When Daniel Boone was still a youth, his father emigrated to North Carolina.  The precise date of this removal of the family residence is not known.  Mr. Peck, an excellent authority, says it took place when Daniel was about eighteen years old.  This would make it about the year 1752.

The new residence of Squire Boone, Daniel’s father, was near Holman’s Ford, on the Yadkin River, about eight miles from Wilkesboro’.  The fact of the great backwoodsman having passed many years of his life there is still remembered with pride by the inhabitants of that region.  The capital of Watauga County, which was formed in 1849, is named Boone, in honor of Daniel Boone.  The historian of North Carolina[6] is disposed to claim him as a son of the State.  He says:  “In North Carolina Daniel Boone was reared.  Here his youthful days were spent; and here that bold spirit was trained, which so fearlessly encountered the perils through which he passed in after life.  His fame is part of her property, and she has inscribed his name on a town in the region where his youth was spent.”

“The character of Boone is so peculiar,” says Mr. Wheeler, “that it marks the age in which he lived; and his name is celebrated in the verses of the immortal Byron:” 

“Of all men—­
Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
Is Daniel Boone, backwoodsman of Kentucky.”

* * * * *

“Crime came not near him—­she is not the child
Of Solitude.  Health shrank not from him, for
Her home is in the rarely-trodden wild.”

* * * * *

“And tall and strong and swift of foot are they,
Beyond the dwarfing city’s pale abortions,
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
Of care or gain; the green woods were their portions: 
No sinking spirits told them they grew gray,
No fashions made them apes of her distortions. 
Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were not yet used for trifles.”

   “Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers,
    And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil. 
    Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers;
    Corruption could not make their hearts her soil;
    The lust which stings, the splendor which encumbers,
    With the free foresters divide no spoil;
    Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
    Of this unsighing people of the woods.’”

We quote these beautiful lines, because they so aptly and forcibly describe the peculiar character of Boone; and to a certain extent, as Mr. Wheeler intimates, his character was that of his times and of his associates.