The young generations of Americans believe that they are the first to have parents that watch their every step – and they are very wrong. Parents in the mid- to late-1700’s hired out yesterday’s version of the GPS – Daniel Boone – to track their teens.

Daniel Boone often broke up underage drinking parties and, as pictured, romantic rendezvous.

Armed with his rifle, two styrofoam cups, and several miles worth of yarn, Boone would track the unsuspecting teens and report to the parents in real-time by use of the cups and string. During his assignments he trekked all over Kentucky, thereby earning him the status of an American icon for his explorations and occasional fights with Indians.

Helicopter parents were commonplace in those days – Lewis’s father Clark followed him all the way to the Pacific Coast and back; a young mother in 1871 was following her son by the light of a lantern when she dropped it and set fire to Chicago.

Visitors to the Museum of History at The History Bluff campus located in Washington, DC are able to see Daniel Boone’s famous styrofoam cups and yarn that he kept closer to him than his gunpowder horn. They were, after all, his livelihood.