mmunity. Later
they moved to the northwestern frontier hamlet of North Wales, a Welsh
community which, a few years previously, had turned Quaker. Sarah Boone
married a German named Jacob Stover, who had settled in Oley Township,
Berks County. In 1718 George Boone took up four hundred acres in Oley,
or, to be exact, in the subdivision later called Exeter, and there
he lived in his log cabin until 1744, when he died at the age of
seventy-eight. He left eight children, fifty-two grandchildren, and ten
greatgrandchildren, seventy descendants in all--English, German, Welsh,
and Scotch-Irish blended into one family of Americans. *
* R. G. Thwaites, "Daniel Boone", p. 5.
Among the Welsh Quakers was a family of Morgans. In 1720 Squire Boone
married Sarah Morgan. Ten years later he obtained 250 acres in Oley on
Owatin Creek, eight miles southeast of the present city of Reading; and
here, in 1734, Daniel Boone was born, the fourth son and sixth child of
Squire and Sarah Morgan Boone. Daniel Boone therefore was a son of the
frontier. In his childhood he became familiar with hunters and with
Indians, for even the red men came often in friendly fashion to his
grandfather's house. Squire Boone enlarged his farm by thrift. He
continued at his trade of weaving and kept five or six looms going,
making homespun cloth for the market and his neighbors.
Daniel's father owned grazing grounds several miles north of the
homestead and each season he sent his stock to the range. Sarah Boone
and her little Daniel drove the cows. From early spring till late
autumn, mother and son lived in a rustic cabin alone on the frontier. A
rude dairy house stood over a cool spring, and here Sarah Boone made her
butter and cheese. Daniel, aged ten at this time, watched the herds; at
sunset he drove them to the cabin for milking, and locked them in the
cowpens at night.
He was not allowed firearms at that age, so he shaped for himself a
weapon that served him well. This was a slender smoothly shaved sapling
with a small bunch of gnarled roots at one end. So expert was he in the
launching of this primitive spear that he easily brought down birds and
small game. When he reached his twelfth year, his father bought him a
rifle; and he soon became a crack shot. A year later we find him setting
off on the autumn hunt--after driving the cattle in for the winter-with
all the keenness and courage of a man twice his thirteen years. His
rifle enabled him
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