The following are abbreviated versions of some of the stories that appeared in the recent issue of Compass, the quarterly newsletter that is distributed to members of The Boone Society, Inc. Contact the Society if you have stories you would like to contribute to Compass.

The next Boone Family Reunion will be held in Winston-Salem, N.C., June 21-23, 2000.

A full description of the reunion activities will be in the January issue of Compass, but rest assured our itinerary will include an opportunity to pay our respects at the graves of Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone.

That issue also will include the Society registration form.

Reunion activities will be conducted at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in downtown Winston-Salem, and some details about the hotel are in this issue. As always, members are responsible for their own room reservations. A block of rooms that should be large enough to handle all delegates is on hold for us until the spring, still we encourage attendees to register as soon as they can.

Our selection of North Carolina as next year’s reunion site was in response to a request by a majority of delegates to the 1996 reunion. The natural beauty of the region and its historical significance to the Boone family were underscored by members.

While board members are arranging speakers and the tour itinerary, volunteers still are needed for other details.

For help in planning your trip to the reunion, be sure to check the Winston-Salem Convention and Visitors Bureau Web site, which has maps, listings of attractions and other useful information.

The Adam’s Mark Hotel’s Web site.

Delegates to Boone Reunion 2000 will be impressed by the gracious beauty of the Adam’s Mark Hotel and the easy access to Winston-Salem from anywhere in the country.

The hotel has 605 guest rooms with such superb amenities as 24-hour room service, and many guest services. It has 70,000 sq. ft. of meeting space, including three ballrooms, a health club, glass enclosed heated pool with outdoor sun deck, and a dry sauna.

For dining and entertainment, Adam’s Mark has the Trattoria Carolina Italian restaurant serving three meals daily, the Cherry Street Bar and Players Sports Bar.

It is within walking distance of shopping and entertainment and 20 minutes from Piedmont Triad International Airport.

The Society’s prearranged daily rates are $79 for the Standard Double and $69 for the Deluxe King. Members can reserve at these rates until mid-May.

When Daniel Boone moved out of Fort Boonesborough in the late 1770s, he didn’t go far, only about six miles north into Fayette County, to a place called Boone’s Station.

More than a dozen Boone families lived at Boone’s Station at various times, including his son, Israel, nephew, Thomas, and brother and sister-in-law Samuel and Sarah Day Boone, who are thought to be buried on the site.

For five weeks last summer, a team of diggers from the University of Kentucky excavated several grids at the Boone Station State Historic Site in hopes of finding artifacts.

They found a jew’s harp, nails, buttons, beads, pieces of broken pottery, marbles, utensil handles and part of a pair of scissors. Cut gemstones have been found at the site, suggesting some affluence, and a 1740s English penny was found at the site a few years ago.

Boone’s Station now is owned by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which may restore it.

Thought for the day

It is a noble faculty of ours which enables us to collect our thoughts, our sympathies and our happiness with what is distant in place or times–to hold communion with our ancestors. We become their contemporaries, live the lives they lived, endure what they endured and partake of the rewards which they enjoyed. — Daniel Webster

Letter from Europe weighs theories of family origins

“I was surprised to find a Boone family home page. I belong to the Dutch branch of the family, mostly in Zoetermeer, a new town near The Hague, Holland. The name Boone is very common in Flanders, Belgium, and in the Zeeland Isles in the Netherlands.

“Most members of the family have an uncommon combination of dark hair and blue eyes, probably Celtic influence, as do the people in Bretagne, France.

“I wonder whether your George I originally came from Holland? Look at the Dutch pronunciation of ‘Joris.’ The reason George moved to England might have been his faith. From 1572 to 1648 the Dutch revolted against the Spanish rulers and had one of the first republics in Europe. The Dutch mostly were of protestant faith. In Zeeland only a few communities held the Roman Catholic faith.

“The Dutch linguist Meertens supposed that the name ‘Boone’ originally came from the saint Boniface, who had visited the Low countries. It had been used like Eustacius Boenensz (son of Boone). We from the Dutch branch pronounce our name like the German sound of ‘Bohn.’ In the Middle Ages the Dutch wrote an ‘e’ for the longer sound of ‘o.’ So ‘Boenensz’ sounds like ‘bones’ in English. In the Middle Ages the languages started to differ. In Germany the name is written ‘Boehne.’ In the Dutch province of Limburg near the German border the name is written ‘Beunen’ and sounds the same in German.

“You can find Boones everywhere. To our surprise we also found a Boone in Ainay-sur-Audon in Normandie, France. He owns a restaurant, and descended from a Flemish (Belgian) family that fled to France in WWI. Did you know that when the French writer Victor Hugo gave a meal in honour of the publication of ‘Les Miserables,’ a Flemish journalist from Gent named Boone was among the invitees?”

Izaak Boone, Voorburg, The Netherlands

Queries

Granderson appears as a given name for at least two Boone descendants: (1) Granderson Pennington (4/22 1811 Barren Co., Ky.-10/30 1873 Warren Co., Tenn.) (Joshua P. Pennington and Mary Gist and grandson of Hannah Boone (sister of Col. Daniel) and Richard Pennington); and (2) Granderson Wilson (12/25 1822 -?) (James B. Wilson and unknown first wife, and grandson of Jesse Wilson and Rachel Boone, dau of Jonathan, son of Col. Daniel’s brother, Israel). Has it appeared in other lines? Have information concerning Granderson/Boone connections? Susan A. Henderson, 555 Ash Street, Winnetka IL 60093 sahenders@aol.com

Parents of Ann Elizabeth Boone (8/26 1820-12/1 1892)? m Thomas McIlvain (1820-1863) on 3/28 1839, m2 (?) Hart. Lived in Brown/Johnson Cos., Ind. Douglas C. Fraker, PO Box 307, Franklin, Ind. 46131.

Children of Ernest Eugene Boone b 1875 (Theodore Boone b 11/10/1844 & Martha Thompson). Arlene Buschert, 3636 Hulsey SE, Salem, Ore. 97302. edwbusch@ open.org

The Boones, Bryans and Grants, all immigrating from North Carolina to Kentucky, were intermarried in several lines.

In 1865, Mrs. Joseph Winston, Sarah, was a woman with a particularly retentive memory, and she dictated:

My mother often described to us children how they came across the mountains from North Carolina to Kentucky, in the month of November 1779. The station had been built by the Bryans in the spring before, and they went back to the Yadkin to bring out their families in the fall. I remember perfectly all that she told us about it. She came in company with the Bryans and some others. The immigrants at that day travelled in companies, in order to protect themselves against the Indians. They reached Kentucky river after a tedious journey through the wilderness from Cumberland Gap, and halted awhile at Boonsboro. Then they set forward again from Bryan’s Station, and when on the last day’s journey, and not far from Bryan’s, my mother, then a little girl of four years of age, rode behind one of her uncles. He was in advance and pushed on rapidly to the fort and entered it, she jumping from the horse onto a stump. She was, she said, thereby, the first female to enter Bryan’s Station.

Boone Reunions have a history

The Boone Family Reunion next June in Winston-Salem, N.C. will be our third biennial event. In 1996 the reunion was held in St. Louis, Mo., and in 1998 we met in Lexington, Ky.

Delegates voted to formalize our association as The Boone Society at the 1996 reunion, and they unanimously ratified the Society’s bylaws at the 1998 Convention of Boonesborough.

Society officers are proud of their accomplishments in such a short period, including achieving I.R.S. non-profit approval. They expect delegates to Winston-Salem will come armed with additional ideas about how we can be an effective genealogical society.

A reminder—we work best when we’re all involved. The present board of directors wants to see many candidates for the board of directors election next spring, in which all eight seats will be open.

Undaunted by Oregon thunder showers on Aug. 7 we intrepid Boones trudged down the slippery bank to the waters’ edge, climbed aboard the river boat to experience our ancestors’ method of transportation on the Willamette River.

As we swung out into the current, we passed the 1846 Donation Land Claims of Alphonso Boone and his son Jesse who began operating a ferry across the river. Adjacent was the claim of Chloe Boone and her husband, Gov. George Law Curry.

Beginning in the 1850s, steamboats carried passengers and goods from Oregon City to Salem, Oregon’s capital. Captain Alphonso Boone, Jr. carried on the family tradition of rivermen. It was easy to imagine the Boone’s Ferry crossing back and forth to speed the journey of settlers going north and south.

Boone’s Ferry Days are held each year on the first Saturday of August. Contact The Boone Society for additional information.

Coming attractions

In the January issue: two directors of the Society are involved in a feature film about the Revolution, and another spent his summer boosting Boone appreciation in Missouri; candidates are invited for the Society board of directors election.

Setting the record straight
Israel Boone descendants debated

This story is condensed from a letter member Susan Henderson sent to a genealogy newsletter whose members are affected by conflicting claims about the family of a son of Israel Boone.

I was recently appalled to read that Jonathan Boone, son of Israel Boone, had four wives and two sets of children. That perpetrates a mistake made in an old draft article on “Descendants of ‘Irish John’ Alford” alleging that the John Boone who married Elizabeth Alford was a son of Israel Boone. Impossible!

1. Israel Boone’s son Jonathan died by Oct. 1826 when his estate was probated in Burke Co., N. C. Miles S. Philbeck Jr., Burke Co., N. C.Surviving Will and Probate Records, #56. Irish John applied for a pension in Monroe Co., Va., seven years later

2. Irish John Boone, apparently was born ca. 1755 in York Co., Penn.; died July 17, 1835; enlisted, 1778, York Co., Penn., under Capt. Spangler, served about two years; mar. Elizabeth Alford by published bans, 1787/8, Augusta Co., Va.; applied for pension, Aug. 20, 1833, in Monroe Co.; certificate issued, Nov. 21, 1833.

Irish John said in his pension application that he was born in, enlisted in and returned to York Co., Pa. His family likely resided in there. The pension application does not mention any time when Irish John was in North Carolina except during the war. Jonathan appears often in North Carolina records during the period when Irish John was living in Virginia. Jonathan’s excessive drinking is in the Baptist church minutes, resulting in an unusually large number of preserved records of his whereabouts.

3. They had different children.

Bad research seems to have a life of its own, and I would like to nip the Israel-as-father-of-Irish-John thing in the bud.

Settlers’ bibliography

Concluding the bibliographic references of “Early Settlers of Ft. Boonesborough,” the 1975 study of people living in or near the fort by H. Thomas Tudor, Richmond, Ky., that we began in the July issue:

• Draper Mss., Series “CC,” Vol. 11, p. 138
• Boonesborough, George W. Ranck, 1901
• Old Homes and Landmarks of Clark County, Kentucky, by Kathryn Owens, 1967
• Wilcoxen and Allied Families, Dorothy Ford Wulfeck, 1958
• The Life and Travels of Rev. William B. Landrum, 1878, Southern Methodist Publishing Co., p. 10
• Daniel Boone, Master of the Wilderness, John Bakeless, 1939
• Seedtime on the Cumberland, Harriet Simpson Arnow, 1960
• Hennings Statutes of Virginia
• War Record of John Hamlin, Revolutionary War Claim #26543
• Filson Club Quarterly, Vol. 20, #4, Oct. 1946, p. 308
• Pension Application #W9366 for Revolutionary War service
• 1796 Tax Records, Madison Co., Ky.
• Pension Application #W3594, Benjamin Proctor, for Revolutionary War service
• Register of Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 3, No. 9, Sept. 1905, pp. 81-92
• Portrait and Bibliographical Album of McLean Co., Ill., Chicago, Chapman Bros., 1887
• Kentucky’s Last Frontier, Henry P. Scalf, 1966, pp. 138, 236
• Gravestone near Stanford, Ky.
• Transylvania Marker near Boonesborough
• Notes on the Family of Page and Ann Portwood, Louis Durmyer, Wilmington, Del., 1949
• Miller Unbound Manuscript, Eastern Kentucky University Library
• Draper Mss., State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Vol. II & 11CC 11-15 (John Shane interview of 1843).

Chester Harding print repro is partially tax-deductible

The July issue mentioned that Chester Harding’s full-length portrait of Daniel Boone has been recreated by Ted Franklin Belue and artist David Wright.

Part of the $260 price ($50) is tax-deductible as a charitable donation to The Boone Society, Inc. (Tennessee residents add 8.25% sales tax.)

The 10-in. x 15-in. hand-colored, hand-numbered print is available from:
Col. Daniel Boone Print
The Boone Society, Inc.
23 Nord Circle Rd.
North Oaks, MN 55127

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