 Daniel Boone came back to his family in North Carolina and finally convinced his wife to leave again for Kentucky - this time with nearly 100 of their kin and joined by the family of Abraham Lincoln (the president's grandfather).In September 1779, this emigration was the largest to date through the Cumberland Gap.By late October 1779, they reached Fort Boonesborough but conditions were so bad that they left on Christmas Day, during what Kentuckians later called the "Hard Winter," to found a new settlement, Boone's Station, with 15-20 families on Boone's Creek about six miles north-west (near what is now Athens, Kentucky).