were buried there. In more recent years, a plaque was installed at the Oak Valley subdivision in Advance, North Carolina claiming that Morgan and Martha Bryan are buried there, but there’s not sufficient evidence to prove this. Therefore, the location of their graves is currently unknown and may never be verified.  Martha’s headstone currently rests on a table in one of the historic houses owned by the Rowan Museum in Salisbury, North Carolina, and it would take another article to explain why.

Squire Boone died at his “Dutchman’s Creek” property in 1765. His wife, Sarah, went to live with her daughter Mary Boone Bryan and her husband William Bryan on the 189 acres described above. Sarah Morgan Boone died in 1777. Squire and Sarah’s well-maintained graves are in Joppa Cemetery in Mocksville, North Carolina, and their son Israel is buried beside them.

Within a generation after arriving in the Bryan Settlement, many of the Boones and Bryans embarked on what I would call two “great migrations” out of North Carolina in 1775 and 1779. They were led by Daniel Boone and William Bryan. This became part of America’s first westward expansion into Kentucky and beyond.

Sources:

Anson County Deeds, Anson County Records, Wadesboro, NC.

Bryan, Jr., John K., “Morgan Bryan,” Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 Volumes edited by William S. Powell, The University of North Carolina Press, copyright 1979 – 1996.

Clark, Walter, ed., The State Records of North Carolina, 16 Volumes, Winston, Goldsboro: State of North Carolina, 1895-1907.

Draper, Lyman Copeland, Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

Fries, Adelaide Lisetta, Records of the Moravians in North Carolina, 1752-1771, Vol. 1, Publications of the North Carolina Historical Commission, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, NC, Reprinted 1968.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina 1753-1762, Salisbury, NC, 1977.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Court of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions, Rowan County, North Carolina 1753-1762, Salisbury, NC, 1979.

Linn, Jo White, Abstracts of the Deeds of Rowan County, NC 1753-1785, Salisbury, NC, 1983.

Linn, Jo White, Rowan County Tax Lists 1757-1800, Salisbury, NC 1995.

McMurtry, David C., Seven Sons and Two Daughters of Morgan Bryan (1671-1763):“Irish Immigrant” and Some of Their Descendants, Mil-Mac Publishers,     Lexington, KY, 2009.

McMurtry, David C., Bryan, David Randall, and Weiss, Katherine, Morgan Bryan (1671-  1763: A Danish Born “Irish Immigrant” and Some of His Antecedents and Descendants, Mil-Mac Publishers, Lexington, KY, 2007.

Phillips, Marcia D., Historic Shallow Ford in Yadkin Valley: Crossroads Between East and West, The History Press, Charleston, SC, 2022.

Ramsey, Robert W., Carolina Cradle: Settlement of the Northwest Carolina Frontier 1747-1762, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1964.

Raynor, George, Patriots and Tories in Piedmont Carolina, The Salisbury Post, Salisbury, NC, 1990.

Records of Augusta County Virginia, Volumes I – III.

Rowan County Deeds, Rowan County Records, Salisbury, NC.

Rowan County Wills, Rowan County Records, Salisbury, NC.

Saunders, William L., ed., The Colonial Records of North Carolina, 10 Volumes, Printers to the State, Raleigh, NC 1886-1890.

Stimson, R. Kyle, The Great Philadelphia Wagon Road in Forsyth County, N.C. 1750 – 1770: Historic Roads of Forsyth County – Volume One, copyright 1999 by R.C. Kyle Stimson.

Surry County Deeds, Surry County Records, Mt. Airy, NC.

U.S. Quaker Meeting Records 1681-1935.

Weiss, Katherine, Morgan Bryan, Senior’s “Original Eleven” Anson (Rowan) County North Carolina Land Grants, Katherine Weiss, Forbestown, CA, 2006.

Morgan Bryan's family crossing the Shallow Ford in 1748. Drawing by Robert A. Crum 2022

"Jameokee" oil on canvas by Robert Alvin Crum copyright 2016