Boones come back to life to close out historical lecture series
PARKERSBURG — The life and times of Daniel and Rebecca Boone came to life Sunday at the Blennerhassett Museum of Regional History in downtown Parkersburg.
Joe and Cheryl Lycan presented “Frontier Living with Daniel and Rebecca Boone” as the final entry in the 2017 Blennerhassett Winter Lecture Series.
The Lycans portrayed the Boones and told stories of the couple’s meeting, courtship and marriage. They also told stories of Daniel’s many hunting excursions into the untamed territories of Kentucky in the late 18th Century; interactions and violent confrontations with Indians, including many with the Cherokee tribe; and many challenges they faced in making lives for themselves on the frontier.
Daniel Boone was considered an early pioneer and great frontiersman. He was known for his scouting abilities, communication skills and was known for the settlement of Kentucky.
“I did hunt quite a bit,” said Lycan in character as Daniel Boone. “I wasn’t much on farming and I did not wear a coonskin hat.”
Lycan, as Boone, talked about the lives of hunters in the territories during the French and Indian War while Cheryl, as Rebecca, talked about the work she had to do at home. They discussed life on the frontier, taking shelter at forts when Indian attacks were bad and tactics used in frontier warfare.
They also talked about economics and how Boone’s long hunting trips and the skins he would gather would make them more money than just farming ever would.
Lycan, as Boone, talked about Boone’s ability to communicate with Indians and how they respected him for knowing their ways. He talked about losing two sons in fighting in Kentucky, having land claims not honored there, the siege of Boonesboro and what they had to do to come out victorious and more. They ended with talking about how the Boones eventually made their way to the Missouri territory and finished out their lives.
“We had sacrificed so much for Kentucky,” Lycan said as Boone. “I was once quoting as saying, ‘If I had my choice to return to Kentucky or to go to hell, I would choose the latter.'”
Boone was a wonderful woodsman and one of the finest patriots this nation has ever known, Joe Lycan said.
“He was hard working, he was honest and he relied on the good Lord to get him through every day,” he said.
Boone had two favorite books, “Gulliver’s Travels” and the Bible.
“When he went on those long hunts, going traipsing, he had his Bible with him and it gave him comfort in the woods,” Joe Lycan said. “There is much wisdom in that book, practical and spiritual.”
He grew up idolizing the version of Daniel Boone brought to life by actor Fess Parker on the 1960s TV series “Daniel Boone.”
“I literally built my first flintlock rifle when I was in the seventh grade,” Joe Lycan said of having to buy the parts himself and having to work to make the $171 he needed to do it.
“Didn’t it just break your heart when you found out Daniel Boone hated coonskin hats,” Joe Lycan asked the crowd at the museum.
He also read the book, “The Frontiersmen” by Allan W. Eckert which mesmerized him and inspired him to build more rifles and got him looking into the life of Boone, Simon Kenton and Tecumseh.
“I learned to hunt with a flintlock,” Joe Lycan said. “After you built your own gun and dropped a squirrel out of a tree with a rifle you built, you will strut around like a rooster.”
Cheryl Lycan recounted how when Boone’s family went to Missouri and Rebecca died at 74. Daniel Boone, who was four years older, lived another seven years.
“He always made family promise that no matter where he died that they would bring him back and bury him next to Rebecca,” she said. “I think that is a testament to the love and the family through everything they had been through, the good and a lot of bad, but I think it is a testament for the love they had for each other.”
Joe Lycan talked about how he felt the country now has lost its way.
“We have to be one nation under God,” he said. “It is going to take some people with some backbone and spit in them to get it done.
“I want you to think about what our forefathers went through for this fine wonderful nation, called the United States of America. I am sick of watching all of the feuding and fighting and all of the silly things going on. This country is something to be proud of and a lot of people gave their blood for.”