Born in rural Rockingham County, Bryan attended Washington Academy (later Washington and Lee University) but did not graduate. He then studied law at home. His first book,
The Mountain Muse (1813), consisted primarily of “The Adventures of Daniel Boone,” an ambitious poem of more than 5,600 lines. Perhaps the poem’s subject persuaded some later writers that its author was a nephew of the famed frontiersman. Boone did have a nephew named Daniel Bryan, but he was not the poet.
By 1815 Bryan was practicing law in Harrisonburg, and he married Rebecca Davenport that year. She died in July 1816. In April 1818 Bryan married Mary Thomas Barbour, sister of James Barbour (1775–1842) and Philip Pendleton Barbour, who were then representing Virginia in Congress. Later in 1818 Bryan was elected to a term in the Senate of Virginia. On January 26, 1820, he cast the only vote against a Senate resolution advocating Missouri’s entry into the Union as a slave state. He also delivered an im
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