An American frontiersman and explorer, Daniel Boone (1734-1820) was the greatest woodsman in United States history. Hero of much farfetched fiction, Boone survived both legend making and debunking to emerge a genuine hero.

For all the myths about him, Daniel Boone was very much a real man born near Reading, Pa., on Nov. 2, 1734. At the age of 12 he became a hunter. He accompanied his family to North Carolina's Buffalo Lick on the Yadkin River in 1751 and, after working for his father, became a teamster and blacksmith. In 1755 he accompanied Brig. Gen. Edward Braddock as a wagoner on the ill-fated march to Ft. Duquesne. While on this march he met a teamster named John Finley, an old hunter, whose talk of the Kentucky wilderness eventually influenced Boone's career as a woodsman and explorer. When Braddock's command was destroyed at Turtle Creek (near modern Pittsburgh) by a French and Indian...