Daniel Boone Sugar Tree Creek Homestead
Daniel Boone (1734-1820), son of Squire and Sarah Boone, married Rebecca Bryan (1739-1813) in Davie County on 14 August 1756. For some eight years, from about 1756 until about 1764, they lived on what was probably Bryan property in the forks of Sugar (tree) Creek in eastern Davie County.
Their first two sons, James and Israel, were born there. Though Daniel farmed some, he was primarily engaged in hunting and trapping. He is said to have killed as many as thirty deer a day, selling the hides in Salisbury, North Carolina.
High amplitude reflections around the perimeter of the house site could be produced by corner stones or foundation stones that originally supported a cabin. The large area of high amplitude reflections in the northwest corner of the site could some type of prepared surface. Smoke houses often had a gravel floor, and a washhouse could have a cobble lined floor. The reflection-free area west of the house site could be the vault of a privy. The linear sets of reflections that extend across the grids on the 0.7-1.0 foot depth slice are tree roots.
We suggest that the cabin’s width was approximately 16 x 20 feet, typical of the single pen log cabin construction that housed early settlers in the region (Kelso, 1984). Doors would have been cut in the front and rear walls and there would be a window or two with a chimney at one end. The cabin could have been expanded into a double pen as the family size grew by building another cabin that shared the same wall (Fisher, 1989).
The location of a possible privy (identified as a cesspool vault in the subsurface) occurs within the usual distance of 25-100 feet behind the house and situated near other outbuildings such as a smoke house (Harrison, 2002).The location of Daniel Boone’s cabin has been reported to be where a pile of stones presently rests in a grove of trees. This GPR survey identified anomalies which could be interpreted to indicate the location of a smokehouse and privy. A conceptual map of the lay out of the Daniel Boone homestead was drafted.
Topographic map showing the location of the house site.
Aerial photograph of the house site and surrounding features.
Small scale LiDAR image of the house site and surrounding features.
Large scale LiDAR image of the house site and surrounding features.
0.4-0.8 foot GPR depth slice with the footprint of a single pen cabin.
Three GPR profiles across the reflection-free anomaly (red dashed line) west of the house site.
GPR profiles across anomaly on the northwest corner of the house site.
Conceptual map of the Daniel Boone homestead at Sugar Tree Creek.
