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....