My Father, Daniel Boone by Neal O. Hammon

My Father, Daniel Boone by Neal O. Hammon

Author:Neal O. Hammon [Hammon, Neal O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Memoir, Historical
ISBN: 9780813143996
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2013-04-06T04:00:00+00:00


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BACK TO KENTUCKY

Nathan Boone: While at school in Kentucky, I formed an attachment for the place, and more especially for the quietness and safety of the interior from Indian dangers. I wanted my parents to move back to Kentucky, and they agreed.

In the spring or summer of 1795, I came down the Ohio with my father and mother. We landed at Limestone and proceeded to Bourbon County, where we settled on a tract of unimproved land owned by my brother Daniel M. Boone. The little farm was on the waters of the Brushy Fork of Hinkston, about six miles east of Millersburg. We lived on land in the fork between Brushy Fork and Hinkston Creek in what is now Nicholas County. We were about twelve miles from the Lower Blue Licks.1

Our spring ran into Brushy Fork. We brought along provisions needed for the first year. My father and I killed a few deer, and we lived mostly on venison. We cleared ten acres and raised two crops there, in 1796 and 1797. We spent the first fall and winter preparing for the crops. In the fall of 1796, my father and I, along with his son-in-law Flanders Callaway and two persons named Maupin and White, started for a fall and winter’s bear hunt. We each took a horse, but we had no traps. In traveling to the settlement on the Big Sandy River, we killed but a single bear. On the way we passed the Burning Springs and then went on to the Big Sandy River, probably near the present Prestonsburg. We did not go far above where we first reached the river, and we certainly did not go up to what are now called the Louisa and Russell Forks.

On this hunt, Maupin and White were so discouraged, they soon returned to the settlements. They left just beyond the Burning Springs. There was a settlement at Young’s saltworks, with three or four families and a few work hands, and another small settlement of three or four families about four miles below. We reached the river at the lower settlement where we halted for a few days. Here we were told that there were some bear on a creek about nine miles down the river and on the east side. We went there and named it Greasy Creek; there we camped and killed some thirty or forty bears by New Year’s, when the bears went into hibernation.2

A man came into the settlement with a horse load of bear meat. He didn’t want to tell us where the bear were shot, but my father said he could follow his tracks anyway, so the man directed him to Greasy Creek. We saved the skins and smoked the meat. When spring came we made a canoe, and the men took the load of meat down the river. My father and I returned by land with the horses. The bear meat was unloaded at Limestone and carried to Bourbon County. Here we found



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