HistoricSiteMarkers
Colonial America

Daniel Boone Homestead

Exeter Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Site of the birthplace of Daniel Boone on Nov.2, 1734, and his home until 1750. Administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

The Story

On the rolling farmland of Berks County stood the log dwelling where Daniel Boone was born in 1734 to a Quaker family of English and Welsh descent. Boone spent his first sixteen years here, learning to hunt and range the Pennsylvania woods before the family pushed south and west, skills that would carry him into legend on the trans-Appalachian frontier. The homestead endured long after the Boones departed and is preserved today by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

Why it matters

Boone became the archetype of the American frontiersman, and this quiet farm is where that story of westward striving first began.

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Related people

  • · Daniel Boone

Themes & tags

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Nearby & related markers

Daniel Boone

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1957

Daniel Boone, born here in the Oley Valley in 1734, spent his first sixteen years on the family homestead before the Boones pushed south and west into the Carolina and Kentucky backcountry. Long before he became the legendary blazer of the Wilderness Road and a symbol of American frontier daring, he was a Pennsylvania farm boy hunting the woods of Berks County. The homestead a few miles north is preserved today as a state historic site.

Daniel Boone

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947

Daniel Boone was born here in the Oley Valley on November 2, 1734, to a Quaker family, and spent his first sixteen years in the Pennsylvania backcountry before the family moved south. The hunting, tracking, and woodcraft he learned on this ground carried him into legend as the pathfinder of Kentucky's Wilderness Road. The homestead a few miles north is preserved as a historic site.

Exeter Friends Meeting

Exeter Township, PA · est. 1979

Quakers established this Berks County meeting in 1725 as "Oley," renaming it Exeter in 1742, and raised the present stone meeting house in 1759 on the site of two earlier log structures. Among those buried in its ground are members of the Boone and Lincoln families—kin to the frontiersman Daniel Boone and to the ancestors of Abraham Lincoln. After closing in 1899, the meeting reopened for worship in 1949.

Daniel Boone (1734-1820) - PLAQUE

Amity Township, PA · est. 1957

This plaque honors Daniel Boone (1734-1820), the famed pioneer and scout who was born just a few miles away in the Oley Valley and spent his earliest years there. The area's rolling Berks County farmland was Boone's first world before the family migrated south, launching the life of wandering and trailblazing that made him a household name. The nearby birthplace survives as a state historic shrine.