Daniel Boone

This biography of the great woodsman and pioneer makes use of a large cache of documents and oral interviews conducted by Lyman Copeland Draper. Draper was a writer and historian who spent decades collecting historical documents and conducting extensive oral interviews with the family, friends and associates of Daniel Boone and several other prominent early American settlers and pioneers. Draper's hoard of documentary material passed to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Reuben Gold Thwaites, a later director of the society, used this large collection of primary sources to create one of the first comprehensive and scholarly biographies of Boone. The text is accompanied by numerous illustrations, and this book is famous for presenting a rounded, human portrait of Boone as remembered by his friends and descendants. All future biographies of Boone draw heavily on this volume and the Draper collection.