Another Daniel Boone, Greers and Wilcoxsons

by Glenn N. Holliman

We are fortunate to have another article by Gary O. Hodges, recently retired from civilian U.S. Navy service, and now sharing with us his continued research on the Greer, Wilcoxson and Boone families.  He is our go-to person for ancestral societies information and is generous in passing along lineages.  

In this new article, inspired by recent emails from distant cousins, he writes further on the Benjamin and  Boone Greer families.  Yes, descendants of Daniel Boone,  occasionally named their offspring after the famous frontiersman.  Here is the story of one distant cousin and also some information on Greer and Wilson ancestors.

Below left to right: Mr. and Mrs. P. Thompson, Gary and his daughter, Wendy Hodges and Mrs Gayle Raizor a meeting of the national Daniel Boone Society conference in 2014.  The picture is the famous one of Daniel and his family (including John and Sarah Boone Wilcoxson) at the Cumberland Gap.  For information on the Daniel Boone Society (and most reading this are eligible to join), please contact Gary at gary.hodges1@verizon.net.
 

"Cousins, do you ever wonder if anyone outside our small circle reads the family blog spot? Well, I am not the only person who ran across the family blog through a Google search. Recently three people contacted Glenn and he forwarded their queries to me. I am now in contact with them, helping them as much as I can in their research. 

The most recent new cousin is Amber. She “stumbled across” the blog and found it very

interesting. Amber is the newest member of the family who is looking for documentation on

the Greer family. Like the cousins mentioned in our most recent posting, she is a direct

descendant of Benjamin Greer’s son James (17 September 1783 - September 1869). In fact, she is descended from James' son Alexander Greer. So we add another cousin to those looking for documentation on the children of James Greer. 

A short time before Glenn got the e-mail from Amber, Dorothy was surfing the web and ran across our blog. She was excited to see the name of Daniel Boone. It seems her husband is a descendant of Daniel Boone who was born in Rowan County, North Carolina. Well, this particular Daniel is not the brother of our Sarah Boone Wilcoxson, but a son of Daniel and Sarah’s brother Jonathan Boone (December 1730-1818). I contacted cousin Dorthy Mack, the senior genealogist of The Boone Society,and she sent me this reply: 

'As to this Daniel Boone, he married first Marie Rose Benoit in August 1800 in Louisiana and she died 3 April 18 01. They had no children. He married secondly on 23 Nov 1801 to Ann Boudreaux, and they had 7 children. This Daniel died between November and December 1817 near Beaumont, TX killed by Indians. He was not killed at the Alamo as many stories say. 

He is the son of Jonathan Boone who married Mary Carter, he the son of Squire Boone, Sr. and Sarah Morgan. The children of Jonathan Boone and Mary Carter have been contrived and inflated through the years. I think the son Daniel escaped due to the fact that he went to Louisiana as a young man and sort of got lost in the Boone folly that intrigues so many to claim what they are not. His daughter, Uranie, was just two or so when he died, and her mother died when she was about age 15. Although I have completed a lot of census work on this line not much has ever been known about them in reality.' 

The downloads Dorthy Mack refers to are the ones Dorthy attached in her contact e-mail to

Glenn. Some of you may remember me mentioning Dorthy Mack before. She is a descendant of Sarah Boone Wilcoxson’s brother Nathaniel Boone. So Dorthy is one of our Boone cousins. Now we know at least one of our Boone family moved to Louisiana and it includes Cajuns. 

The next cousin who emailed recently is Nancy. She is also a descendant of James Greer (1783-1869) and his wife, Mary “Polly” Hampton (1789-February 1880).

Nancy is a descendant of Alfred Greer (b 1840) whose mother was Mary Greer (b 1815)

who married William Thomas of Ashe County, North Carolina. Nancy says Alfred is an illegitimate son of Mary. I have not gotten far enough in my research on the children of James and Mary so I have nothing on Mary other than her birth year and that she married William Thomas. 

I will continue researching James descendants gathering as much information on his children and grandchildren as possible. It’s a trip on a tree branch I hadn’t intended on taking until we started getting queries from cousins on James and Mary’s family. Now my interest is aroused on the children and grandchildren of my William Greer (21 January 1772, Rowan County, North Carolina - 1862, Ashe County, North Carolina) siblings. 

Another cousin contacted Glenn about the Wilson family wondering of this person is part of the Wilsons of this blog. Well, that cousin is me. I know in a former article I said I was not a Wilson but I was wrong. Call it old-timers but I had been looking at my Wilcox family line over and over again and it wasn’t till a few weeks ago I saw my great grandmother was Rebecca Iva Wilson Wilcox.

Great grandmother Iva was born in Ashe County, North Carolina in 1835-6. She died in the same county before 2 June 1880. Iva was the first wife of Martin Van Buren Wilcox. Glenn told me Iva’s parents were John Wilson (1812-1892) and Jane “Jenny” Norris (1812-1895). I refer to great grandmother by her middle name Iva because that the given name shown on her son, General Grant Wilcox’s death certificate. So she may have gone by either Rebecca or Iva. 

Great grandmother Iva does not show on the Ashe County cemetery records under either given name. Not sure why this is the case. Any help on my Wilson family line will be helpful. 

So take heart cousins. Our family blog is getting a lot of attention. I would venture to take a wild educated guess and say there are probably several people who peruse the blog for every one who contacts Glenn. I think it is exciting that all the hard work Glenn does maintaining the blog and posting articles is bearing fruit. Who knows how many more contacts we will get in the future. Remember our blog is only as good as the information we have on it. You don’t have to be a wordsmith. Just give the information to Glenn and me and one of us will turn it into an article or articles. 

Recently I made another presentation at my Sons of the American Revolution chapter representing myself as John Wilcoxson.  Similar to the one I gave at our July 2014 family forum in Boone, North Carolina, but I added information on John's brother-in-law, the Daniel Boone.

That same night I received a supplemental certificate from the Sons of the American Revolution for our ancestor John Greer (1714, Baltimore County, Maryland - May 1782, Wilkes County, North Carolina.  John was Benjamin Greer's father.  Again, I was in period attire, complete with a new long waist coat and tri-corn hat.  My daughters Leigh Ann Workman and Wendy Hodges were present to hear the talk."

Respectfully

Cousin Gary O. Hodges

4th Great Grandson of Benjamin Greer and Nancy Wilcox

The 2014 Wilson, Greer and Associated Families Forum 4

by Glenn N. Holliman

With retirement this year, cousin Gary O. Hodges of Virginia is rapidly becoming one of the most prolific researchers of the Wilcoxson-Boone-Greer family lines.  Those of you descended from Caroline Greer Wilson (1828-1911), as am I, are direct descendants of most of the persons recorded by Gary below.  With his wry sense of humor, Gary shares some important information with us.- GNH

Greers, Boones and Wilcoxsons by Gary O. Hodges

It’s time to set the record straight about the cousins who attended the family reunion this July in Boone, North Carolina. Not all of the attendees were Wilsons. Several of us have no direct blood line connections to the Wilsons.

At the dinner Friday night my wife Elogene, my daughter Wendy and I crashed the party and weren’t thrown out. Saturday Wendy and I attended the get together at the library, though I had to sneak in disguised as John Wilcoxson. Don’t put all the blame on me for crashing the reunion. Glenn spilled the beans and inadvertently let me know about the gathering.  Now I say all this with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, next to a chew of tobacco.

Below, Gary, far left, shares information at the July Wilson/Greer and Associated Families Forum in Boone, North Carolina.  

So who am I? I am your cousin Gary Hodges. I am a Boone/Wilcoxson/Greer/Wilcoxson. I haven’t found any Wilson members in my direct line, but I hope you won’t hold that against me. But I am a Greer. I am a direct descendant of Sarah Boone Wilcoxson, her husband John Wilcoxson and two of their children; Samuel Wilcoxson and his sister Nancy Wilcoxson Greer. It’s through Nancy that I have my Greer blood line.

How is it that I am descended from two of Sarah and John’s children? Well, that is what can happen when second cousins marry. Their grandson Isaiah Wilcoxson married their great granddaughter Frances “Fanny” Greer.  Isaiah and Fanny’s son Rev. William M. “Billy” Wilcoxson/Wilcox is my 2^nd great grandfather. Through Sarah and John’s son Samuel my Wilcoxson/Wilcox family surname is unbroken to my mother Rosa Jean Wilcox Hodges. Through their daughter Nancy my line takes the Greer twist with their son William Greer and his daughter Fanny Greer.

When I started this article I tried to figure out just what to include. I decided to concentrate on our Wilcoxson and Greer families connection to the American Revolutionary War. Maybe I need to do another article that is more personal to my family line, post Rev. Billy Wilcox, but let’s concentrate on our families participation in the Revolutionary War.

Most of us have four documented Revolutionary War Patriot ancestors through the Boone/Wilcoxson Greer line. If you are a descendant of William Greer and his wife Hannah Cartwright then you have five. 

The first Patriot Ancestors I want to talk about are Sarah Boone and her husband John Wilcoxson. Sarah was the first child of Squire Boone and Sarah Morgan. Her brother, Daniel Boone, was Squire and Sarah’s sixth child. But being a sister of Daniel Boone is not why Sarah is designated as a RW Patriot. Sarah and her husband John Wilcoxson were some of the earliest settlers of Fort Boonesborough in Kentucky County Virginia.  

The Sarah and John Wilcoxson house in Mocksville, North Carolina in the 1980s, still standing over 200 years old.

She was at the fort when it was attacked in September of 1778 by over 400 Indians allied with the British and 12 Tory Militiamen. Since Sarah was at the fort during this 10 and a half day siege, she has been designated by the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) as a Patriot Ancestor. Her designation is “Defender of the Fort”. Sarah’s husband John was not present at the time of the siege. John, a member of the Kentucky County Virginia Infantry, was away fighting Indians allied with the British. John’s designation is as a “Soldier” in the Revolutionary War.  

Ft. Boonesborough in a 1901 sketch.

The next two Patriot Ancestors I submit are John Greer (Grier) and his son Benjamin Greer (Grier). When the Wilkes County NC court first met in March of 1778 John was appointed one of the first Justices of the Peace. John served in this capacity for over a year. He swore allegiance to the State of North Carolina the first day the court met. His designation is as a “Civil Servant”. 

John’s son Benjamin was appointed as the first Constable of the Moravian Creek (now Moravian Falls) community of Wilkes County. This appointment and his swearing the oath of allegiance to North Carolina was done on that same day. In addition to serving as a “Civil Servant” in Wilkes County, Benjamin Greer also served in the North Carolina Infantry and the Wilkes County Militia. Ben attained the rank of Captain in the Wilkes Militia, serving under Col. Benjamin Cleveland. Benjamin Greer has two RW Patriot designations, both as a “Civil Servant” and a “Soldier”. I won’t go into Ben’s exploits in the rescued of Col. Cleveland or the famous “Greer Hint”. Cousin Glenn Holliman has covered those in previous articles.

Ben Greer, my 5th great grandfather, was an Indian fighter also, as was his kinsman of the same time period, Daniel Boone.  This dramatic picture interprets an episode in the long and exciting life of our ancestor.  GNH

The fifth Patriot Ancestor some of you may share with me is Joseph Cartwright. Joseph was the father of Hannah Cartwright and  the grandfather of Fanny Greer. There is little information available about Joseph Cartwright and his wife Eve Miller. Eve apparently died in 1777 and Joseph died in 1778, leaving Hannah and her brother Joseph M. Cartwright orphaned. Hannah was six and Joseph was five. Joseph Cartwright served in the Wilkes County Militia under Capt. William Lenoir. His designation is that of a “Soldier”.

For those of you interested in these five Patriot Ancestors, I have documentation proving their service and my blood line to each of them. Some of this documentation comes from the records of the SAR and DAR. At least one person has successfully filed applications to one of these organizations through their direct blood line to one or more of them. 

I successfully filed applications to the SAR under both Sarah Boone Wilcoxson and her husband John Wilcoxson. I have an application (supplemental) for John Greer (Grier) that is being reviewed by the SAR at the National level. It has already been reviewed and approved at the State (Virginia) level. I presently serve as the Chaplain of the Thomas Nelson Jr. Chapter of the SAR in Newport News Virginia.  I know some of our cousins are members of the DAR. Maybe it’s time more cousin joined the SAR or DAR, Hint-Hint. And that’s not a “Greer Hint” I won’t hit any cousin, even if they steal my tobacco.

A few years ago I became very interested in researching my blood line. I started looking for ancestors who served in the American Civil War. Now I call it the War of Northern Aggression. I found two direct ancestors who served in the 65^th NC Troops (6^th NC Cavalry) and several collateral ancestors (multi great uncles) who served. Some were members of the Wilcoxson/Wilcox family, including one multi great uncle and his son who were Yankee soldiers. Those of you who are familiar with the Journal of Francis Marion Wilcox have read about him and his father serving in the 450^th KY Vol. Infantry (USA). But I digress. 

A Daniel Boone portrait of a man perhaps age 35 to 40, lean and hardy from years as a hunter, explorer and soldier.   

When I started my research I was fortunate to get in contact with the senior genealogist of The Boone Society, Dorthy Grissom Mack. Cousin Dorthy is a direct descendant of Sarah Boone Wilcoxon’s younger brother Edward Boone. Cousin Dorthy had a lot of research information on our family and she also created some family line documents just for me. 

I say just for me but Dorthy encourages me to share her work with my cousins, which I do at every opportunity. She guided me in how to research my family line and continues to help me and offer encouragement. Another Wilcox cousin once told me “family history without documentation is just a bunch of folk tales”. Document everything you can”. 

When I was appointed the de-facto genealogist for my first and second cousins, on my Hodges and Wilcox sides, I decided to amass as many documents as I could. I grab hold of and file every document I come across. Some of them have been furnished by cousins. A few aren’t in my direct blood line but anything a cousin gives me goes in the appropriate file. I try to keep everything on a thumb drive so I can attach information to e-mails. That’s another non “Greer Hint” hint that I share everything I have with my cousins. Most of my close cousins aren’t interested in detailed information about our family but I don’t let that discourage me. I just keep plugging on sharing more with cousins who really want the stuff I have.

If I don’t get nasty comments about this article, ha-ha-ha, maybe I will write more for our family site. Cousin Glenn is encouraging me to write an article on the 2014 Boone Society family reunion held at Pine Mountain State Resort Park in Kentucky. There were over 100 Boone family members there including at least eight direct descendants of Sarah Boone and her husband John Wilcoxson.

Gary O. Hodges

Boone/Wilcoxson/Greer/Wilcox families 

Our thanks to Gary for his full and factual presentation of some important family history. For information on Gary Hodges' email address, write me at glennhistory@gmail.com. GNH, seventh great grandson of Squire and Sara Morgan Boone.

The Families of Damascus, Virginia, Part I

On the Road to Damascus
by Glenn N. Holliman

Let's begin with a Google map of Western North Carolina, upper East Tennessee and a portion of Southwest Virginia.  By the late 1700s most of my mother's ancestors had made their way from Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake colonies to the uplands and valleys of the Appalachians found on this map. They were the Osbornes, Greers, Wilsons, Boones, Browns, Wilcoxsons, Taylors, McCrays, Bayless and others.

The red dot in the bottom center is the approximate location of the Civil War farm of my great great grandparents, Isaac and Caroline Greer Wilson, in Sutherland, near Creston, Ashe County, North Carolina.  The blue dot underlined in red is Damascus, Virginia, and in the center left underlined is Bristol, Tennessee the birthplace of my mother.  Geraldine Stansbery Holliman Feick, my mother,and I are descendants of all the above families.

 On her father's side, Charles S. Stansbery, Sr., mother descended from a family that landed in the Maryland colony in the late 1600s, made their way thought through the Piedmont areas of Virginia and the Carolinas, before offspring settled by the 1850s in the Knox and Greene counties of East Tennessee.

For a period of time, this Southern Appalachian area was America's frontier.  The Cherokee and Shawnee lost their hunting grounds by the late 1700s and eventually most of their homeland as the tide of European and African Americans kept pushing westward.  Many of the offspring of my families moved into Tennessee and Kentucky and within a generation across the Missisippi and eventually to the Rockies and beyond.  Daniel Boone, my 6th great uncle, founded Kentucky but eventually would die in Missouri.

Of course, not all children and grandchildren of the named families above moved west.  Many made the Appalachian mountains, coves and river bottom land their homes.  To this day, one will find my distant cousins living in Ashe and Watauga counties in North Carolina, Knox, Greene, Sullivan and Washington counties in Tennessee and Grayson and other counties in Virginia.

In this series of posts, I am exploring the lives of ancestors who remained in the Appalachian highlands, in particular a great aunt and uncle, Pearl Osborne Wright and her husband, Dave.  They made an impact on the small community of Damascus, Virginia, in the first half of the 20th Century and left an archive of photographs that capture their lives and the fashions of their time.

Above David and Pearl Osborne Wright in Damascus, Virginia early 1900s with their puppies.  Many of the photographs to be posted are courtesy of my second cousin, Phyliss Akers Mink, a great niece of the Wright.


My Great Aunt Pearl was not the first of my ancestors to travel through Damascus, Virginia.  That honor belongs to Daniel Boone, a 6th great uncle of mine.  A few miles south of Damascus, in Laurel Blooming, Tennessee is a monument (pictured below) to his explorations.  He traversed what is now the upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia valleys and river bottoms, before forcing the Cumberland Gap.

When We Were Greers, Part XI

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Greers Move Through the Great Valley of Virginia

to Relocate in North Carolina

Both my generation's 7th and 6th grandfathers, John Greer, Sr. and John Greer, Jr. left Maryland and moved south and west to the then frontier of western North Carolina. John, Sr. left to establish a new family. John, Jr. to acquire virgin farm land made available as the Cherokee were pushed from their historic hunting grounds.

John Greer, Jr. was born in Joppa, Maryland sometime between 1714 and 1718. He married at St. John's Episcopal Church in Joppa one Sarah Elliott, my generation's 6th great grandmother. John, Jr. would die in Wilkes Country, North Carolina in the Yadkin River Valley in May 1782. An early settler to the area, he must have prospered as he served his community as a justice of the peace. His wife then was Nancy Lowe Walker.

The map below captures the American frontier of 1763 when English Crown established the Proclamation Line, the black line in this map that stretches from New England to Georgia. No colonial settler was allowed to purchase or take Indian land west of the line. The dark purple reflects colonial settlement from 1700 to 1760.

The Greers, Boones, Wilcoxsons and another of my relations moved from Maryland and Pennsylvania down the Shenandoah to the purple circle next to the word 'frontier' in western North Carolina. Notice how far in advance this area in the Yadkin Valley around Wilkes County, North Carolina was from other Carolina settlements. This area was hunting ground for the Cherokee (just over the Proclamation line in what is now Tennessee).

This is a reproduction from Making America, published 2003 by Houghton Mifflin Company, and is not to be used for commercial purposes.

The move from the Chesapeake south evidently took place in several stages. My generation's 5th great grandfather, the Revolutionary War patriot, Benjamin Greer, was born February 9, 1746 in Augusta Country, Virginia, near the town of Staunton. Augusta County is smack in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley and was and is the Great Road from the Northeast to the Southwest in the Eastern United States. For the past half century, one travels on I-81 and since the dawn of the automobile age, U.S. Highway 11.

My ancestors - the Osbornes, Greers, Wilcoxsons, Boones, Wilsons and many others, the majority Scotch-Irish who poured off the ships in Philadelphia - began in earnest in the 1730s and 1740s to settle the back country of Virginia. With the defeat of the Tuscarora nation in eastern and central North Carolina, the Carolina frontier was pushed west toward the foothills and mountains of the Appalachian chain, into Cahawba and Cherokee and later, Shawnee hunting territory.

When We Were Wilcoxsons, Part IV

by Glenn N. Holliman

Below, a map from Robert Morgan's book on Daniel Boone, available through Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, NC. Notice the Cumberland Gap, Boonesborough and Bryan's Station, all important places in our family history. 

In 1779 Rachel Wilcoxson Bryan, my generation's fifth great aunt, settled with her relatives, Wilcoxsons and Bryan(t)s at Bryan's Station, Kentucky. (see map above for location) There were numerous Indian attacks, the most threatening in 1782 when the women of the Station prevented it firery destruction by carrying badly needed buckets of water from the spring to the Station while surrounded by Indians. A memorial exists for their efforts. A 5th great uncle, Daniel Wilcoxson, was a captain at the Station.

Above from the Kentucky Historical Society, this drawing of the women, several our family members, leaving the protection of Bryan's Station, to collect water from a spring. The awed Shawnee held their fire, and the women returned safely to the fort with the precious liquid. The settlement was saved.

By 1779, now 60 years of age, and evidently prosperous, John Wilcoxson and Sarah, returned to the Yadkin Valley leaving Kentucky to the younger children and kin. With the American Revolution underway and Lord Granville of England no longer owner of a huge portion of North Carolina, long time settlers such as John and Sarah could now register their land with the new government.

In January 1780, John began to do so for 640 acres on both sides of Bear Creek in Rowan County, NC. Bear Creek is so named because Sarah's younger brother, Daniel Boone, had killed over 90 bears in the area in one year. (Because Daniel and others had killed so much local game, hunters had to keep moving west.)

Seemingly no place seemed safe for the extended family. British General Cornwallis had invaded South Carolina and invaded North Carolina. The Revolutionary War was also a civil war, with neighbor against neighbor. John and Sarah may have left Kentucky to avoid hostile Indians. However, they returned to find a hostile British Army and Tories! Armies marched to and fro, the biggest North Carolina battles being at Guildford Court House and Kings Mountain. Our ancestors fought at both battles.

Map from Robert Morgan's biography of Boone.

John died sometime after 1798, after selling the last of his North Carolina land to a son, William Wilcoxson, my generation's 5th great uncle. Of course, Wilcoxson land was adjacent to Squire Boone's settlement (see above map). Daniel Boone was married to Rebecca Bryan. John seemingly left no will that has been found. Nor do we know his grave site.

Sarah moved to live with a daughter, another pioneer woman, Elizabeth Wilcoxson Cutbirth ( my 5th great aunt). Sarah died there in Madison County, Kentucky in 1815. Another source has her living in southern Clark County, Kentucky, not far from Boonesboro and dying at the home of her grandson, Jesse Boone Wilcoxson, a son of Samuel Wilcoxson.

We Are Also Wilcoxsons - Part II

by Glenn N. Holliman

Our Family Gathers in North Carolina

(Sources include Boone Family History and Genealogy at www.family-genealogy-online.com/little/boone.html, The Willcockson Society, the Salisbury, NC Enterprise-Recorder, July 24, 1975 and Salisbury Sunday Post, August 3, 1975)

Beginning in the 1750s, a migration, generally of Scotch-Irish, but also Welsh and early English colonists, began moving to the and Catabaw and Cherokee Indian hunting grounds of Southwest Virginia, Western North Carolina and South Carolina. The colonists, generally second and third generations in America, thirst for land, and a lot of it, resulted in the ancestral families of our present generation moving from Pennsylvania and Maryland, south often through the Shenandoah Valley on the Great Wagon Road to the contested frontier.

The Wilcoxson's, my generation's 6th great grandparents, moving with the Boone family, acquired a land grant near the present Cooleemee, Davie County, NC. , formerly Rowan Co. There John and Sarah Boone Wilcoxson built a log cabin and continued to raise their expanding family on what became 800 acres of land. At the 'Shoals" where Cooleemee is now located (see below, center left), the Yadkin River could be forded for travel into Salisbury, NC. The original log cabins of the extended Boone family were built along this road.

On a continuous tract of land over four miles in length, the families built cabins, and it is reasonable to assume they helped one another in the construction. John and Sarah built one of the better and larger houses between 1752 and 1756, using logs as large as 18 inches by 34 feet. This home, greatly enlarged and modernized, stands today, 250 years later!

It consisted of one large 17 by 33 ft room where the family cooked, ate and adults slept. The floors were 3 inches thick of wood. The children, eventually there were 11, perhaps more, slept in a big attic room, which also provided protection in case of Indian attack.

We know that in this frontier the Quaker and Anglican Churches were left behind, and the families embraced what became the Boone's Baptist Church near their home. John and Sarah appear on the tax list in 1759. In 1778 the family moved to Booneborough, Kentucky, but after a year on the very dangerous frontier opened by Sarah's brother, Daniel, the Wilcoxsons returned to the log cabin. While in Kentucky, the Wilcoxsons were part of the pioneer party that defended the various settlements. At Boonesborough today, the Wilcoxson names are listed along with the Boones.

The Wilcoxson's sold the house in 1787 to a Abraham Welty. The 1790 census of Yadkin Valley, Rowan Co., NC lists John and some of his family living on Bear Creek. The Mylar family married into the Wilcoxson and Boone families, and their web site lists much of this material (http://www.familytreecircles.com/journal_7466.html). One of John and Sarah's son-in-laws would be killed during an Indian attack in 1788.

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....