Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 24, 2025
The writer is indebted to N. Gammon, Esq., formerly of Jonesboro, now a citizen of Knoxville, for the following inscription, still to be seen upon a beech tree, standing in sight and east of the present stage-road, leading from Jonesboro to Blountsville, and in the valley of Boon's Creek, a tributary of Watauga:" D. Boon CillED A. BAR On Tree in ThE yEAR 1760
True, the story as to the carving is traditionary, but a man had as well question in that community the authenticity of "Holy Writ," as the fact that Boone carved the inscription on that tree. I am very respectfully The following copy of an original note of Boon's was sent me by Judge John N. Lea: July the 20th 1786.
The early battles of the Revolution were fought while Boon's comrades were laying the foundations of their commonwealth.
But hardly had they built their slight log-cabins, covered with brush or bark, and broken ground for the corn-planting, when some small Indian war-parties, including that which had attacked Boon's company, appeared among them. Several men were "killed and sculped," as Boon phrased it; and the panic among the rest was very great, insomuch that many forthwith set out to return.
Boon's expeditions into the edges of the wilderness whetted his appetite for the unknown. He had heard of great hunting-grounds in the far interior from a stray hunter and Indian trader, who had himself seen them, and on May 1, 1769, he left his home on the Yadkin "to wander through the wilderness of America in quest of the country of Kentucky."
Small parties of Indians were constantly lurking round the forts, to shoot down the men as they hunted or worked in the fields, and to carry off the women. There was a constant and monotonous succession of unimportant forays and skirmishes. One band of painted marauders carried off Boon's daughter.
Soon afterwards Boon's companion in his first short captivity was again surprised by the Indians, and this time was slain the first of the thousands of human beings with whose life-blood Kentucky was bought. The attack was entirely unprovoked. The Indians had wantonly shed the first blood.
Then he determined to escape, and formed his plan in concert with two other Kentuckians, who had been in Boon's party that was captured at the Blue Licks. They are very dramatic, and may possibly be true; the old pioneer would probably always remember even the words used on such occasions; but I hesitate to give them because McClung is so loose in his statements.
This, too, had happened, external to Boon's knowledge: the lady and the gentleman had witnessed, through the small diamond window-panes of the Jolly Cricketers' parlour, the passing-by of the two horsemen in pursuit of them; and the gentleman had stopped the chariot coming on some fifteen minutes later, but he did not do it at the instigation of the lady.
Haywood says they were named Crabtree; Putnam hints that they had lost a brother when Boon's party was attacked and his son killed; but the attack on Boon did not take place till over a year after this time. "Annals of Augusta," 21. On the eve of the Revolution, in 1774, the frontiersmen had planted themselves firmly among the Alleghanies.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking