Mr. Ben Boone

By Lois S. Poff © 1986

Issue: March, 1986

Editor's Note.... Mr. Ben Boone was born in the 1850's and died in 1926. He is buried in the Spangler Cemetery on Pine Creek in Floyd County, Virginia.

I always loved to go down to my Grandpa Strickler's beautiful old hillside home with an upstairs walkout porch, over at the back of Pine Creek Primitive Baptist Church at Floyd, Virginia.

Every time I went, I would look way over across the creek on a hillside, at the old Boone house and think of the time when I got so scared of Mr. Boone when I was real little, only about two or three years old.

I had walked over there from Grandpa's with my mother. Some of Mr. Jake Boone's family from Spray, North Carolina were visiting there and she wanted to see them. She grew up with Alice, Ruby and Sue Boone and went to Mossy Dell School with them before they moved to Spray in the late 1800's.

I don't remember going down the hill, crossing the creek or following my mother up a narrow path through the woods. I only remember coming into a clearing in view of the house and seeing Mr. Boone sitting in a chair out under a tree.

He had long, flowing, white hair down around his shoulders and I just stopped. I thought we had better be going back. I glanced around at my mother and saw she wasn't afraid. She was just walking on and didn't know I had stopped, so I started running to catch up.

Years after that, I told my mother that she took me over to Mr. Boone's with her when I was real little and I got afraid of him because he had long white hair. My mother said, "Mr. Boone never hurt anyone. He was one of the best men that ever lived. He never went to school and never learned to read and write, but he could read the Bible."