The end, however, was sad enough. When Kentucky was admitted to the
Union, Boone's titles to the land he had laid out for himself were
declared to be defective; it was all taken from him, and he moved first
to Ohio, and then to Missouri, where he spent his last years. He was
hale and hearty almost to the end, leading a hunting-party to the mouth
of the Kansas when he was eighty-two years old, and completely tiring
out its younger members. Nearly at the end of his life, Congress
recognized his services to his country by granting him eight hundred and
fifty acres of land in Missouri, and on this grant, the last years of
his life were spent. Chester Harding visited him just before the end and
painted a portrait of him which remains the best delineation of the
redoubtable old pioneer, whose striking face tells of the resolute will,
and unshrinking courage which made the settlement of Kentucky possible.
Scarcely less prominent than Boone on the Kentucky frontier, and with a
career in many ways even more adventurous, was Simon Kenton. Born in
Virginia in 1755, he had grown to young manhood, rough and uncultivated,
and with little evidence of having been raised in a civilized community.
At the age of sixteen, he had a desperate affray with a neighbor named
William Veach, during which he caught Veach around the body, whirled him
into the air, and dashed him to the ground with such violence, that he
thought he had broken his neck.
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