Nathaniel Boone

Notes:

Document owned by the Boone Society:

(4.) 1696 Squire ye son of George Boone baptized December ye 25th From James Boone Genealogy: “SQUIRE BOONE (son of George & Mary Boone) was born on the Fourth Day of the Week, between 11 & 12 in the Forenoon, on the 25 November 1696.”

Squire married Sarah Morgan 23 July 1720 at the Gwynned Meeting of Quakers, Berks Co, Pennsylvania. Squire died 2 January 1765 and Sarah died 1777; both buried at Mocksville, North Carolina.

Daniel Boone's father (frontiersman) Squire Boone's significance to this genealogy, however, is due to his influence upon his nephew John Boone in settling in North Carolina. On April 11, 1750, Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone sold their land in Berks County and left with their family, including their sixteen-year-old son Daniel, who was destined to become the most celebrated frontiersman in America. The Boones stopped for a year or more in Linville Creek, six miles north of Harrisonburg, Virginia. It was not until the late autumn of 1751, or some time in 1752, that Squire Boone and his party reached the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina. For his first home site Squire chose a hill overlooking the Yadkin River in the area which soon became a part of Rowan County but which is now in Davidson County. At the first County Court held in Salisbury in June, 1753, Squire Boone was listed as one of the fourteen justices. His residence was given as Boone's Ford. Later in that year, on December 29, Squire acquired land on the western side of the Yadkin River in what is now Davie County, but Rowan County at that time. The grant was for 640 acres on Bear Creek from the Earl of Granville.

On 11 Apr 1750, Squire and Sarah conveyed their 158 acre farm in Exeter to William Maugridge and started out for North Carolina. They did not buy land in NC until Dec 1753, and it is likely that they stopped in Virgina for 2 years.

In 1759, due to Indian outbreaks, and the "French stirring up trouble", the Boone's moved again. They moved to Georgetown, District of Columbia. In 1762, the Boone's returned to the Yadkin Valley, NC. Squire and Sarah remained there until their deaths. They are buried in Joppa Cemetery in Mocksville, Davie Co NC.

They arrived in southeastern Pennsylvania, following an established Quaker migration pattern from England. Squire Boone (1696-1765)--Squire his given name, and not an honorific title--left Devonshire for America in 1713. Squire Boone, traveling shipboard as cabin boy, had been sent with his brother and sister by their father, George Boone, to help decide if the entire family should emigrate. The Boones had contacts with the members of the Society of Friends who lived in Abington (in present-day Montgomery County), where they first settled, and from which they sent favorable reports back home. The remaining Boones arrived four years later, and the family moved ten miles northwest to Gwynedd.

In Gwynedd, Squire Boone met Sarah Morgan (1700-1777), an American-born woman of Welsh Quaker background. They married in 1720 and lived first in Gwynedd, then in Chalfont, Bucks County, before they purchased two hundred and fifty acres in the Oley Valley in 1730. (The valley was part of Philadelphia County until 1752, when it became part of the new Berks County.) His father and brothers had already relocated to the area and enjoyed prominence in business, government, and the Exeter Friends Meeting.

Squire Boone was primarily a tradesman. Following in his father's footsteps as a weaver, he set up five looms. He also worked as a blacksmith and gunsmith. The Boones farmed their new land in Oley as well. Although the red sandstone soil in this southern part of the valley did not yield the bounty that the lime-based northern portion did, successful farming productive enough to feed a growing family was certainly possible. With the help of family and friends, Squire built a one-and-a-half story log house with a stone "ender" wall on one side. The basement housed an integral springhouse typical of the early eighteenth century, and the cool, flowing water was useful for drinking, washing, cooking, and cold storage. The cellar's archway supported the fireplace above. It was in this house that Daniel Boone, the sixth of Squire and Rebecca's eleven children, was born on October 22, 1734 (according to the Old Style calendar, which today, by the modern calendar, is November 2).

In the 1740s, relations between Squire Boone and the Friends of Exeter Meeting grew strained. In 1742, Daniel's sister Sarah married "out of Meeting" by wedding a German, John Wilcoxen. Squire and his wife confessed that their mistake had been letting the couple keep company in the first place, but that they had found themselves faced with an unhappy dilemma when they discovered that pair had been "too conversant." The suspicion later shown to be true, was that the young Sarah was pregnant at the time of the marriage.

Despite their work to be more mindful of their children's behavior, the Boones' eldest son, Israel, also married a "worldling" in 1747. Called to account again, Squire resisted the communal discipline the Society of Friends attempted to impose, insisting that Israel could choose to marry whomever he wished. In 1748, the Exeter Friends Meeting expelled Squire; his wife remained a member in good standing.

Squire had had enough of Pennsylvania. Besides his trouble with the Quakers, his land--with no crop rotation or fertilization--was rapidly declining in productivity. Land was cheaper in the South. In 1750, the Boone family left the Oley Valley of Pennsylvania for the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. At the age of fifteen-and-a-half, Daniel's Pennsylvanian days were ending but the imprint they had made upon him was deep and lasting. This influence would extend throughout and beyond the trans-Appalachian West as the Berks County youth became the leader of the Kentucky pioneers. Boone only returned to the area of his childhood twice, in 1781 and 1787, to visit relatives.

"The Boones' move was part of a migration of thousands of families down the Shenandoah Valley to North Carolina," says Lewars. "In the eighteenth century, people did not settle down permanently till they found the best possible place. Land was less expensive in the South; Squire Boone paid three shillings for one square mile in North Carolina, while here, in 1730, it had cost ninety pounds for several hundred acres. As Pennsylvanians moved down though western Maryland and Virginia and the Carolinas, they greatly influenced material culture, architecture, language, and religion. They took things with them form their 'cultural hearth' in southeastern Pennsylvania, as historians refer to it. A distinct culture, including decorative arts, was incubated here. It spread as settlers made their way across the country. By looking at material culture remnants--bank barns, furniture, and so on, you can trace the travels and influence of Pennsylvanians in the eighteenth century."

William Maugridge, a Philadelphia shipwright and house builder--related to the Boones although not himself a Quaker--purchased a portion of Squire Boone's Pennsylvania property in 1750. Historians are not completely certain if Maugridge expanded the house, or if the large, two-story stone section of the present house fronted by the porch had been built by the Boones. "There's no specific documentation," says Lewars, "but I believe that if William Maugridge had built the stone house anew he would have built a more tasteful, stylish house. In Philadelphia, he was a vestryman of Christ Church; he know Benjamin Franklin and other movers and shakers. The stone portion of the Boone house is a traditional country house, not a fashionable structure. I think William Maugridge was a man who valued pretension; perhaps he was aspiring to a status like the minor country gentry. Maugridge was active in the church; he owned two slaves. He became a Berks County judge in 1752; maybe some of this influential friends in Philadelphia helped him." During Maugridge residency, the house reflected English features including a bible closet and the typical "hall and parlor" arrangement of rooms.

Found at: http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/ppet/daniel_boone/page1.asp?secid=31

Squire married Sarah Morgan on 23 Sep 1720 in , Berks, Pennsylvania, USA. Sarah was born on 23 Sep 1700 in , Berks, Pennsylvania, USA; died on 1 Jan 1777 in , Rowan, North Carolina, USA; was buried in Mocksville, Davie, North Carolina, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Residence: , Chester, Pennsylvania, USA