Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone

The Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone: The First Settler of Kentucky, written in 1833, is an embellished account of Daniel Boone's life by Timothy Flint. Like other authors, Flint interviewed Boone for details, but he added his own version of events, making Boone fight bears, escape rampant Indians on a swinging vine, and forming him into an all-around backwoodsman hero. The retelling made the book one of the best-selling biographies of the 1800s, was the inspiration for literary figures like Davy Crockett, Don Juan, and Tarzan, and continues to influence the public picture of the "nature man" type even today. TIMOTHY FLINT (1780-1840) was a clergyman and scientist from Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1800 and became a pastor for the Congregational Church in Lunenburg, Massachusetts in 1802. Because of the many chemistry experiments he conducted (which no one understood), Flint was accused of counterfeiting money, to which he responded with a slander lawsuit. As a result, he left his congregation to travel along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as a missionary for almost eight years. In addition to clergy work, Flint edited and contributed to Knickerbocker and Western Review magazines and wrote several books, essays, and short stories, most of which focused on backwoods and missionary life.