Rebecca Ann (Bryan) Boone (1739 - 1813)

Born 9 Jan 1739 in Winchester, Frederick, Virginia

Ancestors

Wife of Daniel Boone — married 14 Aug 1756 in Rowan, North Carolina

Descendants

Died 18 Mar 1813 at age 74 in St. Charles Township, St. Charles, Missouri, United States

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Rebecca (Bryan) Boone is a part of Kentucky history. Join: Kentucky Project Discuss: Kentucky

Rebecca (Bryan) Boone was part of a Southern Pioneer Family. Join: Southern Pioneers Project Discuss: southern_pioneers

Biography

Rebecca Bryan was an early American Pioneer. She is best remembered as the wife of famed American frontiersman Daniel Boone.

Born Rebecca Ann Bryan on January 9, 1739,^[1] in Winchester, Virginia.^[2] Rebecca's father was Joseph Bryan, and her mother died shortly after Rebecca's birth.^[3] Alice "Aylee" Linville, Rebecca's mother, was Joseph's second wife.^[4]

In 1748, at the age of 10, Rebecca Bryan moved with her Quaker grandparents, Morgan and Martha (Strode) Bryan, to the Yadkin River Valley in the backwoods of Rowan County, North Carolina,^[5] where she met and courted her neighbor Daniel Boone in 1753 and married three years later at the age of 17.

Daniel and Rebecca, married in 1756, were the parents of ten children:^[6]

• James Boone (May 3, 1757-1773)
• Israel Boone (January 25, 1759-1782)
• Susannah (Boone) Hays (November 20, 1760-1800)
• Jemima (Boone) Callaway (October 4, 1762-1834)^[7]
• Levina (Boone) Scholl (March 23, 1766-1802)
• Rebecca (Boone) Goe (May 26, 1768-1805)
• Daniel Morgan Boone (December 23, 1769-1839)
• Jesse Bryan Boone (May 23, 1773-1820)
• William Bryan Boone (June 20, 1775-1775)^[8][9]
• Nathan Boone (March 3, 1781-1856)

In addition to Daniel and Rebecca (Bryan) Boone's own ten children, the Boones raised eight other children: Daniel Boone's two young orphan nephews, who lived with them in North Carolina until the family left for Kentucky in 1773, and "the six motherless children of Rebecca's uncle James Bryan; they would grow up in the Boone household, and their children would think of Boone and Rebecca as grandparents."^[10]

Without any formal education, Rebecca was reputed to be an experienced community midwife, the family doctor, leather tanner, sharpshooter, and linen-maker, resourceful and independent in the isolated areas she and her large, combined family often found themselves. In the autumn of 1773, she came through the Cumberland Gap with her family and fifty others under the leadership of William Russell, though they were turned back by the violent resistance by Native Americans to British colonization west of the Allegheny Mountains.

In 1775 her husband brought the family to the Kentucky River where, on behalf of the Transylvania Company, he and Richard Henderson laid out Fort Boonesborough. In May 1778 she left Kentucky under a cloud of rumors that her husband, a captive of the Shawnee, had turned Tory. She returned to her parents' settlement in North Carolina with five of her children, leaving behind her daughter Jemima who by then had married. Her husband came back to his family in North Carolina and finally convinced her to leave again for Kentucky, this time with nearly 100 of their relatives and joined by the family of future President Abraham Lincoln (the president's grandfather, according to tradition). In September 1779, this emigration was the largest to date through the Cumberland Gap.

By late October 1779, they reached Fort Boonesborough but conditions were so bad that they left on Christmas Day, during what Kentuckians later called the "Hard Winter," to found a new settlement, Boone's Station, with 15 to 20 families on Boone's Creek about six miles northwest (near what is now Athens, Kentucky). By spring, she and her husband moved to a cabin several miles southwest on Marble Creek.

In 1781 she lived in a double cabin with five of her children still living at home, the six children of her widowed uncle James Bryan, as well as her daughter Susannah with her husband Will Hays with 2 to 3 children of their own, a household of almost 20 people. In 1783 she and her family moved where for the next few years she helped Daniel create a landing site at the mouth of Limestone Creek for flatboats coming down the Ohio River from Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania. They lived in a cabin built out of an old boat (on what is now Front Street in Maysville, Kentucky). She ran the tavern kitchen and oversaw the seven slaves they owned.

In 1787 Daniel was elected to the Virginia legislature as Bourbon County's representative, and he moved to Richmond, Virginia with Rebecca and their youngest child, leaving the tavern in the hands of their daughter Rebecca and husband Philip Goe. In 1788 they moved to Point Pleasant (now in West Virginia) in the Kanawha Valley, settling on the south side of the river almost opposite the mouth of Campbell's Creek.

In 1799 she and Daniel followed their youngest son Nathan to Spain's Alta Louisiana (Upper Louisiana, now Missouri, about 45 miles west/northwest of Saint Louis) in the Femme Osage Valley. Rebecca died there after a brief illness at the age of 74, on Mar 18 1813, at her daughter Jemima's home near the village of Charette (near present day Marthasville, Missouri) and was initially buried in the Old Bryan Family Cemetery there, on the bank of Tuque Creek overlooking the Missouri River near Marthasville, Missouri. In 1845 her remains (and those of her husband) were disinterred and reburied in the new Frankfort Cemetery in Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky. ^[11]

(bio by: William Bjornstad)

Find A Grave links

Daniel Boone (Find A Grave: Memorial #109) and Rebecca (Bryan) Boone (Find A Grave: Memorial #2340) had the following children:

• James Boone (1757 - 1773) (Find A Grave: Memorial #195061692)
• Israel Boone (1759 - 1782) (Find A Grave: Memorial #8319054)
• Susannah Boone Hays (1760 - 1800) (Find A Grave: Memorial #136401204)
• Jemima Boone Callaway (1762 - 1834) (Find A Grave: Memorial #8797950)
• Levina Boone Scholl (1766 - 1802) (Find A Grave: Memorial #208307889)
• Rebecca Boone Goe (1768 - 1805) (Find A Grave: Memorial #14556218)
• Daniel Morgan Boone (1769 - 1839) (Find A Grave: Memorial #6223)
• Jessie (Jesse) Bryan Boone (1773 - 1820) (Find A Grave: Memorial #13707012)
• William Bryan Boone (1775 - 1775) (Find A Grave: Memorial #158853777)
• Nathan Boone (1781 - 1856) (Find A Grave: Memorial #9481558)

Sources

1. ↑ Boone Association Timeline had this date; many sources show the date using the double style (1738/39)
2. ↑ most sources say Winchester, but many also (incorrectly) have Pennsylvania
3. ↑ Boone Association Timeline: "Her mother’s name is not known but has been stated without proof as Hester Simpson. Her mother died shortly after Rebecca was born."
4. ↑ See Joseph's profile and NSDAR record for details.
5. ↑ Boone Association Timeline
6. ↑ list edited August 15, 2013 based on names and dates given in the Boone Association Timeline. This profile also has a list of Find A Grave references.
7. ↑ Jemimah in Wikipedia:Rebecca_Boone Wikipedia
8. ↑ died shortly after
9. ↑ middle name Bryan from Boone-547
10. ↑ Rootsweb post quoting Daniel Boone by John Mack Faragher - the same source cited in Wikipedia as (incorrectly) saying "widowed brother" (Wikipedia accessed 8/15/2013). Her Uncle James Bryan had six children by his wife Rebecca (Enochs), who died in 1768 when their oldest child was 11.
11. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/2340/rebecca-ann-boone : accessed 12 December 2021), memorial page for Rebecca Ann Bryan Boone (9 Jan 1739–18 Mar 1813), Find A Grave: Memorial #2340, citing Frankfort Cemetery, Frankfort, Franklin County, Kentucky, USA ; Maintained by Find a Grave .

• Book: Daniel Boone and His Neighbors by Bryan & Barbara Broderick, Compiled from a Boone/Bryan family manuscript discovered by the author, descendant Bryan Broderick after the death of his sister in 2015. Author Bryan Broderick is the great-great grandson of Elijah Bryan: https://danielbooneandneighbors.com/
• https://www.kentuckyhistory.co/kentucky-people/rebeccaboone
• https://youtu.be/K2zNeWr_O5k A History of Rebecca Boone by Kentucky History Channel on youtube
• Boone Association Timeline; children of Daniel and Rebecca
• https://web.archive.org/web/20000815063706/http://www.genealogy.com/famousfolks/danielb/d0/i0000001.htm Daniel Boone Genealogy] Archived on Wayback Archive Machine
• Wikipedia entry for Rebecca Boone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Boone
• DAR record for Patriot Ancestor #http://services.dar.org/public/dar_research/search_adb/?action=full&p_id=A016264 A016264. (Rebecca's father)
• Notable Southern Families, Volume II, Compiled by Zella Armstrong, Member of the Tennessee Historical Commission. Published December 1942 by the Lookout Publishing Company, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Although most information in this seemingly reliable source matches other sources concerning Daniel Boone's family, it does clearly state that Daniel's wife Rebecca was Morgan's daughter, not granddaughter (which she is according to the Boone Association Timeline).

Availabe online from American Libraries.

Acknowledgments

• Thank you to David Moore for creating WikiTree profile Bryan-1452 through the import of The Moore Family Tree and then.ged on Mar 8, 2013.
• A WikiTree profile was created through the import of Stout - Trask - Cowan .ged on 19 April 2011.
• A WikiTree profile was created through the import of Redmond_Chambers(3).ged on 28 January 2011.