In American popular culture, Boone is remembered as one of the foremost early frontiersmen, even though mythology often overshadows the historical details of his life.

[5][note 1] His father, Squire Boone (1696–1765), immigrated to colonial Pennsylvania from the small town of Bradninch in the county of Devon, England, sometime around 1712.

In 1731, the Boones built a one-room log cabin in the Oley Valley in what is now Berks County, Pennsylvania, near present-day Reading, where Daniel was born.

In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child Sarah married a "worldling", or non-Quaker, while she was visibly pregnant.

[19] In 1755, his unit accompanied General Edward Braddock's attempt to drive the French out of the Ohio Country, which ended in disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela.

After his father's death in 1765, Boone traveled with a group of men to Florida, which had become British territory after the end of the war, to look into the possibility of settling there.

[33] It was the first of May, in the year 1769, that I resigned my domestic happiness for a time, and left my family ... to wander through the wilderness of America, in quest of the country of Kentucky.Years before entering Kentucky, Boone had heard about the region's fertile land and abundant game.

[38] On December 22, 1769, Boone and fellow hunter John Stuart were captured by a party of Shawnee, who confiscated all of their skins and told them to leave and never return.

Boone was still an obscure figure at the time; the most prominent member of the expedition was William Russell, a well-known Virginian and future brother-in-law of Patrick Henry.

On October 9, Boone's oldest son, James, several Whites and Charles and Adam left the main party to seek provisions in a nearby settlement.

Upon his return to Virginia, Boone helped defend colonial settlements along the Clinch River, earning a promotion to captain in the militia, as well as acclaim from fellow citizens.

[50][51] Following Dunmore's War, Richard Henderson, a prominent judge from North Carolina, hired Boone to help establish a colony to be called Transylvania.

By late spring of 1776, Boone and his family were among the fewer than 200 colonists who remained, primarily at the fortified settlements of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and Logan's Station.

[56][57] In 1777, Henry Hamilton, British Lieutenant Governor of Quebec, began to recruit American Indian war parties to raid the Kentucky settlements.

That same year in March, the newly formed militia of Kentucky County, Virginia, mustered in Boonesborough, whose population included ten to 15 enslaved people.

[60] Blackfish intended to move on to Boonesborough and capture it, but Boone argued the women and children would not survive a winter trek as prisoners back to the Shawnee villages.

Boone responded by leading a preemptive raid against the Shawnee across the Ohio River, and then by helping to successfully defend Boonesborough against a 10-day siege led by Blackfish, which began on September 7, 1778.

[72] After the siege, Captain Benjamin Logan and Colonel Richard Callaway—both of whom had nephews who were still captives surrendered by Boone—brought charges against Boone for his recent activities.

Boone joined General George Rogers Clark's invasion of the Ohio country in 1780, fighting in the Battle of Piqua against the Shawnee on August 7.

[86][87] After the Revolutionary War ended, Boone resettled in Limestone (later renamed Maysville, Kentucky), then a booming Ohio River port.

Although the war would not end until the American victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers eight years later, the 1786 expedition was the last time Boone saw military action.

He contracted to provide supplies for the Kanawha militia, but his debts prevented him from buying goods on credit, so he closed his store and returned to hunting and trapping,[97] though he was often hampered by rheumatism.

Boone's remaining land claims were sold off to pay legal fees and taxes, but he no longer paid attention to the process.

[104] Anecdotes of Boone's tenure as syndic suggest he sought to render fair judgments rather than strictly observe the letter of the law.

He continued to hunt and trap as much as his health and energy levels permitted, intruding upon the territory of the Osage tribe, who once captured him and confiscated his furs.

The graves, which were unmarked until the mid-1830s, were near Jemima (Boone) Callaway's home on Tuque Creek, about two miles (3 km) from present-day Marthasville, Missouri.

This was famously expressed in Lord Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1822), which devoted a number of stanzas to Boone, including this one: Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere; For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he Enjoyed the lonely vigorous, harmless days Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.

"[133] In the 19th century, when Native Americans were being displaced from their lands and confined on reservations, Boone's image was often reshaped into the stereotype of the belligerent, Indian-hating frontiersman which was then popular.

[141] In 1961, the US Navy ordered ten James Madison-class ballistic missile submarines to be made at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

Arthur Guiterman in a four stanza poem recounts the life of Boone, ending with his ghost happily tracking animals, both ancient and mythical, across the Milky Way.