Daniels
family
compiled by Columbian
staff in 1989
Politics,
journalism and other businesses were top interests for the Daniels
family in Vancouver.
A street
west of the downtown section is named for the Daniels.
William
B. Daniels, born in Ohio in 1817, crossed the Plains about 1853
and settled with his wife, Sarah, in Yamhill County, Oregon Territory.
The 1860 census shows him as a farmer. He also was active in Republican
politics.
A son,
Thurston, said his father's mind was more speculative than practical
except in politics, "where he excelled in judgment and shrewdness.
In the
early 1860s, when the discovery of gold sent miners rushing east
of the Cascade Mountains, President Abraham Lincoln appointed
Daniels secretary and acting governor of the new Idaho Territory.
He served
there a short time, then returned to the west side. He ran the
weekly Vancouver Independent, and sold the business in 1878, when
he became partners in a law firm with N.H. Bloomfield. When Bloomfield
was named Superior Court judge. W. Byron Daniels continued his
law business alone. He also served as city councilman, state legislator,
city attorney, mayor, county school superintendent and school
board member. W. Byron Daniels died in 1900.
Thurston
Daniels, another son of W.B. and Sarah, was longtime publisher
and editor of the Register, a weekly newspaper at Vancouver. Later
he was a lieutenant governor of Washington State in the early
1900s and involved in various business ventures.
A fourth
son, Horace Daniels, was the captain on a steamboat. He died in
1882.
George
Hubert's children totaled four. Two of these carrying on the Daniels
name were Horace Daniels and Gilbert Daniels.
Horace
active in various civic projects went to work for the Commercial
bank and later the U.S. National Bank.
He was
president of the Clark County National Bank when it merged with
Seattle-First National Bank in 1947. In 1951, he retired from
his final bank job, manager of the Clark County branch of Seattle-First
National bank, which had moved into its new offices in 1950.
Horace's
brother, Gilbert, was a bank employee, and later president of
the Wintler Abstract Co. and later Fletcher-Daniels Abstract Co.
