Staunton Spectator

The Birthplace of Daniel Boone.

A NATIVE OF THIS COUNTY VISITS THE BIRTHPLACE OF DANIEL BOONE.

A well known native of this county, in his recent peregrinations, has visited the birthplace and homestead of Daniel Boone in Berks county, Pennsylvania, and from his interesting letter published in the Times and Dispatch of Reading, Pa., of the 17th inst., we make the following extract:-

BIRTH-PLACE OF DANIEL BOONE

"Mr. Jones did us the very great kindness on the 14th inst., to carry us to one of the most interesting historic spots, among the many, this great county contains, created as they were during the colonial times and amid the throes of that Revolution that under Washington and his compeers initiated this Republic. We refer to the birthplace of that great "pioneer and backwoodsman," Daniel Boone. We are surprised Mr. Editor, to find among your intelligent citizens many who did not know that Berks county gave him birth. When a young man, in connection with a cousin of his, Henry Miller, he made several expeditions into the head of the Shenandoah Valley to trade with the Indians. This must have been about 1730. This Miller, soon after emigrated and built on Mossy creek, Augusta county, the first furnace erected in the Valley of Virginia, and three miles below where the writer was born and reared. He married a Miss Winters, and a sister of his wife married George Crawford, of Augusta. Another of the daughters was the grandmother of Abraham Lincoln, and the youngest of nine daughters lately died, Mrs. Potter, at the age of 93 years. Mr. Editor, cannot some one with an antiquarian taste hunt up and illustrate the history of this Miller and Winters family? Mr. Jefferson in his "Notes on Virginia," refers to this furnace built by Henry Miller.

TRIP TO AND ARRIVAL AT BOONE FARM.

In our drive we passed the spot where the Hessians, after their capture at Trenton, were for some time held as prisoners. The spot is in the eastern border of your city. The beautiful country we passed over, taking the Boyertown road as we rode out, for picturesqueness as well as for elegant farming, it is too familiar to your readers to dwell upon. Eighty miles brought us to the "Boone farm," which is a mile north of the Philadelphia pike and near three miles from the mouth of the Monocacy, where it empties into the Schuylkill. This is the red shale land that lies prettily but is the thinnest in the county. The historic old mansion, that for aught we know and probably was built in the 16th century, is in good preservation, and will stand for centuries to come. This built of the dark free stone, the oldest part is 30 feet long, 28 feet wide, walls 18 to 20 inches thick and two and a half stories. The heavy girder supports the joists in both stories, and the lower project two feet or more and are covered with a narrow roof of shingles. There are two rooms below and three above and the old-fashioned wide fireplace in the west end, (house stands east and west) that has been covered and made into a cupboard. Porches have been put to the north and south sides and are modern. An addition was built to the western end, of the same kind of stone, same width and about sixteen feet long. A large stone dairy, or it may have been a kitchen, was built, as we supposed, at the same time, a few yards to the southwest of the main building and in 1792. The addition to the old house contains the spring in the basement and at the southeast corner, and the water issues from under the southwest corner of the old house. This room constitutes an elegant dairy room for fruit, preserves, &c., and the display of nice bread, pies and with the butter and milk, gave a foretaste of what was in store for our friend and ourself, under the kind and not to-be resisted invitations of our hostess and her daughter, that we must take supper.

ENTERTAINED ON THE BOONE HOME STEAD.

Little did we anticipate when stopping in your beautiful city that it would be vouchsafed to drink from the spring and eat in the house under whose roof this grand old woodsman and pioneer had first seen the light. We believed it was in Berks that he was born, but did not suppose a knowledge of the spot had been preserved, much less that the mansion was in as good a state of preservation as the day he shouldered his trusty rifle, and turned his back on it to seek a home in the wilderness—first in West Virginia, near the mouth of the great Kanawha, then in the State of Kentucky, near the Blue Lick Springs, and then in Missouri, where when neighbors settled within eighteen miles of him, he thought them too close, and in disgust moved further into the wilderness. A Mr. Richardson has for eighteen months been the owner of the farm. He removed from a point eight miles west of your city, and his family seemed to have been informed of the interest connected with their home as the birthplace of Boone. They had a history of the United States with a sketch of his life and his likeness, which they at once produced."