Several Missouri historians have stated before that the bones taken from the Missouri cemetery were actually those of a slave. When Boone died at 85, the gravediggers discovered an unmarked body had been buried next to Rebecca Boone (died 1813). The stranger was left in his grave and Daniel was buried at the foot of his wife's grave, but 16 years later, a gravestone was mistakenly placed over the stranger's grave. When the party from Kentucky took the bodies in 1845, it took the bodies of Rebecca and the stranger next to her wrongly marked as Daniel Boone. Both states claim to have the actual grave of Daniel Boone.