100 BOONE, JACOB his family to Point Pleasant, Va., but the family returned in 1795, and Boone spent a period of time as a hunter and farmer on land owned by his son Daniel Morgan Boone near Blue Licks. In 1798, the year Boone was honored by the naming of a Kentucky county for him, he moved again, to the mouth of the Little Sandy River. He also lost more than 10,000 acres of land, when the sheriffs of Mason and Clark counties sold it for unpaid back taxes. Boone left Kentucky for Missouri in September 1799. It is reported that when someone in Cincinnati asked him why he was leaving Kentucky, Boone responded, “Too crowded—I want more elbow-room.” He died in Missouri in 1820 and was buried in the Marysville Cemetery at Defiance, Mo. His and Rebecca Boone’s remains were reinterred at Frankfort Cemetery in Frankfort, Ky., on September 13, 1845. Faragher, John Mack. Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer. New York: Henry Holt, 1992. Kleber, John E. ed. The Kentucky Encyclopedia. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992. Lofaro, Michael A. Daniel Boone: An American Life. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2003.
Andrea Watkins
BOONE, JACOB (b. August 15, 1754, Berks Co., Pa.; d. May 4, 1827, Maysville. Ky.). Jacob Boone, an early settler and official of Maysville, was the son of Joseph Boone II and Elizabeth Warren Boone. During the Revolutionary War, he fought in Capt. John Bishop’s Company, the 5th Battalion of the Pennsylvania Militia, from 1777 to 1778. Perhaps the reason he left the militia after one year was to be with his wife, Mary DeHart, whom he married at the time of the Revolution. It is clear that his loyalty to the colonies did not waver, since Pennsylvania records show that he paid a supply tax on behalf of the militia in 1782. Several sources suggest that by fall 1785 Daniel Boone, Jacob’s second cousin, visited his Pennsylvania relatives and persuaded Jacob and his brothers Thomas and Ovid to try their fortunes in Kentucky. The brothers sold their Pennsylvania property that fall and made their way down the Monongahela River to the mouth of the Sewickley River, downriver but northwest of Fort Pitt, where they stopped for the winter and built a boat. In spring 1786 they continued toward Limestone (Maysville), Ky., where the group arrived without incident on May 11. Jacob soon put himself to good use within the community. He served as the interpreter between Col. Benjamin Logan and Indian warriors and chiefs during a conference on prisoner exchange on August 20, 1787. At that summit, Logan instructed the Indians to turn over any white prisoners in the future directly to Jacob Boone. As quartermaster of the militia throughout the conflict with the Indians, Jacob also provided grain for Gen. Anthony Wayne’s and Gen. Arthur St. Clair’s troops. Concurrent with their negotiations and struggles with the Indian population, the people of Limestone were trying to persuade the Virginia
General Assembly to create a separate county (which became Mason Co.) from Bourbon Co. After the first petition was rejected, second and third petitions were sent, and Jacob’s signature appears on the latter two. On December 11, 1787, the Virginia assembly officially recognized the town of Limestone (still in Bourbon Co.) and named Jacob Boone, Daniel Boone, Henry Lee, Arthur Fox, Thomas Brooks, and George Mefford as its first trustees. As part of their mandate, the trustees (or their appointees) were to lay out the town into lots to be sold at public auction, and the Boones— Jacob, Thomas, Ovid, and Daniel—had the honor of so doing. In addition to his official duties, Jacob Boone ran a tavern on Front St. in Maysville, which Daniel Boone allegedly helped to construct. In 1820 Maysville’s first jail was built as an annex to the tavern. From 1808 onward, Jacob also operated one of the many ferries on the Ohio River at Maysville. In 1827 Jacob Boone died and was buried at the Pioneer Cemetery in Maysville. His headstone remains intact. Clift, G. Glenn. History of Maysville and Mason County. Lexington, Ky.: Transylvania Publishing, 1936. Spraker, Hazel Atterbury. The Boone Family: A Genealogical History of George and Mary Boone Who Came to America in 1717. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1974.
Amber L. Benson
BOONE BLOCK. The historic three-story brick building known as the Boone Block is located on the east side of Scott St., between Fourth and Fifth Sts., in Covington. It does not occupy the entire city block, as its name suggests. Anthony D. Bullock had the structure built in 1872, and his initials (ADB) are intertwined on a stone tablet above the original entrance. Bullock also had built the Vernon Manor Hotel in Cincinnati. His family owned and operated the Bullock Electric Company in Norwood, Ohio. For many years the Boone Block held the offices of some of Kenton Co.’s most successful lawyers, judges, and politicians. Included were governors John White Stevenson (1867–1871) and William Goebel (1900); Lieutenant Governor James W. Bryan; judges William E. Arthur, Walter W. Cleary, John Menzies, James J. O’Hara, Michael T. Shine, and James Pryor Tarvin; and politician John G. Carlisle. The Kenton Co. Democratic Party also had its headquarters in the building, along with the fraternal organizations the Knights of Pythias and the Bull Moose Club. In the early 1900s, many of the building’s tenants moved to more convenient locations in Covington along Madison Ave. and Pike St., and vacancies resulted. In 1914 the Boone Block was extensively remodeled into commercial space on the first floor and apartments on the second and third. The remodeling had only limited success in fi lling the vacancies; further remodeling was done in 1926, but the problem persisted. Today, several businesses are located on the first floor, but the upper floors are unoccupied.
“A. D. Bullock has Completed Building on Scott St., between Fourth and Fift h Sts.” CJ, November 9, 1872, 3. “Building Notes,” KP, November 3, 1914, 4. “Covington K. of P. to Have New Home,” KP, January 18, 1911, 3. “Historic Boone Block Soon to Change,” KP, July 29, 1914, 4.
Jack Wessling
BOONE CO. Long before recorded history, prehistoric cultures of American Indians, dating back to 10,000 b.c., lived in the area that is now Boone Co. All along the county’s 39-mile Ohio River shoreline, from the mouth of Dry Creek, which separates Boone Co. from Kenton Co., to Big Bone Creek, which separates Boone Co. from Gallatin Co., there is documented archaeological evidence of all four of the major temporal prehistoric native traditions: Paleo Indian, Archaic, Woodland, and Late Prehistoric. It was a logical and practical choice for American Indians to settle in the region. The Ohio River provided water and game and afforded a means for transportation, and the fertile bottomlands offered native vegetation for food, basket-making, weaving, bedding, attracting game, and later, farming opportunities. Eons of glacial events had left behind creek and river cobbles that provided materials for stone tools and other implements. The upper and inland hardwood forests above the separate riverine terraces provided nuts, berries, forage, fuel, and cover. The later American Indians utilized the abundant shell, limestone, and clay for the manufacture of pottery and other ceramic items. The lush grazing and browsing resources and the presence of mineral springs and salt licks in the area guaranteed an ever-available meat source. As far back as prehistoric times, there were three major navigational landmarks on the Ohio River in the region, and each was identified long before the river was named by whites or the Commonwealth of Kentucky was created. Of these three, the Falls of the Ohio, Big Bone Lick, and Split Rock (see Split Rock Conservation Park), the latter two are in present Boone Co. Split Rock is located along the bank at the Ohio River’s 500mile marker and is a unique natural history feature. It is a rare freestanding glacial conglomerate formation, which was well known to prehistoric and historical travelers alike. Big Bone Lick is the most famous depository of Pleistocene vertebrate megafauna fossil remains in North America. President Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809) is considered the father of vertebrate paleontology, and Big Bone Lick is regarded as its home. Six separate onceunknown Pleistocene species have been discovered there. In the late 1700s, and throughout the 20th century, world-renowned naturalists and scientists arrived to study specimens from Big Bone Lick. Early Kentucky explorers, frontiersmen, and military leaders such as George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, and others went to the Big Bone Lick area during the course of their adventures, not necessarily collecting specimens, but knowing and noting what was there. The first doc-