“loud shrieks of the captured girls…” – Daniel Boone Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin

Today, the Daniel Boone Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin remembers the capture of Boone’s daughter and her rescue 240 years ago.

There are several versions of this story with some more colorful than others.

This version came from the book, Daniel Boone, The Pioneer of Kentucky by John Stevens Cabot Abbott, published in 1874:

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An accident occurred which sent a tremor of dismay through the whole colony, and which we will describe as related to the intelligent historian, Peck, from the lips of one of the parties, who experienced all the terrors of the scene:

“On the fourteenth of July, 1776, Betsey Calloway, her sister Frances, and Jemima Boone, a daughter of Daniel Boone, the two last about fourteen years of age, carelessly crossed the river opposite Boonesborough in a canoe, at a late hour in the afternoon.

“The trees and shrubs on the opposite bank were thick, and came down to the water’s edge.

The girls, unconscious of danger, were playing and splashing the water with their paddles, until the canoe floating with the current, drifted near the shore.

“Five stout Indians lay there concealed, one of whom, noiseless and stealthy as the serpent, crawled down the bank until he reached the rope that hung from the bow, turned its course up the stream, and in a direction to be hidden from the view of the fort.

“The loud shrieks of the captured girls were heard, but too late for their rescue.

“The canoe, their only means of crossing, was on the opposite shore, and none dared to risk the chance of swimming the river, under the impression that a large body of savages was concealed in the woods.

“Boone and Calloway were both absent, and night came on before arrangements could be made for their pursuit.

“Next morning by daylight we were on the track, and found they had prevented our following them by walking some distance apart through the thickest canes they could find.

“We observed their course, and on which side they had left their sign and traveled upwards of thirty miles.

“We then imagined they would be less cautious in traveling, and made a turn in order to cross their trace, and had gone but a few miles when we found their tracks in a buffalo path.

“We pursued and overtook them on going about ten miles, as they were kindling a fire to cook.

“Our study had been more to get the prisoners without giving the Indians time to murder them, after they discovered us, than to kill them.

“We discovered each other nearly at the same time.

“Four of us fired, and all of us rushed on them, which prevented them from carrying away anything, except one shot-gun without ammunition.

“Mr. Boone and myself had a pretty fair shoot, just as they began to move off.

“I am well convinced I shot one through, and the one he shot dropped his gun. Mine had none.

“The place was very thick with canes, and being so much elated on recovering the three broken-hearted girls, prevented our making further search.

“We sent them off without their moccasins, and not one of them with so much as a knife or a tomahawk.”

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The Daniel Boone Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin shows with an artist’s image of the girls and their canoe.

Daniel Boone Commemorative Silver Half Dollar Coin