Tulare County Biographies

ROBERT A. McDANIEL

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
        For sixty-five years the name McDaniel was closely interwoven with the 
growth and development of Tulare county, California ; not in the sense that 
members of the family were prominent as office holders or active in political 
affairs, but that they, and Robert A. McDaniel especially, played an important 
part in the development of the county's natural resources, building up its 
schools, improving the highways, etc.
        Mr. McDaniel was a son of James McDaniel, who was born in the state of 
Tennessee, married Margaret Stevens, a native of Missouri, and went to Lamar 
county, Texas, where their son Robert was born on November 11, 1850, the 
youngest of seven children, the other six being girls. James McDaniel died while 
Robert was still a small child and his widow decided to go to California. At 
that time the Indians were inclined to be troublesome on the plains and 
emigrants bound for the Pacific coast usually traveled in large companies for 
protection. Mrs. McDaniel joined a party of forty-two people bound for the San 
Joaquin valley, with four of her children and a few necessary household articles 
in a two-horse spring wagon. The party left Texas in the spring of 1859, driving 
one thousand seven hundred head of cattle, and did not reach Visalia until the 
15th of the following September, having been about seven months en route.
        At the age of sixteen years Robert A. McDaniel started in to earn his 
own living. For many years he was employed as a cowboy and "rode the range" over 
a large part of the San Joaquin valley. The country was then almost entirely 
uncultivated and he frequently saw herds of antelope on the plains or deer in 
the lowlands. In 1877, while still working as a cowboy, he homesteaded one 
hundred and sixty acres of government land near Woodville, which he afterward 
developed into one of the best dairy ranches in the county, capable of raising 
large crops of alfalfa and sustaining a large herd of dairy cattle. This land is 
now valued at two hundred dollars an acre. He also bought three hundred and 
twenty acres of land from the railroad company, which he partially developed. 
For this land he paid four and a half dollars an acre and sold it for fifty 
dollars an acre, making it a rather profitable investment. After he had passed 
his Scriptural allotment of "three score years and ten," he rented his ranch 
near Woodville and moved to Tulare, where he lived until his death, which 
occurred January 6, 1925.
        John Graham, a member of the party with which the McDaniel family came 
from Texas, married Mr. McDaniel's oldest sister, entered land east of Visalia 
and there passed his life as a farmer. Both Mr. and Mrs. Graham have been dead 
for a number of years.
        While living at Woodville Mr. McDaniel served for some time as a member 
of the school board and was influential in improving the character of the public 
schools of that district. He was a member of Tulare City Lodge No. 306, 
Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and belonged to the Methodist Episcopal 
church.
        In 1884 Miss Carrie E. Besse came to Tulare county from her native state 
of Illinois. She became acquainted with Mr. McDaniel soon after her arrival in 
California and in 1888 they were united in marriage. Two children were born to 
this union : Robert M. and Martha Eleanor. The latter died at the age of fifteen 
years. Mrs. McDaniel is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church and is 
interested in the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
 
Source:  History of Tulare County and Kings County, California � Kathleen 
Edwards Small & J. Larry Smith, Vol. II, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke Publishing 
Company, 1926., p. 452