Return to Christmas past at the Nathan and Olive Boone Homestead
Hunter, trapper, adventurer, soldier, surveyor. These are all words used to describe Nathan Boone, youngest son of Daniel Boone and a man cast from the same mold as his father. Overshadowed by the exploits of his famous father, Nathan played an important role in leading Missouri into statehood.
Today, the life and times of Nathan and his wife, Olive, can be experienced at the Nathan and Olive Boone State Historic Site near Ash Grove. There’s no better time to visit their home and final resting place than on Dec. 7 this year when visitors will be welcomed to the site’s annual Ozark Christmas Traditions event.
“It’s going to be slightly different this year,” says Holly Welch, superintendent of the site. “We’ve switched the times a little bit. It’s going to be from 2 until 6 p.m. so we’re going to kind of transition from an afternoon to an evening scene. We’ll be lighting candles, the path will be lit with lanterns and the house will be lit up with different candles and lanterns.”
Added this year is music from the time of the Boones. The Dogwood Mountain Dulcimers will be performing from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. during this year’s event.
The goal, Holly says, is to recreate the holiday traditions common to the area when Nathan and Olive lived at the southwest Missouri home. “We try to make it so that when people walk in, they do kind of experience how somebody would be walking into the Boone homestead, or any other homestead at the time,” Holly says. “You know, where you get the aromas. We don’t have apple pie, but we do have some oranges with cloves and nutmeg.”
Walking into the Boone home during the event is like taking a step back to a simpler time. Instead of twinkling lights, the season is celebrated with natural greenery, adding the aroma of a fresh-cut cedar tree to the scent of hot wassail, cinnamon and nutmeg. Visitors can create their own greenery with help from park employees and volunteers on the home’s front porch.
The focus is on hands-on learning about the traditions of the time when Missouri was slowly emerging from the wilderness.
“We look at it as our Christmas tradition,” Holly says. “So, we try to find materials, newspaper articles, personal accounts of what Christmas would have been like back in the 1800s and then we base our events on that.”
For example, last year Holly helped visitors make Christmas cards using a handpress. They could also witness how much more difficult it was for Olive to prepare meals by cranking a corn sheller and a grinder that would turn ears into meal to make cornbread, a pioneer staple.
Other demonstrators showed how to make a German feather tree, the first artificial Christmas tree, and paper ornaments. There were also many selfies taken with St. Nicholas, portrayed by park volunteer Todd Wilkinson.
The home was built in 1837 but would have hosted Boone family holidays until the couple’s deaths in the 1850s. These were important gatherings, Holly says.
“While you have the day-to-day goings-on that we show most of the time, of course, holidays were important,” she says. “It was a time for family to gather with those who sometimes were not here. You know, maybe they could only travel once a year, if that. It was a special time.”
That was especially true of Nathan, who spent most of his younger years away from home soldiering or surveying boundaries between the Indian nations to the west. Historians estimate that over 16 years, Nathan probably was home only four years.
Few state histories properly credit Nathan for his role in Missouri statehood, but that is something the historic site employees hope to correct through constant research. Nathan was born in Kentucky in 1781 but settled with his family in what is now St. Charles County. He helped write Missouri’s Constitution as a delegate to the 1820 Constitutional Convention.
With his brother, Daniel Morgan Boone, he launched a salt-making business near present-day Boonville that led to the region being known as the Boone’s Lick. The Boone’s Lick State Historic Site in Boonsboro tells the story of this early Missouri industry.
He dabbled in politics, running unsuccessfully for state representative twice. He fought in the War of 1812 and several skirmishes with Native American tribes. Nathan also was responsible for laying out roads and trails that would become important routes for western expansion.
He left behind a stately stone mansion, which still stands near Defiance, to move to the frontier in southwest Missouri. The move was necessary to avoid a month-long return home when Nathan was stationed at Fort Gibson in today’s Oklahoma. But one can only imagine Olive’s thoughts as she left the relative comfort to set up housekeeping in what was originally a dogtrot log cabin.
An important Missourian in her own right, Olive, the daughter of an immigrant from Holland, was a pioneer woman who gave birth to 14 children, losing one but raising the others to adulthood. While Nathan was off on his adventures, it was Olive who maintained the homestead with the help of several enslaved people.
The couple was married for 57 years and are buried in one of two historical cemeteries at the site. In the years that followed their deaths, no sign marked the little house as the home of these Missouri icons. In 1969 it ws placed on the National Register of Historic Places and it was named a Greene County Historical Site in 1985. The home fell into disrepair but was purchased by Missouri State Parks in 1991 and saved from ruin.
Today the homestead is lovingly restored, inside and out. One can stand on the back porch, and thanks to careful land management, experience the same view Olive must have seen as she carried on her daily activities. Recently the spring was cleared and invasive honey locust trees cleared out.
Research on the homestead continues, with future projects focusing on the enslaved people who helped build the home and run its farming operations. Plans are in the works to search for the location of the slave quarters and other structures on the site.
“It’s to teach people about how life was, not only for the Boones, but for the people in the area and for all the people on the homestead: the enslaved, Nathan, Olive and the grandchildren who came here,” Holly says. “Just to show what life was like.”
Ozark Christmas Traditions returns to the homestead from 2 to 6 p.m. on Dec. 7. To learn more, or to find more holiday events at Missouri State Parks and Historic Sites, visit www.mostateparks.com.
