12. Daniel Boone was captured again in 1781, in Virginia
Tragedy continued to stalk Boone in Kentucky when the Shawnee killed his brother Ned while the two were hunting in October. Sporadic raids continued throughout the autumn and winter, though Boone’s Station was relatively untouched. Its militiamen, including Daniel and Israel Boone, responded to several alarms throughout the region. In early 1781 Daniel Boone was elected to the Virginia legislature, as a representative of one of the three counties into which Transylvania had been divided. He traveled toward Richmond to take his seat. That summer raids into the Virginia countryside were conducted by units of Cornwallis’s army.
When Boone was near Charlottesville, he was captured by British Dragoons under the notorious Banastre Tarleton. They were part of the same group which was dispatched to Monticello to attempt to arrest Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson eluded them, and Boone, despite carrying his credentials to the legislature, was held for just five days. He was granted his parole and continued to Richmond. At the end of the year, he returned to Kentucky, the news of Cornwallis’s surrender to Washington at Yorktown preceding him. Yorktown ended the fighting of the Revolutionary War in the east, but along the frontier settlements, there was more to come.