 Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz
 Picture Courtesy of Jim Kuntz
About 200 yards east of Highway 94, and about 20 feet south of the north line of the Boone Spanish land grants, is the site of the Daniel Boone Judgment Tree. Daniel Boone held court under this tree from 1800 to 1804, when he was the Spanish syndic for the Femme Osage District.
It is believed there are two judgment trees. The first one (above) was near the town of Missouriton, which was started in 1818 by Daniel Boone and his oldest living son, Daniel Morgan Boone. (The town was washed away in the 1800s by the Missouri River.) The second one is believed to have been on property owned by his youngest son, Nathan Boone, after 1804, when Daniel Boone lived there and held an appointment as an American judge. The Nathan Boone home is now the Historic Daniel Boone Home, Inc.
The site of the Judgment Tree at present-day Matson was located for historian Ken Kamper in 1987 by Mrs. Hilda Stelzer. The tree, which had a massive girth, was still living in 1926, when the Stelzers moved into a limestone house visible to the east-northeast of this site. Mrs. Stelzer recalled that a few years later, lighting struck and killed the Judgment Tree. In 1951, the tree was blown over in a storm. Mrs Barbara Koenig also remembers the tree, which was on family property. Her husband sawed the tree up to remove it from their field, where it had been lying for a number of years. On this board is a copy of a photograph from the files of the State Historic Society of Missouri.
A Boone Sign Tree, with the name "D.Boon" carved into it, stood on bluff property owned by Daniel Morgan Boone, near the present-day location of Sugar Creek Winery. Wilfred Wissmann recalls that the tree was cut up.
The Danial Boone Judgment Tree Memorial Committee, and Richard E. Miller.
MO-94, Daniel Boone Judgment Tree Memorial, Matson, Saint Charles County Missouri
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