Daniel Boone Home

Image: The Historic Daniel Boone Home in winter.

 

One of the most asked questions at our site is: Why is this called the Daniel Boone Home when it is really the Nathan Boone Home?

The name of the home has long been a source of contention as the home has been referred to locally and regionally as the Daniel Boone Home or Daniel Boone Place for well over 100 years. Though his name was not on the land deed, Nathan and Olive’s house was a primary residence for Daniel in his later years, which we know from Lyman Draper’s interviews with the couple. With Daniel’s popularity, his regular residence at this location, and his death in the home in 1820, the name has stuck. We try our best to honor the legacy of the entire Boone Family through our interpretation of the Home, the surrounding land, and the family stories. This site was the primary residence for Daniel Boone from at least 1800 till 1820. We feel that the home is a beautiful and very historic structure, no matter what it is called. The legacy of the entire Boone family is both remembered and preserved through our stewardship of the site.

Listed below are some quotes from Nathan Boone about his father living on his land:

“Both Olive and I and my mother and father spent the winter at my brother Daniel ‘s house.”

Nathan Boone

(This was the winter of 1799/1800 - Daniel Morgan Boone’s (Daniel Boone’s oldest son) land grant was near what is today Matson, Missouri on a ridge overlooking the Missouri River. Daniel Boone had an adjacent land grant to the east extending to the river.)

“At sugar making time in February (1800) my father and mother went to my place and built a half-face camp where they made three or four hundred pounds of sugar. It took them several weeks. In the mean-time, I built a cabin and cleared eight or nine acres of timberland for my first crop.”

Nathan Boone

(The location Nathan is talking about is now The Historic Daniel Boone Home at Lindenwood Park.)

“In the summer of 1800, I erected a good substantial log house, and several years later after that I replaced it with a commodious stone building. My father, Daniel Boone, built himself a shop and had a set of tools, and when at home he would make and repair traps and guns.”

Nathan Boone

(The location Nathan is talking about is again, now The Historic Daniel Boone Home at Lindenwood Park.)

Daniel's move to Nathan's place is recorded in an official document from 1806 to the Federal Land Commission concerning Daniel's original (and unsettled) land grant: Colonel D. Boone states to the Board, that, on his arrival in Louisiana, he took up his residence, with his lady, at his son Daniel M. Boone's, in the said district of Femme Osage, and adjoining the lands he now claims; that they remained there until about two years ago, when he moved to a younger son's, Nathan Boone, where he now lives. It is proved that the said claimant is of the age of about seventy years, and his wife about sixty-eight.

Daniel did at times visit the Flanders Callaway family near Marthasville, MO (the family of his daughter Jemima), and did so in the summer of 1820. Nathan describes the final events of Daniel's life:

"During the whole summer of 1820, he was at the Callaway's. … He had an attack of fever, not severe, and while recovering was exceedingly anxious to be taken to my house. … Finally, I took him back in a carriage…He died on the morning of September 26, 1820, about sunrise—the fourteenth day after his arrival here.”

Nathan Boone

A condensed timeline of where Daniel & Rebecca Boone lived in what is today Missouri:

October 1799, upon Daniel & Rebecaa Boone’s arrival in what is today Missouri, they lived with their son Daniel Morgan Boone on his Spanish land grant (506 acres), adjacent to Daniel’s Spanish land grant (850 acres).

In February 1800, Daniel & Rebecca moved to their son Nathan Boone’s land (400 acres) and built a half-faced shelter.

In the summer of 1800, Nathan built a substantial log home, that same summer, Daniel built a shop on Nathan’s land. Daniel & Rebecca lived with Nathan in his log home.

In 1805, Daniel built a small log cabin on Nathan’s land and Daniel & Rebecca lived there.

Construction of Nathan Boone’s stone home began as early as 1803, according to family tradition and was completed by 1810. Again, family tradition says that Daniel & Rebecca had two rooms on the main floor of the home and lived there until Rebecca’s death in 1813 and Daniel’s death in 1820

In the summer of 1820, he became sick and stayed at his son-in-law and daughter’s home, the Flanders Callaway home. Once he recovered, he was transported back to Nathan’s stone home, where he died on September 26, 1820, near sunrise surrounded by family.

Daniel went on many hunting trips until his death in 1820, of course he would stay at some of his friends and relatives along the way and at many campsites. However, he considered Nathan’s home and land as his primary residence. Daniel Boone was famous in his own lifetime, not Nathan, which is one of the reasons that it was called The Daniel Boone place or Daniel Boone home.

Source information: My Father, Daniel Boone - The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, Edited by Neal O. Hammon.