Farmstead where some believe Daniel Boone buried for sale

MARTHASVILLE, Mo. -- For sale: portion of historic farmstead. Asking price: $1.2 million. May or may not be burial place of storied explorer.

No one disputes that Daniel Boone and his wife, Rebecca, were buried on the Bryan farm, near the Missouri River west of St. Louis. The 32-acre tract that is now on the market includes the original brick farmhouse and the Bryan family cemetery, just across the road.

But in 1845, 20 years after Daniel Boone's death, the couple's remains were supposedly taken to Frankfort, Ky., and reburied there.

Some believe, though, that another man's bones -- not Daniel Boone's -- were exhumed instead, the result of deliberate misdirection by the farm's owner and Rebecca Boone's cousin, David Bryan.

Bryan, they believe, was upset that the famous pioneer's remains were being claimed by a state that had issued an arrest warrant against him for nonpayment of debts -- so while Bryan agreed to the relocation, he had a slave lead the Frankfort officials to the wrong grave.

Forensic study

In 1983, an article in National Geographic magazine reported that a forensic anthropologist had measured a plaster cast of the skull buried in Kentucky and concluded that it had belonged to a black man.

No DNA tests have ever been performed to settle the controversy. But Grace Stemme, who now owns the farm, is among those who believe Boone is still buried there.

So did her late husband, Walter, who died in 2003 -- 50 years after the couple bought the farmstead.

"My husband never would let anyone dig around in that graveyard," Grace Stemme said. "He figured Boone was always trying to find some peace and quiet when he was living, and we ought to let him have it now.

"Someone else gets to keep company with Daniel Boone."