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It was many years before Daniel Boone realized his dream of reaching Kentucky. Such an expedition into the far-off wilderness could not be lightly undertaken; its hardships and dangers were innumerable; and the way thither from the forks of the Yadkin was not as easily found, through this perplexing tangle of valleys and mountains, as Finley had supposed. His own route had doubtless been over the Ohio Company's pass from the upper waters of the Potomac to a tributary of the Monongahela.

Another reason caused Daniel long to linger near his home. A half-dozen years before the Boones reached the Yadkin country there had located here a group of several related families, the Bryans, originally from Ireland. Pennsylvanians at first, they had, as neighbors crowded them, drifted southwestward into the Valley of Virginia; and finally, keeping well ahead of other settlers, established themselves at the forks of the Yadkin. They took kindly to the Boones, the two groups intermarried, and both were in due course pioneers of Kentucky. Rebecca, the daughter of Joseph Bryan, was fifteen years of age when Daniel first read his fate in her shining black eyes. In the spring following his return from Braddock's slaughter-pen he led her to the altar, the ceremony being performed by old Squire Boone—farmer, weaver, blacksmith, and now justice of the peace for Rowan County.

An historian of the border, who had studied well the family traditions, thus describes Daniel and Rebecca at the time when they set forth together upon the journey of life: "Behold that young man, exhibiting such unusual firmness and energy of character, five feet eight inches in height, with broad chest and shoulders, his form gradually tapering downward to his extremities; his hair moderately black; blue eyes arched with yellowish eyebrows; his lips thin, with a mouth peculiarly wide; a countenance fair and ruddy, with a nose a little bordering on the Roman order. Such was Daniel Boone, now past twenty-one, presenting altogether a noble, manly, prepossessing appearance.... Rebecca Bryan, whose brow had now been fanned by the breezes of seventeen summers, was, like Rebecca of old, 'very fair to look upon,' with jet-black hair and eyes, complexion rather dark, and something over the common size of her sex; her whole demeanor expressive of her childlike artlessness, pleasing in her address, and unaffectedly kind in all her deportment. Never was there a more gentle, affectionate, forbearing creature than this same fair youthful bride of the Yadkin." In the annals of the frontier, as elsewhere, all brides are fair and grooms are manly; but, allowing for the natural enthusiasm of hero-worshipers, we may, from the abundance of testimony to that effect, at least conclude that Daniel and Rebecca Boone were a well-favored couple, fit to rear a family of sturdy borderers.

It was neither the day nor the place for expensive trousseaus and wedding journeys. After a hilarious wedding-feast, Boone and his wife, with scanty equipment, immediately commenced their hard task of winning a livelihood from the soil and the forest. At first occupying a rude log cabin in his father's yard, they soon afterward acquired some level land of their own, lying upon Sugar Tree, a tributary of Dutchman's Creek, in the Bryan settlement, a few miles north of Squire Boone's. All of this neighborhood lies within what is now Davie County, still one of the richest farming districts in North Carolina. Save when driven out by Indian alarms and forays, they here lived quietly for many years.

The pioneers in the then back country, along the eastern foot-hills of the Alleghanies, led a rough, primitive life, such as is hardly possible to-day, when there is no longer any frontier within the United States, and but few districts are so isolated as to be more than two or three days' journey from a railway. Most of them, however, had been bred, as were the Boones and the Bryans, to the rude experiences of the border. With slight knowledge of books, they were accustomed to living in the simplest manner, and from childhood were inured to the hardships and privations incident to great distance from the centers of settlement; they possessed the virtues of hospitality and neighborliness, and were hardy, rugged, honest-hearted folk, admirably suited to their self-appointed task of forcing back the walls of savagery, in order that civilization might cover the land. We may well honor them for the great service that they rendered to mankind.

The dress of a backwoodsman like Daniel Boone was a combination of Indian and civilized attire. A long hunting-shirt, of coarse cloth or of dressed deerskins, sometimes with an ornamental collar, was his principal garment; drawers and leggings of like material were worn; the feet were encased in moccasins of deerskin—soft and pliant, but cold in winter, even when stuffed with deer's hair or dry leaves, and so spongy as to be no protection against wet feet, which made every hunter an early victim to rheumatism. Hanging from the belt, which girt the hunting-shirt, were the powder-horn, bullet-pouch, scalping-knife, and tomahawk; while the breast of the shirt served as a generous pocket for food when the hunter or warrior was upon the trail. For head-covering, the favorite was a soft cap of coonskin, with the bushy tail dangling behind; but Boone himself despised this gear, and always wore a hat. The women wore huge sunbonnets and loose gowns of home-made cloth; they generally went barefoot in summer, but wore moccasins in winter.

Daniel Boone's cabin was a simple box of logs, reared in "cob-house" style, the chinks stuffed with moss and clay, with a door and perhaps but a single window. Probably there was but one room below, with a low attic under the rafters, reached by a ladder. A great outside chimney, built either of rough stones or of small logs, coated on the inside with clay mortar and carefully chinked with the same, was built against one end of this rude house. In the fireplace, large enough for logs five or six feet in length, there was a crane from which was hung the iron pot in which the young wife cooked simple meals of corn-mush, pumpkins, squashes, beans, potatoes, and pork, or wild meat of many kinds, fresh and dried; in a bake-kettle, laid upon the live coals, she made the bread and corn pone, or fried her steaks, which added variety to the fare.

Dishes and other utensils were few—some pewter plates, forks, and spoons; wooden bowls and trenchers, with gourds and hard-shelled squashes for drinking-mugs. For knife, Boone doubtless used his belt-weapon, and scorned the crock plates, now slowly creeping into the valley, as calculated to dull its edge. Over the fireplace deer's horns served as rests for his gun. Into the log wall were driven great wooden pegs, hanging from which flitches of dried and smoked bacon, venison, and bear's-meat mingled freely with the family's scanty wardrobe.

With her cooking and rude mending, her moccasin-making, her distaff and loom for making cloths, her occasional plying of the hoe in the small vegetable patch, and her ever-present care of the children and dairy, Rebecca Boone was abundantly occupied.