West wall and base of chimney in a station cabin.

1999 University of Kentucky
Field School at Boone Station (15FA218)

The University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology conducted an archaeological field school for undergraduate students at the site of Daniel Boone‘s Station, located in southeastern Fayette County, Kentucky. Daniel Boone initially settled here with members of his immediate and extended family as well as other settlers in the winter of 1779. He intended this locale to be his permanent home but failed to gain clear title to the land. He and most of his family moved away from the site in 1783-1784, but other settlers continued to occupy the station into the 1790s. In 1795, Robert Frank gained possession of the site and built a large stone house. The Frank family owned the site until about 1807 when it was sold to John Cockrell who lived there until his death in 1809. The site then passed into the hands of John Hundley who lived there until about 1814 when financial and legal troubles forced him to sell. Thereafter, the site was owned by various absentees landowners who probably rented it out to tenants. The Barker family acquired the site and surrounding land in 1849 and built a frame house near the station site in the late nineteenth century. The station site appears to have been abandoned prior to 1849. The last Barker descendant to own the site was Robert Channing Strader who willed the property, including the station site, to the Commonwealth of Kentucky for development as an historical park.

Students excavating the cellar of the Frank family's stone house.

In 1995, the Kentucky Department of Parks contracted with the University of Kentucky to conduct an assessment of the property and the station site; Nancy O‘Malley conducted this preliminary investigation. She determined that the site contained preserved subsurface cultural features and artifacts that dated from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. She also gathered evidence on the ownership history of the site that identified the construction of the Frank house and subsequent land use. Included within the bequest was an area identified as a cemetery. Mr. Strader claimed that Daniel Boone‘s brothers, Edward and Samuel, his son Israel, his nephew, Thomas, and his sister-in-law, Sarah Day Boone, had been buried at the station cemetery. Ms. O‘Malley¹s historic research revealed no credible evidence to support the burial of these individuals at the site; rather, she documented the deaths of Robert Frank, his wife Elizabeth Frank, John Cockrell, at the site and gathered other evidence that strongly supported the burial of the Boone individuals in other locations.

View of station cabin looking east.

The eight-week 1999 field school was co-taught by Dr. Donald Linebaugh, faculty member and director of the Program for Archaeological Research, and Nancy O‘Malley, Senior Staff Archaeologist for the Program. The students established a grid across the site, produced a topographic map, and conducted systematic shovel testing. Dr. R. Berle Clay of Cultural Resource Analysts, Inc., conducted a geophysical survey that recorded magnetic and soil conductivity anomalies across the main site area. The shovel test and geophysical data were used to identify areas of excavations with emphasis being placed on the exposure of architectural features that dated to the construction of the station and the later Frank house. Excavations conducted by the thirteen field school students exposed a section of the Frank house which had a massive stone foundation that enclosed a full cellar, two structures with shallow stone foundations, a cellar marking another structure, and a linear feature that was tentatively identified as a stockade segment. All of the architectural features were aligned along the cardinal directions and formed two parallel alignments that strongly suggest that the Frank family continued to use and improve the station cabins, and maintained the quadrilateral spatial plan of the original station by building their stone house in line with the earlier station features.

The artifact assemblage included abundant late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century artifacts and virtually no evidence that the site was occupied beyond approximately 1840. Locally made redware, English export ceramics, small quantities of empontilled bottle glass, wrought and early cut nails, abundant animal bone, metal tools, windowpane and mirror glass, buttons, beads, coinage (including a drilled 1740s English penny depicting King George II), marbles, and faceted jewelry stones all were recovered from the site.

Although excavations have been conducted by O‘Malley and others at several other late eighteenth century station and fort sites in Kentucky, the Boone Station excavations are the most extensive to date and are the first to uncover linear structural alignments that appear to represent the quadrilateral stockaded enclosures that are unique to station architecture.