The 1776 abduction and rescue of Jemima Boone and the Callaway girls became one of the most retold episodes of early Kentucky colonial history, inspiring major 19th-century literature and art.
Key Facts
- Date of capture
- July 14, 1776
- Number of girls captured
- 3
- Days held before rescue
- 3 days
- Raiding party
- Cherokee-Shawnee
- Lead rescuer
- Daniel Boone
- Literary adaptation
- The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
In the summer of 1776, a Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party was active in the region around Boonesborough, Kentucky, a period of ongoing conflict between Native American groups and colonial settlers pushing into the territory. The presence of settlers at Boonesborough made them targets for such raids.
On July 14, 1776, three girls—Jemima Boone and the two Callaway sisters—were captured by the Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party near Boonesborough. Daniel Boone led a pursuit and, three days after the abduction, successfully rescued all three girls, an outcome widely celebrated among colonial settlers.
The incident gained lasting fame in American popular culture. James Fenimore Cooper drew on it for a fictionalized episode in his 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans, and Charles Ferdinand Wimar depicted the abduction in a painting around 1855, cementing the event's place in 19th-century American historical memory.