Ken Kamper is the founder and Historian for the “Daniel Boone and Frontier Families Research Association”.   In 1981, quite by accident, Ken came across the original Government Survey Plat, showing the location of Daniel Boone’s 1799 Spanish Land Grant in what is now Missouri.  It didn’t take long to realize that his find was known by only a very few persons.  A natural curiosity for knowing more about the real Daniel Boone led Ken to seek library books, only to find that each account about Daniel Boone differed considerably from the others, enough so, that he continued looking.

Ken’s curiosity soon became an intense search for the facts about Daniel Boone, Daniel’s family, the Bryan family of Daniel’s wife Rebecca Bryan, and for any useful facts related to events within the Boone period frontier.  The search spread out to Pennsylvania, Daniel’s birth place, and to all the other states where Daniel lived, including; Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Missouri.  It was soon found that most of the Missouri Boone history had been overlooked by previous researchers even though Daniel had lived in Missouri for nearly 21 years versus 17 years in Kentucky.  Missouri, as it turned out, proved to be important as Daniel’s chosen final home, and as the home state for five of Daniel and Rebecca’s children and 68 grandchildren.

Ken’s search has continued for over twenty-five years, with other persons joining in to help him along the way.  While the search for facts has been ongoing, many astonishing new things have already turned up.   In Missouri, Ken has found and defined a number of important Boone history items including the stone house of Daniel’s brother Squire, the stone oxen-driven  mill building of Jonathan Bryan (Rebecca’s first cousin), three previously unknown important American trails blazed by the Boones, a number of Boone family house sites, cemeteries, and War of 1812 fort locations, etc.

In the process of the search for Boone facts Ken has studied and assembled what seems to be all of the main books, including all of the twenty-some Boone biographies, family genealogy books, books of government documents, state histories, county histories, and official records such as Court of Quarter Sessions, Circuit Court, Deeds, Taxes, Marriages, etc., and about every other book that matches to the Boone and Bryan frontier history from the 1680s until Missouri Statehood in 1821.  Ken now has over five-hundred books, and 2,500 file folders , in addition to maps, and other documents.  There are also many rolls of microfilm, and history data filled computer CDs.

The Research Association was created as a way for Ken Kamper and the Boone associates to share some of their findings.   A separate Daniel Boone Research Group, formed by a number of Boone researchers, is also being created into a Web site to offer much of the factual information for public knowledge and in some cases for purchase.

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