Bill Robinson
Daniel Boone, the famed frontiersman who erected a fort on the Kentucky River and led numerous settlers to the Bluegrass region, turned 275 on Monday.
Eastern Kentucky University and the Madison County Historical Society marked the anniversary of this birth by unveiling a bronze plaque attached to the pedestal of the Boone statue on University Drive.
The plaque was the prototype for those embedded into the sidewalk around the Madison County Courthouse for the county’s Heritage Walk of Fame, said Charles Hay of the historical society.
Boone’s plaque is the walk’s first. Both it and the prototype list his birth and death years, 1734 and 1820.
The statue, which has stood guard in front of the Keen Johnson Building since May 1, 1967, is a replica of one erected in Louisville’s Cherokee Park in 1906, the same year the university was founded, said Dr. Tom Appleton, EKU history professor.
A native of Tennessee with ancestors from Kentucky, Appleton said he began to study Boone’s life after coming to the Bluegrass state and making Kentucky history his life’s work.
At first, Appleton said he was skeptical of the regard that Kentuckians have for Boone.
“I thought, no one could be that interesting or that significant,” he said. After some serious study, however, “I concluded that Boone is indeed worthy of our esteem.”
Boone became a folk hero after writer John Filson published his “Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone.” The English poet Lord Byron devoted seven stanzas of his long poem “Don Juan” to Boone.
Despite his fame and accomplishments, Appleton said Boone was noted for his modesty, telling a visitor late in life, “I have been but a common man.”
Justifiably known for bravery, Boone “was not one to seek trouble, but was quick to come to the aid of others.”
Boone never was discouraged, Appleton said, even after American Indians held him prisoner, killed two of his sons and took the furs he had accumulated during a year of trapping in Kentucky.
He also was never bitter, even after Kentucky courts ordered him to forfeit all his property in the state.
Appleton called Boone’s determination as a prisoner an inspiration to the Harrodsburg soldiers who were mistreated as prisoners of war by the Japanese during World War II.
Many myths are associated with Boone, said Dr. Doug Whitlock, EKU president.
He never wore a coon skin cap, although the statue depicts him wearing one, and the actor Fess Parker famously wore one as he played Boone in a television series.
“If Boone didn’t wear a coonskin cap, he should have,” Whitlock said. “It looks so good on him.”
Soon after Boone’s statue was placed on campus, students began to rub the boot on its left foot prior to final exams for good luck, the president said.
“I’ve rubbed it many times myself,” he said.
Whenever he drives down Big Hill into Madison County, Whitlock said he tries to envision the image seen by settlers as Boone led them to Fort Boonesborough.
Boone left the relative comfort of his home in Pennsylvania for the challenges of the frontier, Whitlock said.
“As we face our challenges,” Whitlock told the university community, “we will have to leave our comfort zone and move into a world that will be quite different.”
The ceremony was attended by two Boone descendants, Connie Newman Leach of Richmond, and her son, William D. Leach, district judge for Estill, Lee and Owsley counties.
Connie Leach, who taught for 35 years at Daniel Boone Elementary School and now supervises student teachers for EKU, said her family did not know of their famous ancestor until her brother began genealogical research as a high school student.
He began investigating the family history as part of a history assignment, Leach said. After discovering the gravestone of a great aunt in Owsley County listed her as a Boone descendant, her brother was skeptical.
“Many people claim to be descended from Daniel Boone, and no one in our family had ever mentioned it,” Leach said. “I don’t think my father ever knew.”
Legal records, however, proved the Newmans were descended from Levinia Boone, one of only two Boone children to remain in Kentucky.
When her students at the school named for him refused to believe she was descended from Daniel Boone, Leach said she would show them her certificate from the Society of Boonesborough.
“Levinia Boone married a man named Scholl, and her daughter Leah married a John Newman of Clark County, my great-grandfather,” Leach said. “They settled in Owsley County.”
Like Boone, the Newmans probably preferred to live away from heavily settled areas, she said.
As a student at EKU in the late 1960s, Leach said she witnessed the erection of the Boone statue.
“I could look out my window over there,” she said, pointing to Burnam Hall dormitory, “and see it going up.”
Bill Robinson can be reached at brobinson@richmondregister.com or at 624-6622.
