Removal of Boone's father and family to North Carolina--Location on
the Yadkin River--Character of the country and the people--Byron's
description of the backwoodsman--Daniel Boone marries Rebecca
Bryan--His farmer life in North Carolina--State of the
country--Political troubles foreshadowed--Illegal fees and
taxes--Probable effect of this state of things on Boone's
mind--Signs of movement.
When Daniel Boone was still a youth, his father emigrated to North
Carolina. The precise date of this removal of the family residence is
not known. Mr. Peck, an excellent authority, says it took place when
Daniel was about eighteen years old. This would make it about the year
1752.
The new residence of Squire Boone, Daniel's father, was near Holman's
Ford, on the Yadkin River, about eight miles from Wilkesboro'. The fact
of the great backwoodsman having passed many years of his life there
is still remembered with pride by the inhabitants of that region. The
capital of Watauga County, which was formed in 1849, is named Boone, in
honor of Daniel Boone. The historian of North Carolina[6] is disposed
to claim him as a son of the State. He says: "In North Carolina Daniel
Boone was reared. Here his youthful days were spent; and here that bold
spirit was trained, which so fearlessly encountered the perils through
which he passed in after life. His fame is part of her property, and she
has inscribed his name on a town in the region where his youth was
spent."
"The character of Boone is so peculiar," says Mr. Wheeler, "that it
marks the age in which he lived; and his name is celebrated in the
verses of the immortal Byron:"
"Of all men--
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
Is Daniel Boone, backwoodsman of Kentucky."
* * * * *
"Crime came not near him--she is not the child
Of Solitude. Health shrank not from him, for
Her home is in the rarely-trodden wild."
* * * * *
"And tall and strong and swift of foot are they,
Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions,
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
Of care or gain; the green woods were their portions:
No sinking spirits told them they grew gray,
No fashions made them apes of her distortions.
Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were not yet used for trifles."
"Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers,
And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil.
Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers;
Corruption could not make their hearts her soil;
The lust which stings, the splendor which encumbers,
With the free foresters divide no spoil;
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this unsighing people of the woods.'"
We quote these beautiful lines, because they so aptly and forcibly
describe the peculiar character of Boone; and to a certain extent, as
Mr. Wheeler intimates, his character was that of his times and of his
associates.
It was during the residence of the family on the banks of the Yadkin,
that Boone formed the acquaintance of Rebecca Bryan, whom he married.[7]
The marriage appears, by comparison of dates, to have taken place in the
year 1755. "One almost regrets," says Mr. Peck, "to spoil so beautiful a
romance, as that which has had such extensive circulation in the various
'Lives of Boone,' and which represents him as mistaking the bright eyes
of this young lady, in the dark, for those of a deer; a mistake that
nearly proved fatal from the unerring rifle of the young hunter. Yet in
truth, we are bound to say, that no such mistake ever happened. Our
backwoods swains never make such mistakes."
The next five years after his marriage, Daniel Boone passed in the quiet
pursuits of a farmer's life, varied occasionally by hunting excursions
in the woods. The most quiet and careless of the citizens of North
Carolina were not unobservant, however, of the political aspect of the
times. During this period the people, by their representatives in the
Legislature, began that opposition to the Royal authority, which was in
after years to signalize North Carolina as one of the leading Colonies
in the Revolutionary struggle.
The newly-appointed Royal Governor, Arthur Dobbs, arrived at Newbern in
the autumn of 1754. "Governor Dobbs's administration of ten years," says
the historian Wheeler, "was a continued contest between himself and the
Legislature, on matters frivolous and unimportant. A high-toned temper
for Royal prerogatives on his part, and an indomitable resistance of the
Colonists ... The people were much oppressed by Lord Grenville's agents.
They seized Corbin, his agent, who lived below Edenton, and brought him
to Enfield, where he was compelled to give bond and security to produce
his books and disgorge his illegal fees."
This matter of illegal fees was part of a system of oppression, kindred
to the famous Stamp Act--a system which was destined to grow more and
more intolerable under Governor Tryon's administration, and to lead to
the formation of the famous company of Regulators, whose resistance of
taxation and tyranny was soon to convulse the whole State.
We are by no means to suppose that Daniel Boone was an unobservant
spectator of what was passing even at the time we are speaking of,
nor that the doings of the tax-gatherers had nothing to do with his
subsequent movements. He not only hated oppression, but he hated also
strife and disturbance; and already began to long for a new migration
into the distant woods and quiet intervals, where politics and the
tax-gatherer should not intrude.
The population in his neighborhood was increasing, and new settlements
were being formed along the Yadkin and its tributary streams, and
explorations were made to the northwest on the banks of the Holston and
Clinch Rivers. The times were already beginning to exhibit symptoms of
restlessness and stir among the people, which was soon to result in the
formation of new States and the settlement of the far West.
[Footnote 6: John H. Wheeler. "Historical Sketches of North Carolina."]
[Footnote 7: The children by this marriage were nine in number. _Sons:_
James, born in 1756, Israel, Jesse, Daniel, and Nathan. _Daughters_:
Susan, Jemima, Lavinia, and Rebecca. The eldest, James, was killed, as
will appear in our subsequent narrative, by the Indians, in 1773; and
Israel fell in the battle of Blue Licks, May 17th, 1782. In 1846,
Nathan, a captain in the United States service, was the only surviving
son.]