• Date: 1915
  • Sculptor: Albin Polasek
  • Medium & size: Bronze bust
  • Location: Hall of Fame, Bronx Community College, 2155 University Avenue, Bronx

Albin Polasek, Daniel Boone, 1914. Bronx Hall of Fame. Photo copyright © 2019 Dianne L. Durante

Boone’s expedition

Daniel Boone (11/2/1734-9/26/1820), born in Berks County, Pennsylvania – on the western edge of British settlement in America – always told his 10 children that he had never gone to school a day in his life.

In 1769, he set out with 5 other men to cross the Blue Ridge, eventually passing through the Cumberland Gap into what was then western Virginia – now the state of Kentucky. For 2 years he explored he area.

In 1773, he led a group of family and friends there, but they turned back after his son James and another boy were captured and killed by Indians. In 1775, he finally succeeded in establishing Boonesborough, one of the first American settlements west of the Appalachians. By 1800, more than 200,000 Europeans had migrated to Kentucky along the route Boone had blazed.

Boone’s The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boone, 1784, helped make him one of the most famous American frontiersmen, an ideal of independence and a folk hero.

Quotes from Boone

  • “I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.”
  • Daniel Boone also appears as one of 4 cornice sculptures on the American Museum of Natural History, along with Lewis and Clark and John James Audubon.
  • For more on the Hall of Fame, see here.

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