Daniel Boone (November 2, 1734 [O.S. October 22] - September 26, 1820) was an American pioneer, explorer, woodsman, and frontiersman, whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now Kentucky, which was then part of Virginia but on the other side of the mountains from the settled areas. As a young adult, Boone supplemented his farm income by hunting and trapping game, and selling their pelts in the fur market. Through this occupational interest, Boone first learned the easy routes to the area.

Daniel Boone was of English and Welsh ancestry. Because the Gregorian calendar was adopted during his lifetime, Boone's birth date is sometimes given as November 2, 1734 (the "New Style" date), although Boone used the October date. The Boone family belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, called "Quakers", and were persecuted in England for their dissenting beliefs. Daniel's father, Squire (his first name, not a title) Boone (1696-1765) emigrated from the small town of Bradninch, Devon (near Exeter) to Pennsylvania in 1713, to join William Penn's colony of dissenters. Squire Boone's parents, George Boone III and Mary Maugridge, followed their son to Pennsylvania in 1717, and in 1720 built a log cabin at Boonecroft.  In 1720, Squire Boone, who worked primarily as a weaver and a blacksmith, married Sarah Morgan (1700-77). Sarah's family were Quakers from Wales, and had settled in 1708 in the area which became Towamencin Township of Montgomery County. In 1731, the Boones moved to Exeter Township in the Oley Valley of Berks County, near the modern city of Reading. There they built a log cabin, partially preserved today as the Daniel Boone Homestead. Daniel Boone was born there, November 2, 1734, the sixth of eleven children. The Daniel Boone Homestead is just four miles from the Mordecai Lincoln House, making the Squire Boone family neighbors of Mordecai Lincoln, the great, great grandfather of future President Abraham Lincoln. Mordecai's son, also named Abraham, married Ann Boone, a first cousin of Daniel.  Daniel Boone spent his early years on what was then the edge of the frontier. Several Lenape Indian villages were nearby. The pacifist Pennsylvania Quakers had good relations with the Native Americans, but the steady growth of the white population compelled many Indians to move further west. Boone was given his first rifle at the age of 12. He learned to hunt from both local settlers and the Lenape. Folk tales have often emphasized Boone's skills as a hunter. In one story, the young Boone was hunting in the woods with some other boys, when the howl of a panther scattered all but Boone. He calmly cocked his rifle and shot the predator through the heart just as it leaped at him. The validity of this claim is contested, but the story was told so often that it became part of his popular image.  In Boone's youth, his family became a source of controversy in the local Quaker community when two of the oldest children married outside the endogamous community, in present-day Lower Gwynedd Township, Pennsylvania. In 1742, Boone's parents were compelled to publicly apologize after their eldest child, Sarah, married John Willcockson, a "worldling" (non-Quaker). Because the young couple had "kept company", they were considered "married without benefit of clergy". When the Boones' oldest son Israel married a "worldling" in 1747, Squire Boone stood by him. Both men were expelled from the Quakers; Boone's wife continued to attend monthly meetings with their younger children.

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