Life of Daniel Boone, The Great Western Hunter and Pioneer | Page 6

marries Rebecca
Bryan--His farmer life in North Carolina--State of the
country--Political troubles foreshadowed--Illegal fees and
taxes--Probable effect of this state of things on Boone's mind--Signs of
movement.
When Daniel Boone was still a youth, his father emigrated to North
Carolina. The precise date of this removal of the family residence is not
known. Mr. Peck, an excellent authority, says it took place when
Daniel was about eighteen years old. This would make it about the year
1752.
The new residence of Squire Boone, Daniel's father, was near Holman's
Ford, on the Yadkin River, about eight miles from Wilkesboro'. The
fact of the great backwoodsman having passed many years of his life
there is still remembered with pride by the inhabitants of that region.
The capital of Watauga County, which was formed in 1849, is named
Boone, in honor of Daniel Boone. The historian of North Carolina[6] is
disposed to claim him as a son of the State. He says: "In North Carolina
Daniel Boone was reared. Here his youthful days were spent; and here
that bold spirit was trained, which so fearlessly encountered the perils
through which he passed in after life. His fame is part of her property,

and she has inscribed his name on a town in the region where his youth
was spent."
"The character of Boone is so peculiar," says Mr. Wheeler, "that it
marks the age in which he lived; and his name is celebrated in the
verses of the immortal Byron:"
"Of all men-- Who passes for in life and death most lucky, Of the great
names which in our faces stare, Is Daniel Boone, backwoodsman of
Kentucky."
* * * * *
"Crime came not near him--she is not the child Of Solitude. Health
shrank not from him, for Her home is in the rarely-trodden wild."
* * * * *
"And tall and strong and swift of foot are they, Beyond the dwarfing
city's pale abortions, Because their thoughts had never been the prey Of
care or gain; the green woods were their portions: No sinking spirits
told them they grew gray, No fashions made them apes of her
distortions. Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles, Though very
true, were not yet used for trifles."
"Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers, And cheerfulness the
handmaid of their toil. Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers;
Corruption could not make their hearts her soil; The lust which stings,
the splendor which encumbers, With the free foresters divide no spoil;
Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes Of this unsighing people of the
woods.'"
We quote these beautiful lines, because they so aptly and forcibly
describe the peculiar character of Boone; and to a certain extent, as Mr.
Wheeler intimates, his character was that of his times and of his
associates.
It was during the residence of the family on the banks of the Yadkin,

that Boone formed the acquaintance of Rebecca Bryan, whom he
married.[7] The marriage appears, by comparison of dates, to have
taken place in the year 1755. "One almost regrets," says Mr. Peck, "to
spoil so beautiful a romance, as that which has had such extensive
circulation in the various 'Lives of Boone,' and which represents him as
mistaking the bright eyes of this young lady, in the dark, for those of a
deer; a mistake that nearly proved fatal from the unerring rifle of the
young hunter. Yet in truth, we are bound to say, that no such mistake
ever happened. Our backwoods swains never make such mistakes."
The next five years after his marriage, Daniel Boone passed in the quiet
pursuits of a farmer's life, varied occasionally by hunting excursions in
the woods. The most quiet and careless of the citizens of North
Carolina were not unobservant, however, of the political aspect of the
times. During this period the people, by their representatives in the
Legislature, began that opposition to the Royal authority, which was in
after years to signalize North Carolina as one of the leading Colonies in
the Revolutionary struggle.
The newly-appointed Royal Governor, Arthur Dobbs, arrived at
Newbern in the autumn of 1754. "Governor Dobbs's administration of
ten years," says the historian Wheeler, "was a continued contest
between himself and the Legislature, on matters frivolous and
unimportant. A high-toned temper for Royal prerogatives on his part,
and an indomitable resistance of the Colonists ... The people were
much oppressed by Lord Grenville's agents. They seized Corbin, his
agent, who lived below Edenton, and brought him to Enfield, where he
was compelled to give bond and security to produce his books and
disgorge his illegal fees."
This matter of illegal fees was part of a system of oppression, kindred
to the famous Stamp Act--a system which was destined to grow more
and