“It seems a Pennsylvania schoolteacher by the name of John Filson had his own dream. He was going to write a book about Kentucky. So Filson took a trip down Kentucky way to interview some of the old settlers. The book became popular and held a lot of truths, as well as a good measure of myths. He was generous and devoted a whole section to Daniel Boone and his exploits.
“After the publication of Filson’s book folks started asking Daniel to locate, survey and stake out tracks of land for them in Kentucky. Boone obliged them and set the price on his services at one half of the land surveyed. By 1788 Rebecca’s husband owned some 50,000 acres of prime Kentucky land. At last Daniel could provide for his Rebecca and their large brood the way he thought a man ought too.
“Whether Daniel did it purposelessly or unknowingly, he often surveyed lands that had previous claims on them. He also sort of had a tendency, after locating and surveying land, to put off establishing a clear and legal title to it. The urge to go off wondering through the woods and do some hunting was still a strong pull in the nature of Rebecca’s husband. I guess it never occurred to him that some others might use this delay to establish title for themselves on lands he’d surveyed. As a result, thousands and thousands of acres were lost by his customers, which meant Daniel’s portions were lost, too. It wasn’t long before folks started to regard this honest backwoodsman as a fraud, and the lawsuits began. Doing the best he knew to do, he started selling off his land to pay people back, but a lot of what he’d thought was his was not his to sell. Once more, Rebecca’s husband took off for the forest.
“I recall back in about the mid-1790s when a backwoodsman came upon the Boone camp. What he saw there was unbelievable, considering Daniel Boone had been regaled as a hero. The Boones, with two of their daughters and their husbands, were living in open-sided lean-tos near the Big Sandy River. They had one butcher knife among them and had made forks from pieces of cane to eat their meals with off wooden troughs. But, being Boones, they were making the best of it till times got better. Not only that, Old Boone was real happy because he’d just shot what he called the ‘master bear of the Western country.’ And as always, he was looking forward, not backwards, as he expected to get a good price for the bear’s skin and several others he had drying near their campfire. For Boone, things were always bound to get better, and for a time they did. And, of course, that meant packing up and moving further west.
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