Daniel Boone
Exeter Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Greatest American pioneer and wilderness scout. Born Nov. 2, 1734. Spent the first 16 years of his life on the Boone Homestead a few miles north. Now a State historical shrine dedicated to American youth.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Boone became the archetype of the American frontiersman, and the westward push he embodied opened the trans-Appalachian country to settlement.
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Related people
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Themes & tags
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 Homestead
Exeter Township, PA · est. 1948
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.
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.
Lincoln Homestead
Exeter Township, PA · est. 1947
In 1733 Mordecai Lincoln—great-great-grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln—bought land in Exeter Township and built a stone house that still stands a little over a mile south of here. He served as a Berks County justice of the peace and moved in the same circle as the Boone family, being a friend of George Boone Jr., uncle of the pioneer Daniel Boone. Generations later, Lincoln himself wrote of his forebears from Berks County, Pennsylvania.