Napoleon Boone, the first White child born in Kansas, turns 195 years old

The settlement of Daniel Morgan Boone was the first settlement in what is now Jefferson County and also the first in the state of Kansas. Daniel M. was the son of the legendary Kentucky pioneer Daniel Boone. He was born on December 23, 1769, in Yadkin, Rowan County, North Carolina, he was the seventh child and third son of Daniel and Rebecca Boone. He left his home in the Bib Miami River near Cincinnati in 1795 to explore the region to the west of the Mississippi. He would travel as far west as the area where Kansas City now stands. Two years later at the request of his father he traveled to the St. Charles district of what is today eastern Missouri and received a land grant from the Spanish Lieutenant Governor Zenon Trudeau. The grant was for a tract of land near present day Matson, MO. Trudeau encouraged Daniel M. to invite his father to move there too. Two years later in 1799 both of his parents arrived with a group of settlers. His parents would live in this area until their deaths. He made a living by hunting and trapping as well as conducting land surveys in what is today, St. Charles, Warren, Montgomery, and Lincoln Counties in Missouri.

On March 2, 1800, he married Sarah Griffin Lewis in St. Charles, MO. She was just 14 years old at the time while he was just past the age of 30. Their first child John was born six years later. They would have 12 children, 10 boys and two girls. In 1805 Daniel M. and his brother Nathan opened a salt making operation near present day Boonville. The road that they built became known as Boone’s lick Trail or Boone’s Lick Road which allowed settlers to reach central Missouri. He was also an outfitter for the westward trails and owned a store in Westport, MO which today is part of Kansas City. By 1812 he and Sarah had four children and he was serving as a Captain in the Missouri Militia during the War of 1812. He worked as a spy and patrolling the frontier. He then moved to present day Jackson County, MO.

His assignment to an Indian Agency would come after a treaty between the Kaw Indians and the United States Government was signed. On June 3, 1825, the U.S. government made a treaty with the Kaw Indians by which it was agreed that the government would furnish the Indians with 300 heads of cattle. 300 hogs, 500 fowls, three yoke of oxen, two carts and such farming tools as the superintendent should deem necessary. The superintendent should employ such persons to aid and instruct the Indians in their farming pursuits. The treaty was signed by General Clarke on the part of the U.S. government and by 12 Kaw chiefs representing the Indians. In accordance with the treaty Major Daniel Morgan Boone was selected to instruct the Indians in the Principle of Agriculture. His title was “Farmer for the Kansas Indians” He was appointed in the Spring of 1827 and moved with his family to the Kaw or Kansas Valley. He was located on the North bank of the Kaw in the extreme southern part of present-day Jefferson County and about two and half miles from Williamstown on the Kansas Pacific Railroad Line.

It was here that his youngest child was born on August 22, 1828. Napoleon Boone was undoubtedly the first white child born in not only Jefferson County but also in Kansas. According to a letter from his brother Daniel written years later their father and his family were the only white family in the territory at that time. Napoleon lived a short life dying in California on May 20, 1850, at the age of 21, most likely from the Cholera epidemic that was sweeping through that part of the country. Daniel M. would live at the Kaw site for five to six years before moving back to Jackson County, Missouri. He died there on July 13, 1839, from Cholera at the age of 69 years. His wife Sarah would outlive her husband by eleven years dying almost a month after her youngest child Napoleon on June 19, 1850, at 64 years old. Of Daniel and Sarah’s twelve children only three would live past the age of 40. Their eldest John died when he was 15 and they lost an infant named Milton when he was 5 months old. Daniel Boone III lived to be 70, Edward H. died at 46 years old, and Alonzo Havington Boone died when he was 57. The rest all passed in either their mid to late twenties or early thirties.

Today the Boone Society Inc. is dedicated to preserving the Boone Family history and is run by decedents of Daniel Boone. They help to preserve the Daniel Morgan Boone Memorial Park located in Kansas City and includes the Boone-Hayes Cemetery where many of the Boone family members are buried. This includes Daniel Morgan, his wife Sarah and several of their children. Not much is left of the Kaw Indian agency today as they were eventually moved to their present reservation in Oklahoma. The land where the agency was may have reclaimed much of what was there but the history that was made there has lived on.