Rebecca Boone welcomed her second daughter, her fourth child, into the world on 4 October 1762. Daniel had removed his family from their North Carolina Yadkin Valley home in 1760, taking them all the way to Culpepper, Virginia, due to hostilities between the colonists and the Cherokee, During the next two years, Rebecca often lived alone except for their three small children while Daniel hunted in the mountains to the west or served in the North Carolina militia. Some of Daniel’s family had relocated nearby and provided aid when needed. Daniel and Rebecca’s three older children were James, age 5, Israel, age 3, and Susan age almost 2.
Some say Daniel had been absent from the family for 24 months before Jemima’s birth. Others point out that the treaty with the Cherokee was signed at the Long Island of the Holston on 19 November 1761. Many historians say Daniel returned to his family at this time and moved them back to Sugartree Creek, their Yadkin Valley home. Jemima always claimed she was born in North Carolina. Almost every Boone biographer has a theory as to Jemima’s true father.
Many biographers have pointed out Jemima seems to have been favored among Daniel’s offspring. Perhaps because she was the one he was able to save from hostile hands, having lost James in 1773. Perhaps because, only Jemima out of Daniel’s eight surviving children stayed in Kentucky after Daniel’s capture by the Shawnee in 1778, believing him alive and waiting for his return. Even his two oldest, Israel and Suzy had returned with Rebecca to North Carolina.
Many have documented Jemima’s promise to always stay with her father after he rescued her and the Callaway girls in 1776. Throughout her life, Jemima lived close to her father, following him across Kentucky, and then into the Missouri territory in 1799.
Jemima died on 30 August 1834 in Warren County, Missouri. She was 72 years old. She and Flanders had raised ten children to maturity. Today, she is recognized as a hero of the American Revolutionary War and the Siege of Boonesborough.
Note: There are photographs on Ancestry and other such genealogical sites purported to be Jemima and Flanders with members of their family. However, it wasn’t until 1839 that Louis Daguerre invented a process (called after him-the daguerreotype), which used silver-plated sheets of copper to make detailed permanent photographs. Jemima had been dead 5 years by then.
Image by Shari Knaust.