We Are Also Boones, Part 4

by Glenn N. Holliman

(Source for this posting is largely from In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone by Randell Jones. Photos taken from the work published by John J. Blair, Winston-Salem, NC. There is no commercial intent to using these photos; education for family only.)

In our last posting, George Boone moved his family from Devonshire, England to Philadelphia. His many children began to marry, including Squire Boone to Sarah Morgan. This couple had 11 children, the first being Sarah Boone, who in 1743 married outside the Quaker faith to John Wilcoxson. Sarah and John were my generation's 6th great grandparents.

George Boone (my generation's 8th great grandfather) donated land in Oley, Pennsylvania for a log meeting house for the Society of Friends (Quakers) (photo left). Later, Oley was divided into two parts, with the southern portion named Exeter, after the English town where George Boone had sold woven goods a quarter century earlier.

The historian Randell Jones notes the stone in front of the 1759 Quaker Meeting House commemorates both the Boone and Lincoln families. A niece of Squire Boone married one Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of the future president. This Lincoln would help Daniel Boone blaze the Cumberland Gap Trail. If my analysis is correct then our family (all those of you reading this) share common great grandparents with the Great Emancipator. How about that?! I suppose such makes Ole Abe a distant cousin.

Squire Boone's cabin was only 1.5 miles from the Meeting House about 10 miles east of Reading, Pennsylvania in the Birdsboro area. Below is the stone cellar above which my 7th great grandfather built a log house for his family.

The Boone Homestead of our 7th and 6th great grandparents is operated by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The site is open to visitors and details can be found at http://www.danielboonehomestead.org/. Another excellent site to review our genealogy is http://www.boonesociety.org/. I recently joined the Boone Society and have received much family information from a well-researched group of distant cousins. I recommend the Boone Society for their depth of knowledge and their careful research (and they are nice people).

Next posting, the family leaves the Quaker faith and Pennsylvania....

We Are Also Boones, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman
(Adapted from a document by Roberta Stuart Sims of Shreveport, LA)

Below is the harbour of Bristol, England at low tide several hundred years ago. Three members of the Boone family, including Squire Boone, our great grandfather, sailed from Bristol, first in 1712 and other members in 1717. Ironically for this writer, another distant relative, The Rt. Rev. John Holyman, was Bishop of the Bristol Cathedral (see background) from 1554 to 1558.


The Boones and thousands of others sailed to Philadelphia, a colony founded by William Penn (below) , an activist in the Society of Friends or Quakers. Penn's fair treatment of Native Americans reduced the threat of frontier warfare, and made settlement in Pennsylvania doubly attractive.















Below the harbour at Philadelphia where the Boone family landed and settled in lands outside of the city in the 1710s. By the early 1710s, Philadelphia was the largest city in the English colonies, and would remain so for another hundred years.

George Boone took 400 acres and built a log cabin in Olay, later to be called Exeter, PA. This great grandfather of ours died in 1744 leaving 8 children, 52 grandchildren and 10 great grandchilddren. The offspring were a blend of Engish, German, Welsh and Scotch becoming, well, Americans within a generation.

Next posting, the life of Squire Boone....

We Are Also Boones

By Glenn N. Holliman

The families of G.W. Osborne and Frankie Wilson Osborne helped settle the Appalachian frontier and defeat the British Armies in the Revolutionary War. In our examination of our pioneer ancestors, I begin with one of our most famous ancestral families, the Boones. Yes, my generation's 6th great uncle was Daniel Boone himself. But let's begin the story in England where we first have information on our earlier grandparents.

In 1636, Charles I (Portrait and book right) was on the throne of England, fighting verbally and, within a decade physically, with his Parliament. England was on the edge of a civil war that would determine whether political power lay with the House of Commons or the Crown. This civil war would be important for the development of representative democracy in the American colonies as well as in England.

In that year in the southwestern part of the country, near Exeter, in a village known as Stoke Canon, one George Boone was born. His parents are unknown according to authorities at the Boone Society. George Boone earned his living as a blacksmith, and died 1696. He and his wife, Sarah Mary Oppy, are buried at St. Magdelene Parish in Stoke Canon.

They married in 1665, and the next year, 1666, a son, another George Boone, entered the world.

While this second George Boone grew to manhood, England suffered through a violent civil war which resulted in Oliver Cromwell (portrait left) ruling England as a Commonwealth without a monarchy throughout the 1650s. With Cromwell's death, England turned again to the Stuart family and invited Charles II to the throne, although with reduced powers. No more Divine Right of Kings even with the Stuart family restoration.

So by the early 1660s, King Charles Stuart II (portrait and book below), the son of the executed Charles I, sat in London's Whitehall Palace on the throne overseeing a growing empire. Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and after the Dutch wars, New York and New Jersey were New World English colonies.

One can be assured the Boones did not dress so fashionably as King Charles II (above) who was popular with the 'ladies'.

In the 1680s, this King Charles II, still paying off political debts for his restoration, deeded a huge chuck of North America to the son of one of his noble friends, William Penn. Penn belonged to a growing Christian sect, the Society of Friends or Quakers as they were called.

Our George Boone, now grown, married and with a growing family, was intrigued by the Friends, who sat patiently in informal worship waiting for an 'Inner Light' before speaking or 'quaking'. No priests or bishops were allowed within this democratic, egalitarian and pacifist denomination whose members refused to doff their hats to anyone.

George, himself a tanner and weaver, married Mary Milton Mogridge, daughter of John Mogridge and Mary Milton. Mary had been born in Bradninch, 8 miles from Exeter in 1669. They raised a large family, and one of the sons was named Squire Boone (b 1696).

George Boone was an ambitious man, and restless in Devonshire. He heard of William Penn's new and successful colony along the Delaware River, a colony where the founding city was named Philadelphia or city of brotherly love. The Quaker, with his growing family, was ready to make the dramatic move to the New World and leave behind his ancestral homeland.

Next post we learn of the trip across the North Atlantic to Pennsylvania and a new life on America's frontiers....