John with his parents, brother and sisters on June 30, 1857 Landed in New York. Rented a farm in Penyan, Yates Co, New York.

John married Almira in July 4, 1861 in Seneca Castle, New York. They were married by B.B. Gray, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Senaca Castle, NY. and soon moved south to Elmira, Chemung, NY. It was a booming city on a newly dug canal and the Susquehanna River trade route.

There was a severe drought in the New York area. Then move to Michigan with his wife Almira and daughter Eudora around 1863,settled in Hillsdale, Michigan and then moved to Cambria, Hillsdale, Michigan in 1865. He was a farmer in Saginaw County.

His parents also settled in Cambria Twp.

CIVIL WAR VETERAN
Co G 30th Mich. Inf
John was a member of Post 398 GAR.

In 1864, after harvesting the crops, John volunteered for the army and was to receive $33.30 bounty, a pricely sum for cash was hard to obtain and land was cheap on the frontier. He signed his enlistment papers on 5 Dec 1864 in the township of Adams, Hillsdale County to serve for "one year". John mustered in at age 22yr in Jackson, MI to serve as a private in Company G of the 30th Regiment of Michigan Infantry Volunteers, commanded by Lt George Douglas, stationed in Detroit to guard the boarders along the Detroit River and the Great Lakes from Confederate sympathizers and Rebel Refugees who might conduct raids.

Sickness was common in the Civil War and more soldiers felled by illness that were ever killed by bullets. On May 1, 1865, John was hospitalized in Jackson, MI, where he remained until his honorable discharge at the end of the war on June 17, 1865. ". He also contracted measles in the service causing loss of hearing and at Jackson was taken sick." The doctors at diagnosed him as having "Typhoid Newmonia"(sic) or inflamation of the lungs.

Numerous pension application were submitted, partly because John's condition continued to worsen and partly because new laws would be enacted. His pension began at $2.00 per month and was increased over the years when finally increased to $27.00 per month just a couple of years before he died. His death certificate states he died of Bronchitis.

"John's severty-one years let him through many life changes from a farm lad in the West Country of England where there were often time of frequent famine. Then as a teenager of 14y, with his family, he experienced a "rough voyage of seven weeks and three days" in a tiny ship bobbing and pitching across the north Atlantic Ocean during the wintery fall of 1856. Upon landing in New York City in this new strange land, the Boone family had to make their way across the state of New York to Yates County to thier waiting rented farm where they probably were tenants, meaning they farmed on shares. They provided the labor and the landowner received a share of the crops. They probably found farming somewhat different in New York The crops where quite different including a strange crop called "Indian corn" which had been unknown to them back in balmy England.

The winters were certainly colder with more snow. By the 1860 Census the Boone family was enumerated in the Town (ie township) of Benton, Post Office Penn Yan, Yates Co, NY and John, the eldest child, was out on his own at age 18y as a laborer with the Luman Sprague Farm Family. He had been working as a "hired Hand" or farm laborer during the 4 years since their arrival in New York, still speaking with his British West Country dialect. John apparently was a strong young man however he had one handicap for had "been almost blind in my right eye since childhood." (CW pension app)

John Boone in his lifetime had traveled thousands of miles and lived in at least 3 cultures, beginning as a child in the farming community of old, longtime settled European England, then to the partly settled farming communities of western New York state and finally to the wild raw booming lonely frontier wilderness communities of Michigan.

Taken from "A Boone Family History" by Malcom D. Bater