Rebecca Boone

Since Daniel was away for extended hunting and exploration trips, sometimes for several years at a time, Boone generally raised and protected their eighteen children by herself.

Several times she and her family left their home for shelter and protection in nearby forts and in one case lived several years in Culpeper County, Colony of Virginia, during the Anglo-Cherokee War.

Boone's son James was killed by a group of Cherokee, Delaware, and Shawnee men during the trek through the wilderness.

After the family settled at Fort Boone (now Boonesborough), Jemima was captured by Native Americans and was subsequently rescued by Daniel.

During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), one of Boone's sons was killed and another was wounded at the Battle of Blue Licks (August 19, 1782).

Boone moved to numerous locations where she raised her family, ran a tavern kitchen, operated stores, hunted for game, and made and sold maple sugar.

[8] In Augusta County, Virginia, her father, Joseph Bryan, married a second time to Alice "Alee" Linville, with whom he had a large family.

[3][13] She received domestic training from her grandmother and learned outdoor skills, like shooting, from the male members of the Bryan family.

[6] Daniel Boone's family, who were Quakers until 1748, migrated from Pennsylvania in 1750 and between the fall of 1751 and spring of 1752,[c] they settled along the Yadkin River near the Bryans in Rowan County.

One is that on a night that Rebecca was herding stray cows, Daniel tracked her during a "fire hunt", a Native American night-time method for stalking and shooting deer that became frozen or catatonic by the light.

[13] During that period, gangs of white men called highwaymen "plundered, stole, and killed" people in the Yadkin River area; They often disguised themselves as Native Americans.

[13] Before the birth of her first child, the Boones had moved to a small farm and built a one-story log house on Sugartree Creek near members of the Bryan family, close to current-day Farmington, North Carolina.

[27] She raised the children on her own during the falls and winters that Daniel spent hunting and trapping furs and on his extended exploration trips into the wilderness.

[36] In 1759, following a raid during the Anglo-Cherokee War, Daniel served with the militia under Major Hugh Waddell[26][38] and Boone went to Culpeper County, Virginia[26][39][i] with their four children—young James, baby Israel, and nephews Jesse and Jonathan.

[59] Daniel had traveled into what is now the state of Kentucky beginning in 1767 and again in May 1769 with an exploration expedition to build a trail[26][60] through Cumberland Gap for traders and settlers.

[26] During that time, Boone was still in North Carolina, living a difficult frontier life with threats of attacks by Native Americans and long periods when her husband was away.

[14][63] Boone was intent on leaving North Carolina for several reasons, he owed money to people there, the settlements were becoming crowded, and he sought better hunting grounds.

[26][64][66] Boone and other survivors returned to North Carolina,[26] taking up temporary residence along the Clinch River, where settlers established forts for protection.

[71] Beginning in April 1775, Daniel supervised the construction of Fort Boone that included a block house and cabins, enclosed within a palisade.

[74] The British had urged local Native Americans to hit certain targets, like Boonesborough and other settlements south of the Ohio River.

[78] During my captivity with the Indians, my wife, who despaired of ever seeing me again, expecting the Indians had put a period to my life, oppressed with the distress of the country, and bereaved of me, her only happiness, had, before I returned, transported my family and goods, on horses, through the wilderness, amidst a multitude of dangers, to her father's house, in North Carolina.Daniel escaped his captors around June 1778[26][o] and traveled to North Carolina to reconnect with his family.

Daniel said of the time, "The history of my going home, and returning with my family, forms a series of difficulties, an account of which would swell a volume.

[88] Boone's husband, serving as lieutenant colonel, and two of her sons fought together at the Battle of Blue Licks (August 19, 1782) of the Revolutionary War.

[90] In 1787, Daniel was elected to the legislature as a representative of Bourbon County, and he moved to Richmond, Virginia with Boone and Nathan,[14][92] leaving the tavern in the hands of their daughter Rebecca and husband Philip Goe.

[93] After Daniel's failed attempts at land speculation and ginseng exports,[88] they moved in 1788 to Charleston (now in West Virginia) in the Kanawha Valley.

[96][97] In 1799, Boone and her husband moved with extended family members to the Spanish Territory of Alta Luisiana (Upper Louisiana, now Missouri)[4][27] in the Femme Osage valley.

[107][108] For instance, she says that Timothy Flint writes that "an exemplary Rebecca Boone appeared all too infrequently and all too indistinctly to stand proof against the many and changing stereotypes in which others, in the future, would cast her.

And by portraying her first and most dramatically as reflected in the flickering and distorting torchlight of her husband's predominating myth, Flint effectively annihilated any possibility that she might achieve mythic status on her own.

[108] Author Etta DeGering compares her to the Biblical figure, Ruth, for following where her husband leads, fitting the historical view of women as compliant.

"[111] Samuel A. Drake said of her, "For more than half a century, throughout all the extraordinary vicissitudes of her husband's career, [Rebecca Bryan Boone] had been the faithful and heroic wife and mother.