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.
