Boones at Linville Creek

Josiah Boone had land at Linville Creek from 1752. He bought land adjoining Thomas Bryan and Abraham Lincoln which had been purchased of Vanpelt. He sold land to Michael Shank and others in 1777. So the tight Boone clan was pretty familiar with the neighborhood.

Daniel Boone (1734-1820) was a frontiersman and hunter who became one of the first folk heroes of the United States. His family migrated from Pennsylvania to Rockingham, and from there to North Carolina. His family was good friends with the Bryans and Lincolns of Linville Creek. Frequently the subject of tall tales, Daniel lived in Kentucky and Tennessee, and later moved to Missouri where he lived near a son at Femme Osage. This was in St. Charles of Missouri in the early 1800s, the same place that Daniel Iman and his wife migrated from Mill Place Plantation on the South Branch.

It's said that Squire Boone and his family (Daniel was a young son) had known Lincolns and visited them on their way to North Carolina, spending a summer or perhaps a year on the way. Accounts vary and nobody is sure whether Lincolns had come first and enticed Boones to join them, of if Daniel had explored the area and provided some motivation for the Lincolns. Few take into account the fact that Daniel's uncle actually owned land after 1752, which might be about the time that the Lincolns and Boones were headed down to build what turned out to be long term relationships with the Bryans in the neighborhood. It's a complicated story. Daniel Boone some years down the road married Rebecca Bryan, the daughter of a Morgan Bryan who lived at Linville Creek right next to the Lincolns, and it's not clear where and when their paths were crossing. Researchers of Lincoln, Bryan, and Boone families show a great deal of interests in the many marriages across the lines of those families.

Josiah Boone, a son of George Boone IV also lived in Exeter of Berks County Pennsylvania where the Lincolns and Boones were Quaker settlers in a frontier area plagued with problems between settlers and Indians. In 1750, Josiah was condemned in his church for marrying outside of the faith (1) . In 1776 he married Hanna Hite, the daughter of Abraham living at Moorefield on the South Branch, and the grand-daughter of Joist Hite, Virginia's largest land owners (2). A son (jeremiah) of Josiah married Joyce Neville in 1787(3).

Josiah is thought to have moved with his cousin, Squire Boone to Kentucky. It may be though, that Josiah was at Linville first, and that he remained or returned there for many years. Though some accounts, for instance, have Josiah migrating with Lincolns in 1765, Boone had purchased land as early as 1752! (4) Lincoln deeds are dated near 1767-1768, a good number of years after 1752. Perhaps the Lincolns were visiting the Boones and Bryans rather than the other way around! Josiah may have moved out of the area, but if he did so, he held his land since he had land sales to Michael Shank and others fully twenty-five years later in 1777, which was during the revolutionary war. Josiah Boone may have held land and been out of the area. During the revolution he served in a Lincoln militia -- but not the one which Abraham commended from the Linville neighborhood, but from Lincoln county of North Carolina;-!

(1) Daniel's father's part of the family also had some run-ins with the church. In 1742 they needed to apologize after Daniel's sister Sarah married a non-Quaker while she was visibly pregnant. A second brother of Daniel married a "worldling" in 1747, triggering the family's expulsion from the Quakers. By 1750, the Squire Boone's had sold their land and were ready to leave.

(2) George Washington stayed with Abraham and had him serve as guide on his post-presidency tour through Virginia. Hite rode with him down through the South Branch toward Fort Seybert and showed him the way to get through Brock's Gap. George Washington rode an old Indian trail and passed the Bryan home.

(3) She was the daughter of James Neville, whose brother Joseph Neville was a Major during the revolution and a member of conventions of 1775 and 1776 and had moved to Moorefield in 1762. It was either he or his son Joseph who was the surveyor and source of land purchases for Christian Iman on the South Branch.

(4) Though no deeds have been found (many deeds in the area were burned during the War of 1812 and the Civil War), deeds that are available for neighbors from that date define properties as adjoining that of Joshiah Boone.