LEGACY OF LT. COL. NATHAN BOONE IN MIDCONTINENT, USA: SURVEYOR, EXPLORER, AND NATURALIST

Two of Nathan and Olive Van Bibber Boone's historic houses are preserved in Missouri: (1) a three-story rock house in Femme Osage valley, built in 1817, and (2) a dogtrot homestead in Greene County, built in 1837. While Nathan's life was similar to that of his father, Daniel, the story of the Boones in Missouri is complicated, involving labor of enslaved persons and sometimes violent confrontations with Native Americans, who resisted European-American incursions and settlement on the frontier.

Daniel and Rebecca Boone, and an entourage of family and associates left the state of Kentucky and immigrated to Missouri in September-October 1799, when it was part of Nuevo España. The Boones settled near Defiance and Charette, north of the Missouri River, forty miles upstream from the frontier town of St. Charles. Eighteen-year-old Nathan and his sixteen-year-old bride Olive Van Bibber Boone arrived shortly thereafter by an overland route via Lexington, Louisville, Vincennes, and St. Louis. At St. Charles, Nathan traded a horse, saddle, and bridle for 800 arpents (680 acres) of land in the valley of Femme Osage Creek. In 1800, Louisiana Territory was acquired by France, who took over administration in 1802. On 4 July 1803, Jefferson authorized purchase of Louisiana Territory. In 1804, Lewis and Clark's expedition reported meeting the elder Boone along the Missouri River. Both Daniel and Nathan subsequently lost some Spanish Land Grants, but Nathan kept the Femme Osage farm until 1837, when it was sold to settle debts. He and Olive established a homestead north of present-day Ash Grove.

Around 1805, Nathan and Daniel Morgan Boone, his older brother, began salt production at Boone's Lick near Franklin, Missouri, and established Boone's Lick Road between St. Charles and Franklin. In 1808, Nathan enrolled in a militia that eventually was incorporated into the Missouri Rangers, and the Osage ceded rights to much of Missouri at the Treaty of Fort Clark (Fort Osage). Nathan took part in the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1820. Much of his life was in military service during the War of 1812, Blackhawk War,1833, and subsequently in peace time with the 1st Reg. U.S. Dragoons, where he participated in expeditions across Iowa and the Great Plains. The geologic nature of his observations were recorded in journals of the second expedition.