The Boone Chair
In a little known museum in a well-known part of Fayette County, one of the great treasures of Kentucky history is on display. At Waveland State Historic Site, just off of Nicholasville road, there resides a link to Kentucky's early pioneer period - the Boone Chair. This primitive ladder-back chair was witness to some of the crucial moments in Kentucky's pioneer period.
It is a Pennsylvania chair made in the 1720s and belonged originally to Squire Boone, Daniel Boone's father. The chair was most likely bought when the Boones lived in Berks County, Pennsylvania. It went with the Boones to North Carolina in 1750 when they settled on the Yadkin River in Rowan County, NC. Then, it came to Kentucky in 1779 when Daniel and his family and neighbors moved to Boonesboro in Madison County. The chair at that point belonged to Daniel's sister Elizabeth Grant, wife of William. Elizabeth actually had two identical chairs; the other has been lost to history. She tied the chairs straddling a horse. The now lost chair carried an anvil. The other chair (shown below) had Daniel Boone's four year old niece, Rebecca Boone Grant, tied into it. These pioneers then set out through the mountains for "Kentucke". As tradition tells us, the ladies would take turns riding in the chair when they tired of walking. Little Rebecca Grant spent most of her time in it lest she stray away and be caught by the Indians.
In time, they reached the Kentucky river in what is now Madison County. The
party stayed at Boonesboro for a short time and then the Bryans, Grants, Craigs
and others resettled north of present-day Lexington at Bryan's Station on the
banks of Elkhorn Creek. Bryan's Station had been built in the fall of 1778 by
members of the Bryan family.
The first winter at the station was harsh, and there was a constant threat of attack. Some of the settlers left to return to North Carolina. However, many of the pioneers stayed, having resolved to make a home in the wilderness, even if it meant ruin or death.
In 1782, a force of British soldiers and Shawnee warriors attacked the fort at Bryan's Station and laid siege to the settlement. During the three days of the siege, the settlers began to run out of water. A few brave women ventured out of the fort to fetch water from a spring near the fort while the men provided cover for them. One of those who went out was Rebecca Boone Grant, the girl who had been tied into the chair. They brought water back without a shot being fired. Only three settlers were killed during the entire siege. A force of Kentucky Militia, including Daniel Boone, came and drove the attackers away and pursued them to Blue Licks where the militia was defeated some days later. After these tense few years, the Bryan's Station residents fanned out across the surrounding territory, many settling in Lexington. The chair went out of the fort with the Grant family.
In April 1793, Rebecca Boone Grant was married in Lexington to a man named John James Lamond. Rebecca's mother Elizabeth gave her the old chair as a wedding present and Rebecca kept it for the rest of her life. In 1850, when Rebecca was quite advanced in years, the old seat in the chair finally wore out. Rebecca's slave, named Uncle Frank, took corn husks and made them into a cord. He then wove a new seat that remains in the chair to this day.
Rebecca, in her old age (at left
c.1855), was living with her son John James Lamond II in Trimble County on the
Ohio River. In
1854, they decided to move to Union County in western Kentucky, a distance of
nearly 150 miles as the crow flies, and since they had to travel by river, that
distance was almost doubled. They tore down the house they were living in and
built a flat boat from the lumber. The Lamonds floated everything they owned,
including the chair, down the Ohio to Union County. When they got there, they
took the boat off of the river and rebuilt the house. According to Lamond family
tradition, the house was a faithful reproduction of the structure as it had
stood in Trimble County.
Rebecca died in 1858 and was buried in Morganfield, Union County, Kentucky. The chair was left to her son. He kept it for the rest of his life and when he died in 1896, the chair went to his son, John James Lamond III. This third John loved the chair; he took it to a studio to have his portrait made sitting in it and no doubt he told anyone who would listen the story of the chair. When he died in 1942, the chair was passed to his daughter, Stella Lamond, who was the head of the art department at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Stella never married and had no heirs. When Waveland was turned into a museum in the 1950s, she began to donate family items. She put in her will that when she died, the chair was to come to Waveland. In 1968, Stella's sister Lilla K. Lamond brought the chair to the museum. It had finally come home again to Lexington. The Boone chair is now on display in the mansion.