William B. Daniel

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          William B. Daniel was born Jan. 15, 1847, and joined the Battery May 10, 1864, at Cassville.  He was the son of Rev.  Samuel Daniel, the first Baptist minister in Atlanta.  W. B. Daniel remained with the Battery through the remainder of the War.  In 1871 he married Sallie Urquehart Evans and worked as a pharmacist.  Their children included Louise Ramsour; Stella Daniel (never married); and Mrs. Nathan A. (Annie) Brown.  Mr. Daniel was also very active in the Masonic lodge.  He died Dec. 31, 1926, and is buried at Riverside Cemetery, Macon, Bibb County, Georgia.

•Macon Telegraph, 1921 Nov 27, Page 10:  WIFE OF HALF CENTURY TELLS HOW TO AVOID DOMESTIC ROWS:  Mr. and Mrs. W.B. Daniel Celebrate, in Quiet Way, Their Golden Anniversary:   With their rockers drawn closely in the parlor where quaint old vases and bric-a-brac ornamented the piano and book case, a wife f half a century and a bride of a few weeks sat and talked yesterday afternoon – talked of married life.  The wife of fifty years was Mrs. W. B. Daniel, a dear old lady well known and beloved in Macon, where she and her husband, Dr. Daniel, have lived for forty years.  Most of those years have been spent in the old house on the corner of Academy and Ocmulgee streets.  Yesterday the couple celebrated in a quiet way their golden wedding anniversary, all their children and grandchildren coming home for the event.  Because the bride knew so little of married life and wanted to hear so much – and the little old lady had such a store of knowledge the bride listed and the little old lady talked.  She talked rapidly, her eyes beaming with the memories of the past half century.  “What is my advice to young married people?” she asked, repeating her visitor’s question with a thoughtful air.  “To bear and forbear,” she answered after a few seconds had ticked by.  “Just remember that.  As Dr. Little – you know he is our family physician and feels toward me as a mother – said just this week, Papa and I have been together fifty years and never had a fight.”  Had Few Quarrels.    Her eyes twinkled and the wrinkles around them deepened and lengthened like the brightest rays of the mid-day sun.  “Whenever a discussion comes up and you see it is going to lead to something, drop it,” she said earnestly.  “If you don’t drop it you will have a quarrel – and that will leave a scar. I believe in bearing with each other’s faults.”  “Haven’t you and Dr. Daniel ever fussed?” the wife of a few weeks asked wonderingly.  “Yes – a very few times,” she answered directly.  “Most of them have been about religion.  You see my father was a Methodist preacher.  He was Dr. James E. Evans, you know.  He held pastorates all over Georgia.  He was pastor of the Mulberry street Methodist church here a number of times, so I have really lived in Macon more than forty years.  At a general conference in New Orleans he was proposed for bishop, but strongly opposed it.  He had several small children then and he realized that being a bishop would keep him away from home a great deal.  He did not want to be separated from them, so he was not elected.  I’ve been a Methodist all of my life.  “And Doctor has been just as strong a Baptist as I have been a Methodist.  His father was a Baptist preacher, born in London and coming to America when a young man.  He held pastorates in Albany, Savannah and many other places throughout the State.  When we were first married, Doctor and I discussed religion and the discussions became heated on some occasions.  I realized that I couldn’t change him and he couldn’t change me, so we just agreed to disagree about it.  Don’t you think that was the only sensible thing to do?  For the first **** [four?] years after we moved to Macon I sang in the Mulberry street Methodist church choir.  At night Dr. Daniel would go with me as I couldn’t go alone, but after the children came I dropped out of the choir and Dr. Daniel stopped attending the Methodist church altogether.  The children all went to the Baptist Sunday school with their father.  You know how it is.”  Mrs. Daniel doesn’t believe in wives nagging at their husbands, but she thinks it is well to break them of bad habits if it can possibly be done without quarrelling.  “Dr. Daniel had the habit of leaving his clothes exactly where he got out of them,” she said, smiling at the recollection.  “I used to tell him it just made more steps for me so he stopped doing it.”  “Should you humor them?” the bride inquired, meaning of course, husbands.  So many people had warned her not to spoil “him” and so many had advised her to humor “him,” that she was at sea what course to pursue.  “I humored doctor,” the half-century wife answered simply.  “I used to humor him by putting buttons in his shirt, but had to stop it after the first baby came.  “Wives should always speak quietly to their husband,” she continued.  “You can’t get anywhere by speaking roughly.”  It is not such a terrible thing for a bride not to know how to cook when she takes the fatal step, according to Mrs. Daniel.  “I didn’t know one thing about cooking when I married,” she confessed.  “My mother didn’t know anything about it.  She was 65 years old before she knew a stove had a damper.  If a girl has any education she can take a cook book and with three or four trials learn how to cook a good meal.”  Never Complained about Food.  “Did your husband complain when you put burned biscuit on the table?”  the listener asked timidly.  “No, doctor never objected to a mouthful.  He has never complained about anything in his life,” she declared with a note of wifely pride in her voice.  It makes no difference how ill he is, he doesn’t utter a word of complaint.”  Mrs. Daniel declared that the first few years of married life are the hardest – because they are the adjustment period.  The longer a couple lives together the more alike they become in ideas and disposition.  “I’d never get a disposition like doctor’s, though,” she added, pride and love thrilling her voice.  “I couldn’t ever get the place where I’d never complain.”  The wonderful tete-a-tete was interrupted by “doctor” coming into the room.  As he entered, Mrs. Daniel got up and brushed tenderly some flecks of dust from his coat lapel.  His mustache and hair are snowy white; but excepting these tell-tale marks of age he doesn’t look to be anywhere in the neighborhood of 75.  He walks slowly, but holds himself erect.  His face is full and his complexion is clear and rosy.  Mrs. Daniel looks younger than her husband.  She will be 73 in April.  Her black hair is thinly touched with gray.  She wears it parted in the middle and combed straight back.  She winds the long, thick plait, in a large ball on the back of her head.  She has by far more hair than the average school girl of today.  She is vigorous, looking after many of the household duties.  “Doctor and I married when he was almost 24 and I was going on 23,”  Mrs. Daniel said.  “We married in the Trinity Baptist church in Savannah.  My father was pastor there then.  Nine couples waited on me.  We had a big white wedding.  I wanted to have all my attendants all here to my anniversary, but only four of them are still living.  Three Children With Them.  “My brother, Mr. Evans, who died Tuesday, was one of our attendants,” she said softly.  “He died on our anniversary.  We postponed the observance of the day until Saturday.  I knew he wouldn’t want us to call off the family reunion because of his death.”  Three of Dr. and Mrs. Daniel’s children were with them.  They lost a boy and a girl.  Those attending the quiet celebration were Miss Stella Daniel, Mrs. N. A. Brown, of Augusta, and Mrs. A. J. Metcalf, of Atlanta; the three children of the old couple; Elgin and Lee Ramseur, and Mildred and Ralph Brown, the four grandchildren, and C. J. Daniel, of Atlanta, brother of Mr. Daniel, and one of the attendants; Mr. J. A. Metcalf and Miss Lula Glass.  “Mr. C. J. Daniel celebrated on Tuesday his forty-fifth anniversary,”  Mrs. Daniel explained.  “He is hoping that they can celebrate their fiftieth, too.”  Golden wedding anniversaries are not oddities in Mrs. Daniel’s family.  “My mother and father lived to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary,” the half-century wife related. “My mother lived to be 84 and my father to be 76.  They lived in the old Schofield home in front of the McEwen Johnston home.  During the last year of the Civil War my father was afraid of Sherman’s army coming through Macon, so he refugeed us away from here.  He sold the home for $10,000 in Confederate money.  Of course, the $10,000 was not worth a cent after the war.  One year after the war, the owner sold it for $10,000 in good United States currency.”  Class Presents Token.  Dr. Daniel was clerk of the First Baptist church for twenty-five years.  Before he and Mrs. Daniel moved to Macon they lived in Albany.  He taught a Sunday school class there and two members of it were H. Y. Mallary, Sr., and Mrs. H. H. Tift.  “Doctor gave them little books for good attendance and they both sent us word recently that they still had them,”  Mrs. Daniel said proudly.  “As soon as we moved to Macon, Doctor was made clerk of the first church and soon after a deacon.”  He has been for many years a member of the men’s Bible class of the first Baptist Sunday school.  The class honored his golden wedding anniversary by sending Doctor and Mrs. Daniel $50 in gold and spreading resolutions on the class minutes.  “I almost forgot to tell you that Doctor was for eight years grand treasurer of all three grand bodies of Masonry in Georgia,” Mrs. Daniel said as the visitor was leaving.  When the visitor reached the sidewalk she turned to get one more glimpse of the couple who had weathered the storms together for fifty years and still found in each other boundless interest and love.  They were standing in the doorway, and she was patting his shoulder.