Daniel Boone Homestead

Daniel Boone Homestead
400 Daniel Boone Road
Birdsboro, PA 19508
610-582-4900

Daniel Boone was a pioneer and hunter whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. He is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the State of Kentucky. There he founded Boonesborough, one of the first English-speaking settlements beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Boonesborough was not the final stop on the journey westward; he was later to bring his family past the frontier town of St. Louis to settle in the Femme Osage district of the Louisiana Territory, which at the time of his arrival was still in Spanish hands. Boone’s journey started in a farming region about five miles southeast of today’s Reading, Pennsylvania.

The European settlement of Pennsylvania’s Oley Valley began in the early 1700s. The immigrants were primarily German, accompanied by French Huguenots and Swedes seeking religious freedom. English Quakers also inhabited the region, a natural result of William Penn’s having founded the Pennsylvania Colony primarily to create a new homeland for that group.

Daniel Boone’s father, Squire Boone, Sr., was an English Quaker who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1713 and worked primarily as a weaver and a blacksmith. In 1720, Squire married Sarah Morgan, who was from a family of Welsh Quakers. In 1730, Squire Boone built a one-room, one and a half story log cabin in the Oley Valley, and Daniel Boone was born in that log house in 1734.

In 1741, Squire Boone expanded his property by purchasing 25 acres of pasture land for his dairy cattle, and Daniel was given responsibility for tending the cattle. During the summer months he stayed in a rustic cabin at the edge of the pasture and learned to fend off predators such as black bears, bobcats and mountain lions.

In 1750 ownership of the property was transferred to William Maugridge, a relative of the Boones from Philadelphia. Around that time a large, two-story section was built of stone and attached to the log house. John DeTurk, the next owner, razed the log house in 1779 and replaced it with a two-story section of stone, while removing the barrier between what were previously two separate sections. DeTurk retained the original log house foundation and cellar. The expanded stone house, part of which rests on the foundation of the log cabin in which Daniel Boone was born, is the centerpiece attraction of the Daniel Boone Homestead.

The Daniel Boone Homestead in Berks County, Pennsylvania, is an open air museum containing an assemblage of residences and outbuildings from eighteenth-century Oley Valley. The historic site is located on 579 acres of land and includes the Boone House, a smokehouse, a blacksmith shop, a homestead barn, a Pennsylvania German log house, a combination bakehouse and smokehouse, and a water-powered, vertical-blade sawmill. Also available to visitors are a lake, picnic areas and other recreational facilities. The first stop is the visitor center, which offers a brief orientation video reviewing the life and adventures of Daniel Boone, and contains exhibits displaying artifacts relevant to the historical homestead. The interior of the Boone House can only be seen on guided tours which typically last about 45 minutes. One interior section is furnished in a manner characteristic of English settlers, and the other section demonstrates Germanic customs.

The composition of the front wall gives evidence of the existence of two sections; to the left is sandstone and the section fronted by the porch is composed of red shale. The section to your left is where the log cabin in which Daniel Boone was born once stood. Today, only the foundation and cellar remain.

The small structure to the right of the house (top photo) is a smokehouse, which was probably built by the DeTurk family in the late eighteenth century.

This Pennsylvania German bank barn (notice the stone bank in front of the barn) is the type which the DeTurk family probably owned in the late eighteenth century. The barn is oriented to the south to take advantage of the low winter sun to warm the stables, and the bank protects it from harsh north winds.

The Bertolet House was built in 1737 in the Oley Valley and later relocated to the Daniel Boone Homestead for display and preservation. It is a fine example of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania German log architecture. The fireplace is centrally located and opens into the kitchen. Medieval architectural influence can be seen in the building’s asymmetry, steeply pitched roof, flared eaves and casement windows (to the right). Casement windows are attached to their frame by one or more hinges, typically at their side.

The second photo shows an outbuilding that combines a bakehouse and smokehouse under one roof, also relocated to this site. Clay tiles were a common Germanic roofing material.

The Bertolet Sawmill was a water-powered, vertical-blade sawmill built circa 1810, and moved to this site from the Oley Valley in 1972. A “vertical blade” has a straight edge that cuts by the up-and-down movement of the blade, unlike a circular saw.