In the Footsteps of Daniel Boone

As the theme song from the 1960s television series phrased it, "Daniel Boone was a man/ Yes, a big man." Now, the truth behind the legend can be explored as the reader follows Boone as he leads the expansion of America's frontier. From his birthplace in Pennsylvania to his final resting place in Missouri, this combination travel guide/history book allows the reader to actually walk where Boone walked.

From Pennsylvania, his family moved south through Virginia and into North Carolina, where Boone married Rebecca Bryan and where he lived and hunted for almost two decades. During the late 1700s, Boone and others began exploring the western side of the Appalachians. He engaged in long hunting expeditions into Tennessee and Kentucky, was captured and escaped from Indians several times, marked the Wilderness Trail through the Cumberland Gap, erected a stockade at Boonesborough, Kentucky, and fought the American Revolution on the western front.

Even before Kentucky became a state, his frontier exploits earned him international fame, yet he lost all of his land holdings because of title disputes. Seeking a new frontier, Boone moved to Missouri, where he lived until his death in 1820, just short of age 86.

This book elaborates on these basic facts and tells the fascinating stories connected to the various sites in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, as well as locations in Maryland, West Virginia, Michigan, and Florida.

Author Bio: Born in Arkansas and raised in Memphis, Randell Jones graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology with a degree in civil engineering, and later earned an M.B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has written online and print publications for the Overmountain Victory Trail Association and for the National Park Service. Jones lives in Winston-Salem, NC, where he writes occasional history-themed columns for the Winston-Salem Journal.