dual personalities

How was your weekend? Ours was punctuated by a lot of weather disparities which we are kind of used to in the midwest. Thankfully the really bad stuff went around us this time.

On Saturday daughter #1 and I took part in a DAR “field trip” to the historic Daniel Boone home in the rolling hills of wine country overlooking the beautiful Femme Osage Valley. I had been to the house back in the 1960s when I was a child and again in the 1990s when my own children were small. It is a lovely 1810 home built of native limestone.

I was surprised to find that the nearly 300-acre site now includes not only the historic Daniel Boone home, but the adjoining Village historic site, and surrounding property which was given to the people of St. Charles County by Lindenwood University in 2016. I’m sure I knew that but I had forgotten. The home and property now is called The Historic Daniel Boone Home at Lindenwood Park. The dozen buildings in the village were moved there, originating from within 50 miles of the property, and include several other houses, a general store, a schoolhouse, a church, and a grist mill. It is extremely well done.

Unfortunately, as you can see from these photos, it was an unexpectedly cold, gloomy and very windy morning! Boy, were we cold!

After our tour, we all hustled to our cars and drove down the road to the Defiance Ridge Winery where we had reservations for lunch. We warmed up and enjoyed a convivial time. As always at mid-MO wineries there was live entertainment and a happy crowd.

I also enjoyed becoming reacquainted with the legendary frontiersman who really was quite the exceptional guy. And as you know, this is a kind of guy that really appeals to me.

Boone spent his final years in Missouri, moving here in 1799 when it was still part of Spanish Louisiana and a pretty wild place. He lived here for twenty years and died on September 26, 1820, in the home of his son Nathan Boone on Femme Osage Creek which we visited.  (How he lived to the ripe old age of 85, leading such a life as he did, is amazing.)

Boone was buried next to his wife Rebecca, who had died on March 18, 1813.The graves, which were unmarked until the mid-1830s, were near Jemima (Boone) Callaway’s home about two miles from present-day  Marthasville, Missouri. In 1845, the Boones’ remains were disinterred and reburied in Frankfort, Kentucky. Resentment in Missouri about the disinterment grew over the years, and a legend arose that Boone’s remains never left Missouri. According to this story, Boone’s tombstone in Missouri had been inadvertently placed over the wrong grave, but no one had corrected the error. Boone’s Missouri relatives, displeased with the Kentuckians who came to exhume Boone, kept quiet about the mistake and allowed the Kentuckians to dig up the wrong remains. No contemporary evidence indicates this actually happened, but in 1983, you may recall, a forensic anthropologist examined a crude plaster cast of Boone’s skull made before the Kentucky reburial and announced it might be the skull of an African American. Both the Frankfort Cemetery in Kentucky and the Old Bryan Farm graveyard in Missouri claim to have Boone’s remains. But as our guide said, the Boones are both in heaven, so what does it matter?

(“Daniel Boone escorting settlers through the Cumberland Gap” by George Caleb Bingham, collection of Washington University)

Yesterday, of course, was Palm Sunday.

“There was a vast multitude crying ‘Hosanna’ … But Christ at that time had but few true disciples; and all this was at an end when he stood bound, having a mock robe put on, and a crown of thorns; when he was derided, spit upon, scourged, condemned, and executed. Indeed, there was a loud outcry respecting him among the multitude then, as well as before; but of a very different kind: it was not ‘Hosanna, hosanna,’ but ‘crucify him, crucify him.’” (Jonathan Edwards)

Onward to Easter.