Boone worked in the Industrial Arts program of the college, both instructing students in his craft and creating fine ironwork that was sold for the support of the school. During his time at Lees-McRae he displayed his work at the National Folk Festival in St. Louis, where visitors admired his creations, and he won the Creative Achievement Award at the third annual Chapel Hill Dogwood festival in 1935. He has left his mark on the Lees-McRae campus. From the electrified lanterns hanging on either side of the doors of the Rock House, to the ornamental hinges and fixtures in the house named for him, Daniel Boone VI bequeathed his hand-forged ironwork as an enduring legacy to the college. Daniel VI’s next step was to open the Boone Forge in Spruce Pine, NC, where he undertook the prestigious project of crafting ornamental iron for Colonial Williamsburg beginning in 1939. For several years he labored to craft ironwork to match that of his predecessors from hundreds of years before. “I take some pride in the Williamsburg work,” he said to a National Geographic interviewer in 1958. “I couldn’t do like the original smith who made a fine taper on a finial to please his ownself, hammering away until the line suited his fancy. To reproduce that line from a drawing or a rusted relic, you have to please the architect. That means calipers and more hammering to feather it down than that smith did 300 years back. But they never refused any of my work at Williamsburg.” During World War II, he continued to labor at his fiery forge, making whatever was needed to support his community and his country. One of his most famous creations was a combat knife made of the finest steel, hand-forged and hollow ground. According to Bea Hensley, one of Boone’s blacksmithing protégés, Daniel made a knife for each soldier from the Toe River Valley the Boones called home, as well as for other soldiers who saw the razor sharp knives and wanted one. He made over 2,000 knives. Bea still cherishes one of those knives that he keeps in his blacksmith shop. Bea wandered into Daniel Boone VI’s smithy in Burnsville, North Carolina, when he was four years old. “That was fortunate for me, because I lived next to Daniel Boone. I’d stick right there in the door, squat down and watch. That’s how I got my start,” says Bea, whose bright eyes and chipper manner belie his nearly 89 years. “I was thinking the other day about how much influence someone can have on you and not even know.” When Bea finished high school, he approached Daniel Boone VI and asked if the world famous master of ornamental iron would give him a start in the profession. Boone invited him in. “I kindly growed up in his shop. He was a wonderful guy. He treated me even better than family. He’d say, ‘If you can make something like this, then you’ll be a blacksmith,’” says Bea, wearing Pointer overalls and a khaki shirt. Bea has passed his skills on to his son Mike, who today specializes in hand-forged knives that he sells from the Hensley Forge in Spruce Pine. In addition to the knives, reproductions of which can be found on the Internet for sale, Daniel VI crafted scale model trains at his forge. The working steam engines show Boone’s eye for detail and his uncanny skill at the forge. The larger model is powered by coal-fired steam, and at one time was a ride at Maggie Valley’s amusement park. The Daniel Boone blacksmithing legacy continues in the mountains the Boones settled. In addition to the Hensleys, two of Daniel’s nephews practice the family craft. He left a simple philosophy for them to follow. “New ways are quicker,” he once said, “But old-fashioned ways are, after all, the best.”
Daniel Boone VI
Bea Hensley and son, Mike
A hand forged door latch in the Daniel Boone VI Cottage
The Croft Apartment in the Cottage