Finding Daniel Boone: His Last Days in Missouri & the Strange Fate of His Remains

by Ted Franklin Belue

Overview

Follow the final days of an American frontier icon as a historian examines what happened to him after he died.

Finding Daniel Boone is a unique tribute to America’s frontier hero and offers closure to the greatest of all his mysteries: where he was buried. Part biography, part historical travelogue, and eloquently narrated using fresh sources, rare forensic data, and new field interviews, this is more than just a search for a man’s bones. Fully re-creating Daniel’s lost world, noted historian and author Ted Franklin Belue journeys along the famous Pathfinder’s last trail, from Missouri and back to Kentucky, meeting a host of colorful characters. As little has been written about Boone’s western days, where he lived the longest, this work examines the legendary woodsman’s life as much as his death.

“With vivid writing, and ample historic documentation, Ted Franklin Belue invites readers on an incredible journey that introduces them to a new slant on an old story about one of the greatest American frontier heroes. Belue tirelessly re-creates Boone’s lost world and follows his last trail in the year of his death’s bicentennial, teasing us with a provocative question: Where does Daniel Boone rest, in Missouri or Kentucky?” —KYForward

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439671320
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Series:	American Legends
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	227
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Ted Franklin Belue is the author of The Hunters of Kentucky: A Narrative History of America’s First Far West and The Long Hunt: Death of the Buffalo East of the Mississippi and edited two Daniel Boone biographies. Belue is heavily published in trade and academic press, has served as consultant and commentator for the History Channel and has been an advisor for A&E, BBC and NBC; he also survived the French and Indian War as a Hollywood extra in The Last of the Mohicans. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, Lavina, and a horde of dogs, cats and guitars.

Table of Contents

Preface 13

A Selected Two-Hundred-Year Daniel Boone Postmortem Chronology 17

Acknowledgements 21

Part I Missouri, 1820-44

1 First Light, Tuesday, September 26, 1820 27

2 Crossing the Big Muddy into Boone's World 30

3 Where the Hunter Lived and Died 37

4 The Bed Stood in the N.E. Corner of the N.W. Room 44

5 Coffin in the Ballroom 52

6 On His Last Trail 59

7 Sitting Up with the Dead 67

8 News of His Decease Had Spread Rapidly 75

9 In the Heart of Boone Country 83

10 We Have His Heart and His Brain. And His Skin. 90

11 I Believe Grandfather and Grandmother Are Buried Here 98

Part II Kentucky, 1842-2020

12 Our City Is Without Burying Grounds 109

13 The Gentlemen from Kentucky Finally Carried Their Point 119

14 Desecrated to Gratify a Spasm of Kentucky Pride 126

15 The Skull of Boone Was Handled by the People Present 134

16 The Most August Funeral Solemnity Ever Observed in Kentucky 141

17 Not Withstanding All of Kentucky's Fine Promises, Nothing More Was Done 149

18 The Mortal Part of the Old Pioneer Still Sleeps in Missouri Soil 158

19 He Gave Me All Kinds of Hell 165

20 More Boone Skullduggery 173

21 Tales from the Morgue 182

22 He Analyzed His Brain 190

Epilogue 197

Bibliography 201

Index 215

About the Author 221