User:Neal O. Hammon/sandbox

The last surviving deposition by Daniel Boone is about land in northern Kentucky, in particular a salt lick that was located near the existing town of Vanceburg, Kentucky. The latter place had been visited by Thomas Bullitt and his company in 1773, but this visit was apparently unknown to Boone. The Boone deposition from the court case reads as follows:

The Deposition of Daniel Boone and others taken at the house of Flanders Callaway in the County of St. Charles, Missouri Territory, on the 6th day of October 1817, agreeable to two dedimusses to us directed, two Justices of the Peace within and for this Country to be read in evidence in certain suits In Chancery, now depending and undetermined in the Greenup County Circuit Court in the State of Kentucky wherein Dr. Trimble and J. Young are Complainants and A. Buford and others, Defendants. The Deponent being about 84 years of age and being duly sworn, and interrogated, deposes & says: Question, by Complainants. Were you well acquainted with the Ohio River from what is now called Big Sandy to what is now called Little Sandy Creek as early as May 1780, and previous to that time? If so you will please state what was the reputed distance between the two creeks. Answer. I was not personally acquainted but by good information. In the year 1774, I was requested by Governor Dunmore to go to Kentucky and bring in the surveyors. I was at General Lewis' own house, a few days before I started, and he undertook to give directions how to travel and where to find the surveyors. He directed me to cross the Cumberland Mountains at what we now call the Sounding Gap, at an old war road that would convey me immediately on the waters of Big or perhaps Little Sandy. He said it made but little odds which of them I fell upon, as they both mouthed close; he supposed it might together. I asked him how close he supposed it might be. He said twelve or fourteen miles. He said that his men frequently went down to the mouth of the Little Sandy and back again in two days to the camp, with loads of meat, where he lay near the mouth of Big Sandy near three months in the year 1754, as near as I now can recollect, when he was on a campaign, which was then and is now called the Sandy Creek Campaign. That the creek now called Little Sandy was not then known to them by any name, but knowing that they were camped on Big Sandy they gave the creek below, the name of Little Sandy. But when I received my orders from Governor Dunmore, he changed my route and ordered me as soon as I got over the Cumberland Mountains to take the Kentucky River and meander to its Mouth. In the year 1775, Colonel Thomas Slaughter, and Valentine Harmon of North Carolina was on their way from Fort Pitt by water. Their object was Harrod's town and when they came to the mouth of the Big Sandy they left the boat and took it on horseback. Harmon being a good Woodsman, they struck the Kentucky river about 1 mile above Boonsboro and came down to where we was at work, building a fort, about the 20th of April and they stayed with us two or three weeks, in which time they informed me of a salt spring they had found which proved to be on Salt Lick Creek;  and in order to enable me to find that salt spring, they gave me particular directions in writing as follows: Started from the mouth of Big Sandy and kept down the Ohio about 12 or 14 miles, crossed some small creeks until we came to the mouth of a creek which we could not cross at the mouth with our horses We turned up the same about one or two miles as we thought, when we came to the large falls which we crossed with ease and then proceeded on down the Ohio to Salt Lick or what is now called the Ohio Salt Lick, thence along the Buffalo paths to the Blue Licks. [fn 23]

The instructions by General Lewis were not too good in that the Little Sandy Creek or River has its headwaters in the southern part of Elliot County, about 65 miles from Sounding Gap (also called Pound Gap). Rivers originating within a few miles of this gap are Big Sandy, Cumberland, and Kentucky. According to the US Corps of Engineers, it is exactly 17 miles between the mouth of the Big and Little Sandy rivers, traveling along the Ohio River. The "Ohio River Salt Lick," mentioned in the deposition, is near the present city of Vanceburg. Daniel Died on 26 September 1820, at the age of eighty-five. His last deposition had been made when he was nearly eighty-three. Although this deposition can give no clue to the physical condition of this famous pioneer, it does indicate that his mind was still clear, since he was able to remember detailed events that had occurred over forty years before.