The traditional illustration of David Barton. Some historians question the image’s authenticity. [Howard L. Conard, ed., Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Southern History Co., 1901)]

David Barton was born near Greenville, North Carolina, now in eastern Tennessee, on…

French artist Louis-Leopold Boilly’s rendering of members of an Osage traveling party in Europe, including Big Soldier (at right). [Smithsonian Institution, National Portrait Gallery, object # S/NPG.2011.5]

Big Soldier, a Little Osage war leader, was probably born in 1773 in a village near the…

Frederic L. Billon. [Billon, Annals of St. Louis in Its Territorial Days from 1804 to 1821 (St. Louis: Nixon-Jones Printing Co., 1888), frontispiece]

Frederic L. Billon’s amateur antiquarian pursuits in the mid-nineteenth century resulted in…

 Morris Birkbeck. [Morris Birkbeck and George Flower, History of the English Settlement in Edwards County, Illinois (Chicago: Fergus Printing Co., 1882)]

An early pioneer-farming expert and author, Morris Birkbeck exerted an enormous influence…

Daniel Bissell. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, Portraits, N38584]

The builder and commandant of Fort Bellefontaine, General Daniel Bissell served with…

Bollinger’s Mill. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-highsm-65211]

A group of German-Swiss immigrants landed in Philadelphia in 1710 and settled in southeast…

Daniel Boone. Boone sat for artist Chester Harding shortly before his death in 1820. It is the only known portrait of Boone painted from life. [National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.2015.102]

Daniel Boone is most commonly known as a hunter, trapper, and frontier settler, but he also…

This lunette in the Missouri State Capitol, painted by Victor Higgins, depicts the sons of Daniel Boone manufacturing salt at Boone’s Lick in central Missouri. [Missouri State Archives, Ken Raveill Collection, MS386, 004-030]

Daniel Morgan Boone was born on December 23, 1769, the seventh child of

Nathan Boone. The date of the photo is unknown. [State Historical Society of Missouri, R. L. Hosman Collection (P0925)]

Nathan Boone, the youngest child of Daniel and Rebecca Bryan Boone, was born on March 2,…

Henry Marie Brackenridge. [State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory]

A lawyer, author, diplomat, and journalist in the early Federal and Jacksonian eras, Henry…