Daniel Boone

Whether Boone ever left Missouri is still argued. He died at Nathan's house on Femme Osage Creek on September 26, 1820, and was buried beside Rebecca near Jemima Callaway's home on Tuque Creek, in graves left unmarked until the mid-1830s. In 1845 the remains were dug up and reburied at Frankfort. A Missouri legend holds that the wrong body went east, though no contemporary evidence supports it. In 1983 a forensic anthropologist suggested a plaster cast of the skull might be an African American's, and enslaved people were buried at Tuque Creek too.

What the plaque says

Daniel Boone Daniel Boone, universal symbol of the American frontier, was 65 when he came to Upper Louisiana, now Missouri, 1799. His wife Rebecca was 60. The Spanish lieutenant governor granted Boone 845 acres nearby here on Femme Osage Creek. Boone did not settle on this grant. Instead he and his wife made their home with their children. Two of their sons, Daniel Morgan and Nathan, held land in the locality of the Femme Osage, near the present Matson and Defiance in St. Charles County. Their daughter and son-in-law, Jemima and Flanders Callaway, lived near the present Marthasville in Warren County. Boone served as syndic or judge for the Femme Osage settlements, 1800-1804. Near the Nathan Boone House, still standing, five miles from Defiance, is site of "Judgement Elm" where Boone is said to have held court. The trace to the saline in Howard County where Daniel Morgan and Nathan boiled salt about 1807 became the Boon's Lick Trail. In the War of 1812, Daniel Morgan was a captain and Nathan a major in the Missouri Rangers. (See other side) Daniel Boone (Continued from other side) Daniel Boone died at the home of his son Nathan, 1820, and was buried beside his wife, Rebecca Bryan Boone, overlooking Missouri River near Marthasville. In 1845, the bodies were removed to Frankfort, Ky. A marker stands at the original gravesites. Gottfried Duden (1785-1855), German scholar and humanitarian, came to Missouri, 1824, to investigate opportunities for German immigrants on the American frontier. Near the present Dutzow in Warren County is the site of his farm. Nathan Boone, his neighbor, spent some time with Duden showing him the countryside. In 1827 Duden returned to Germany. Here he published a "Report" which pictured Missouri an ideal spot and inspired a large German immigration to the State. Followers of Duden settled mainly in St. Charles and Warren counties. Many members of the Giessen (Immigration) Society settled in Warren County, 1834. Nearby Warrenton has been county seat of Warren Co., since 1835. Here was German Methodist Central Wesleyan College, chartered, 1864. Marthasville Seminary was chartered, 1855, as German Evangelical Missouri College.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Deutschheim State Historic Site — 17 mi
  Two Hermann houses of the 1840s, a violin maker's brick home and a printer's timber house with its own winery, kept as the German home the Missouri Rhineland settlers built.

More markers nearby

• Troy — 15 mi
• Hermann — 17 mi
• Washington — 19 mi