At this point on the march they were to be joined by William Russell, a famous pioneer, from the Clinch River, with his family and a few neighbors, and by some of Rebecca Boone's kinsmen, the Bryans, from the lower Yadkin, with a company of forty men.
Of Rebecca Boone history tells us too little--only that she was born a Bryan, was of low stature and dark eyed, that she bore her husband ten children, and lived beside him to old age.

Except on his hunts and explorations, she went with him from one cabined home to another, always deeper into the wilds.

There are no portraits of her.

We can see her only as a shadowy figure moving along the wilderness trails beside the man who accepted his destiny of God to be a way-shower for those of lesser faith.
"He tires not forever on his leagues of march Because her feet are set to his footprints, And the gleam of her bare hand slants across his shoulder." Boone halted his company on Walden Mountain over Powell's Valley to await the Bryan contingent and dispatched two young men under the leadership of his son James, then in his seventeenth year, to notify Russell of the party's arrival.

As the boys were returning with Russell's son, also a stripling, two of his slaves, and some white laborers, they missed the path and went into camp for the night.