Squire Boone, father of American frontiersman Daniel Boone, was baptised in St Disen’s Church on Christmas Day 1696. He emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1713 to join William Penn’s colony of dissenters. His parents, George and Mary Boone followed in 1717. Squire Boone married Sarah Morgan, whose family were Quakers from Wales, in 1720. Their married life began in Towamencin Township, Pennsylvania but they moved in 1731 to the Oley Valley and it was here that Daniel was born in 1734, the sixth of eleven children. The log cabin in which they lived is still partly preserved as the Daniel Boone Homestead.
Daniel Boone (1734-1820) is one of America’s earliest and greatest folk heroes. He was a keen huntsman, explorer, pioneer and trail blazer who led the way through the Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian Mountains into the land that is now Kentucky. There he founded Boonesborough, one of the earliest English-speaking settlements on that side of the Appalachians. By the end of the 18th century more than 200,000 European migrants had followed in his path to settle in Kentucky and Virginia.
Daniel Boone by Chester Harding, 1820
Back in St Disen’s Church is a memorial and flags presented by the descendants of Daniel Boone and the Society of Boonesborough in 1977.
Incidently, next to the flags by the Boone memorial is a larger Stars and Stripes which was flown above the Capitol Building in Washington in 1976 to commemorate the bicentenary of American Independence. A copy of a letter signed by Gerald Ford is framed below it.
