During our nation’s 250th year, we continue our look at the people, places, and families who shaped the history of what is now Davie County. Few local families are as closely connected to the story of early settlement as the Boones. In this installment, Linda H. Barnette shares not only some of that history, but also her own family’s fascinating connections to the Boone family.
The Boones Come to Davie County
Many people in our area are interested in the Boone family because we all know that Squire and Sarah Boone came to what is now Davie County in the mid-1700s, raised their children here, and are buried at Joppa Cemetery. And everybody knows about their famous son, Daniel, the explorer.
While I am not directly related to Daniel, I do have some connections to his family.
We know that Squire’s brother John was the keeper of the family history, recording all the marriages, births, and deaths. This John never married. The other John who came here with Squire was his nephew, John, son of his brother Benjamin and wife, Ann Farmer. Ann died young, so young John went to live with his Uncle Daniel and his family. He eventually married a girl named Rebecca, probably a Rebecca Bryan, but her name does not appear on any papers.
It is through the second John that my connection comes. John, nephew of Squire and cousin of Daniel, had a daughter named Hannah who married James Penry. In turn, Joel Penry, son of Samuel Penry, married Ursula Dwiggins, the daughter of my fourth great-grandparents, Daniel and Ursula Dwiggins.
All four are buried in the original Dwiggins Family Cemetery on Boone Farm Road. Also, Hannah Boone Penry’s son was the first person buried at Center Methodist Cemetery.
Boone Land in Davie County
The other connection is the marker on what is now Highway 64 near Center that attests to Squire Boone’s Granville land grant for 640 acres in that area.
John Boone also bought a Granville grant for 640 acres, which was about a mile or so above Squire’s land near what is now Godbey Road.
When John Boone died in 1803, his estate was handled by his son, John Jr., who sold the land. Part of it was bought by my fourth great-grandfather, Daniel Dwiggins.
Original Boone Deeds Preserved in Davie County
My grandmother, Blanche Dwiggins Smith, had the two original deeds that were signed by John Boone and the Penry brothers in 1813. Those documents have survived for more than two centuries and are both safely stored in the vault at the Davie County Public Library. For me, those deeds provide a tangible connection between the Boone family, the Dwiggins family, and the land where generations of Davie County families have lived.
A Childhood Memory of the Boone Cabin
Mama Smith was born in 1891 and shared with me that she remembered going to John Boone’s cabin as a child for a taffy pull. The house was eventually torn down in the 1930s.
Imagine that—a home connected to the Boone family was still standing here in Davie County at the turn of the 20th century, and my grandmother had actually been inside it.
Today, the cabin may be gone, but pieces of the Boone family’s story remain all around us—in old deeds, cemeteries, roads, land records, family stories, and the names that have been passed down through generations.
Sometimes history can seem very far away. But here in Davie County, it may be closer than we think.
