Daniel Boone was an American pioneer and frontiersman whose exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He became famous for his exploration and settlement of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the Thirteen Colonies. In 1775, Boone blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap and into Kentucky, in the face of resistance from American Indians, for whom the area was a traditional hunting ground. He founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. By the end of the 18th century, more than 200,000 people had entered Kentucky by following the route marked by Boone.
Madison County is a county located in the central part of the U.S. state of Kentucky. At the 2020 census, its population was 92,701. Its county seat is Richmond. The county is named for Virginia statesman James Madison, who later became the fourth President of the United States.
The Transylvania Colony, also referred to as the Transylvania Purchase, was a short-lived, extra-legal colony founded in early 1775 by North Carolina land speculator Richard Henderson, who formed and controlled the Transylvania Company. Henderson and his investors had reached an agreement to purchase a vast tract of Cherokee lands west of the southern and central Appalachian Mountains through the acceptance of the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals with most leading Cherokee chieftains then controlling these lands. In exchange for the land the tribes received goods worth, according to the estimates of some scholars, about 10,000 British pounds. To further complicate matters, this frontier land was also claimed by the Virginia Colony and a southern portion by Province of North Carolina.
The Kentucky River Palisades are a series of steep, scenic gorges and limestone outcroppings that stretch for approximately 100 mi (160 km), along the Kentucky River in central Kentucky in the United States.
The Wilderness Road was one of two principal routes used by colonial and early national era settlers to reach Kentucky from the East. Although this road goes through the Cumberland Gap into southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, the other is sometimes called the "Cumberland Road" because it started in Fort Cumberland in Maryland. Despite Kentucky Senator Henry Clay's advocacy of this route, early in the 19th century, the northern route was selected for the National Road, connecting near Washington, Pennsylvania into the Ohio Valley of northern Kentucky and Ohio.
Blackfish, was a Native American leader, war chief of the Chillicothe band of the Shawnee tribe.
Richard Henderson was an American jurist, land speculator and politician who was best known for attempting to create the Transylvania Colony in frontier Kentucky. Henderson County and its seat Henderson, Kentucky are named for him. He also sold land to an early settlement that went on to become Nashville, Tennessee.
The capture and rescue of Jemima Boone and the Callaway girls is a famous incident in the colonial history of Kentucky. Three girls were captured by a Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party on July 14, 1776, and rescued three days later by Daniel Boone and his party, celebrated for their success. The incident was portrayed in 19th-century literature and paintings: James Fenimore Cooper created a fictionalized version of the episode in his novel The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Charles Ferdinand Wimar painted The Abduction of Boone's Daughter by the Indians.
Boone Station State Historic Site was a 46-acre (190,000 m2) Kentucky State Historic Site on Boone's Creek near Athens in Fayette County, Kentucky, USA.
The siege of Boonesborough was a military engagement which took place in September 1778 during the American Revolutionary War. On September 7, Shawnee chief Blackfish, who was allied to the British, led an attack on the Kentucky settlement of Boonesborough. Months before the battle, Blackfish had captured and adopted Daniel Boone, the founder of Boonesborough. Boone escaped the Shawnees in time to lead the defense of the settlement. Blackfish's siege was unsuccessful and was lifted after eleven days. Boone was then court-martialed by fellow officers who suspected him of harboring Loyalist sympathies. He was acquitted, but soon left the settlement.
Richard Callaway was an American frontiersman, military officer, politician, and hunter who was one of the first white settlers in modern-day Kentucky. Born in Essex County, Virginia, Callaway joined Daniel Boone in 1775 in marking the Wilderness Road into central Kentucky, becoming one of the founders of Boonesborough, Kentucky. He took part in organizing the short-lived Transylvania Colony. In 1776, two of Callaway's daughters, along with Daniel Boone's Jemima, were abducted outside Boonesborough by Cherokee and Shawnee raiding party. Callaway led one of a group of settlers in the successful rescue of the girls. His nephew Flanders Callaway later married Jemima Boone. In April 1777, Callaway and John Todd were elected to the Virginia legislature as burgesses from Kentucky County, Virginia.
The Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, usually shortened to Sycamore Shoals, is a rocky stretch of river rapids along the Watauga River in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Archeological excavations have found Native Americans lived near the shoals since prehistoric times, and Cherokees gathered there. As Europeans began settling the Trans-Appalachian frontier, the shoals proved strategic militarily, as well as shaped the economies of Tennessee and Kentucky. Today, the shoals are protected as a National Historic Landmark and are maintained as part of Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park.
Fort Boonesborough was a frontier fort in Kentucky, founded by Daniel Boone and his men following their crossing of the Kentucky River on April 1, 1775. The settlement they founded, known as Boonesborough, Kentucky, is Kentucky's second oldest European-American settlement. It served as a major frontier outpost during the American Revolutionary War, and survived into the early 19th century before its eventual abandonment. A National Historic Landmark now administered as part of Fort Boonesborough State Park, the site is one of the best-preserved archaeological sites of early westward expansion by British colonists in that period. It is located in Madison County, Kentucky off Kentucky Route 627.
Squire Maugridge Boone Jr. was an American frontiersman, longhunter, soldier, city planner, politician, land locator, judge, politician, gunsmith, miller, and brother of Daniel Boone. In 1780, he founded the first settlement in Shelby County, Kentucky. The tenth of eleven children, Squire Boone was born to Squire Boone Sr. and his wife Sarah (Morgan) Boone in Berks County, Pennsylvania, at the Daniel Boone Homestead. Although overshadowed by his famous brother, Squire Boone was well known in his day.
A longhunter was an 18th-century explorer and hunter who made expeditions into the American frontier for as much as six months at a time.
"Indian Reserve" is a historical term for the largely uncolonized land in North America that was claimed by France, ceded to Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris (1763) at the end of the Seven Years' War—also known as the French and Indian War—and set aside for the First Nations in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. The British government had contemplated establishing an Indian barrier state in a portion of the reserve west of the Appalachian Mountains, bounded by the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Great Lakes. British officials aspired to establish such a state even after the region was assigned to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the American Revolutionary War, but abandoned their efforts in 1814 after losing military control of the region during the War of 1812.
Sycamore Shoals State Historic Area is a state park located in Elizabethton, in the U.S. state of Tennessee. The park consists of 70 acres (28.3 ha) situated along the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River, a National Historic Landmark where a series of events critical to the establishment of the states of Tennessee and Kentucky, and the settlement of the Trans-Appalachian frontier in general, took place. Along with the historic shoals, the park includes a visitor center and museum, the reconstructed Fort Watauga, the Carter House and Sabine Hill . For over a thousand years before the arrival of European explorers, Sycamore Shoals and adjacent lands had been inhabited by Native Americans. The first permanent European settlers arrived in 1770, and established the Watauga Association—one of the first written constitutional governments west of the Appalachian Mountains—in 1772. Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone negotiated the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals in 1775, which saw the sale of millions of acres of Cherokee lands in Kentucky and Tennessee and led to the building of the Wilderness Road. During the American Revolution, Sycamore Shoals was both the site of Fort Watauga, where part of a Cherokee invasion was thwarted in 1776, and the mustering ground for the Overmountain Men in 1780.
Peter Hackett was an American frontiersman.
Henry Skaggs was an American longhunter, explorer and pioneer, active primarily on the frontiers of Tennessee and Kentucky during the latter half of the 18th century. His career as an explorer began as early as 1761 as one of the so-called long hunters— men who undertook lengthy hunting expeditions into the Trans-Allegheny wilderness. In subsequent years, working as a land agent with Richard Henderson and Daniel Boone, he explored large parts of Middle Tennessee and Central Kentucky. Skaggs led a pursuit and failed attempt to apprehend America's first known serial killers, the Harpe Brothers in 1799.
Boone's Station may refer to a number of sites related to American frontiersman Daniel Boone (1734–1820):
