Daniel Boone - Missouri

Missouri

In 1799, Boone moved to a frontier area then part of Spanish Louisiana. (It eventually became the state of Missouri.) The Spanish, eager to promote settlement in the sparsely populated region, did not enforce the requirement that all immigrants had to be Roman Catholic. Looking to make a fresh start, Boone moved with much of his extended family to what is now St. Charles County. The Spanish governor appointed Boone "syndic" (judge and jury) and commandant (military leader) of the Femme Osage district. The many anecdotes of Boone's tenure as syndic suggest he sought to render fair judgments rather than to strictly observe the letter of the law.

Boone served as syndic and commandant until 1804, when the area became part of the Louisiana Territory of the United States following the Louisiana Purchase. Because Boone's land grants from the Spanish government had been largely based on verbal agreements, he once again lost his land claims. In 1809, he petitioned Congress to restore his Spanish land claims, which was finally done in 1814. Boone sold most of this land to repay old Kentucky debts. When the War of 1812 came to the Missouri Territory, Boone's sons Daniel Morgan Boone and Nathan Boone took part, but by that time Boone was too old for militia duty.

Boone spent his final years in Missouri, often in the company of children and grandchildren. He hunted and trapped as often as his failing health allowed. According to one story, in 1810 or later, Boone went with a group on a long hunt as far west as the Yellowstone River, a remarkable journey at his age, if true. In 1816, a United States officer at Fort Osage, on the Missouri, wrote, "We have been honored by a visit from Colonel Boon, the first settler of Kentucky; he lately spent two weeks with us. . . . . He left this for the river Platt, some distance above. Col Boon is eighty-five years of age, five feet seven inches high, stoutly made, and active for one of his years; is still of vigorous mind, and is pretty well informed. He has taken part in all the wars of America, from before Braddock's war to the present hour." His obituary, printed in the Missouri Gazette, October 3, 1820, says, "At the age of eighty, in company with one white man and a black man, whom he laid under strict injunction to return him to his family dead or alive, he made a hunting trip to the headwaters of the Great Osage, where he was successful in trapping of beaver, and in taking other game." Other stories of Boone around this time have him making one last visit to Kentucky to pay off his creditors, although some or all of these tales may be folklore. American painter John James Audubon claimed to have gone hunting with Boone in the woods of Kentucky around 1810. Years later, Audubon painted a portrait of Boone, supposedly from memory, although skeptics have noted the similarity of this painting to the well-known portraits by Chester Harding. Boone's family insisted he never returned to Kentucky after 1799, although some historians believe Boone visited his brother Squire near Kentucky in 1810 and have therefore reported Audubon's story as factual.