Mary Boone Bryan

1736-1819

 

Written in 1963 by Lillie Dale Baker Smith
 

Mary Boone was born November 3, 1730, the daughter of Squire Boone and Sarah Morgan and sister of Daniel Boone.

In 1755 she married William Bryan, who was one of the founder’s of Bryan’s Station, near Lexington. He was the son of Morgan and Martha Strode Bryan and was born 17 March 1734. His father was born 1696 and came from Devonshire, England and settled at Holdman's Ford on the Yadkin River in the fertile lands of the Cherokee Indians.  The Bryans who were of Irish descent had arrived at this same place two years earlier and here is where the two families intermingled.

In 1776 William and his three brothers cleared sixty acres of land which they enclosed and planted corn.  Then returned to their homes in North Carolina and never gathered the corn because a Cherokee War broke out.  In 1779 they returned to Kentucky and built the fort known in history as Bryan Station located on Elkhorn Creek 5 miles NE of Lexington. 

So many people came to this fort that corn became so scarce it sold as high as $125.00 a bushel and in some instances a horse was traded for a bushel of corn. In the year 1780 on of William and Mary's sons, William Jr. was killed by the Indians and two other sons, John and Abner died of disease   Then in April 1780, their father William Bryan who was captain of the fort, while out hunting for meat for residents of the fort was shot by the Indians and died about a week later and was buried under a giant sycamore tree on the north bank of a creek opposite the fort.  History now records how his wife, Mary led the woman from the fort at Bryan's Station during the truce in a siege by Girty and his Shawnee Indians down to the spring close by to obtain water.
 
The Bryans were so discouraged that Mary moved her remaining family, two sons Samuel and Daniel and two daughters back to North Carolina.  The sons' revolutionary service was in that state. After the Revolution Mary returned to Kentucky and resided with her oldest son, Samuel on his farm on the east side of the Licking River on what is now known as the Steven's farm near Grant’s Lick.

She lived there with her son Samuel until her death on July 6, 1819. She was buried in the Bryan Family Cemetery on the farm near the Licking River. After she had been buried there 100 years, the "Daughters of the American Revolution" contacted her relatives in regard to having her remains moved to a cemetery. 

In August 1929 her body was interred by Grants Lick Funeral Directors, Smith and Sheanshang. She was taken to the Oakland Cemetery, where the unveiling of the bronze name plate and a dedication took place on Sunday, August 1, 1930.

When Mary Boone Bryan died, her granddaughter, Margaret Gosney Bryan, (born 5 Aug 1803) wife of Hampton Bryan, fell heir to the old family bible and when she died 24 Jan 1888, Minerva Rosetta Bryan Baker (born 5 Dec 1839) fell heir to the bible.  She died 6 Sep 1910, and her daughter, the author Lillie Dale Baker Smith, took care of the bible whose leaves by then were tissue thin and yellowed with age. 
 
So it was decided to store it in a safe place for preservation.  It was presented to the Edmund Pendleton Chapter DAR in December 1946.
 

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