Boone's Bones Brouhaha

Frankfort grave marker detail.

Daniel Boone is hardly a folk hero superstar -- in fact, a lot of people get him confused with Davy Crockett -- but he's been popular enough over the years to merit a Hollywood movie, a lunch box, and a postage stamp. And one thing is certain about folk heroes, even second-stringers: Everybody wants their old bones.

Oklahoma, for example, dug Will Rogers out of California's Forest Lawn Cemetery and buried him in their own memorial park. South Dakota, not content with its Crazy Horse ubermemorial, stole Sitting Bull's bones from North Dakota and reinterred them on their own soil. Even "Mad" Anthony Wayne, an Indian-fighter and a popular subject of pre-interstate monuments, was yanked from his Erie, PA, grave by his son, who boiled the flesh off of the corpse and headed for home (Paoli, PA) with the bones in a bag. Then the bags were stolen. Who knows where Mad Anthony is today?

Defiance's Boone grave.

Daniel Boone has suffered similar body-snatching shenanigans but with a twist: He appears to have ended up in two graves.

Everyone agrees that Boone died at his son's home near Defiance, Missouri, in 1820. Everyone also agrees that he was buried nearby in Marthasville (about 14 mi. west), near the grave of his wife, Rebecca. But then the story gets muddled. The folks in Frankfort, Kentucky, would have you believe that Rebecca and Daniel were exhumed 25 years later and reinterred in Frankfort Cemetery. The marker near Defiance mentions the reinterment, but...

According to Defiance, Frankfort dug up the wrong body. The grave next to Rebecca's was already occupied when Daniel died, they say, so he was buried at her feet. Daniel's relatives were angry at Frankfort and didn't tell them about his true burial plot. They let Frankfort cart away the body next to Rebecca's, the body of a stranger.

 

Frankfort's Boone grave.

Scientific scrutiny seems to support Defiance's claims. A forensic anthropologist studied a plaster cast of the skull in Frankfort's "Daniel Boone" grave in 1983 and said that it really belonged to a large black man. Frankfort, of course, pooh-poohed those allegations.

Both graves have worthy monuments. Frankfort's is bigger (that was, ostensibly, the reason for the move in the first place) but it's in a big cemetery and must share its surroundings with other dead people. The memorial near Defiance is out by itself, and it's worth remembering that Daniel Boone's own reason for leaving Kentucky was that it was "too crowded."

We say, since the marker is all you get to see anyway, it's a toss-up. Daniel Boone is buried in the spot easiest for you to get to on your next trip.

Case closed.

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