Hi,
I’m interested in the family of the James Daniel who md. Priscilla,
lived in Essex Co., VA and whose estate was settled in 1764. He was a
son of the James Daniel who also lived in Essex Co. and left a will
recorded in 1742.

Are there any list members who are researching this particular family?

Have any descendants of this family done the Y-DNA test? If so, is this
family related to any of the other colonial VA Daniel families, or any
other Daniel families? It would be very helpful to know! I’ve done the
atDNA testing if there are any interested descendants of this family out
there.

I recently figured out the connection between my Conduit family and the
James Daniel family, so am looking for additional information about this
family, and also for the other Daniel families so I can steer clear of
the other family groups in my research. I’ve been reading through the
older Rootsweb lists and message boards and the old Genforum archives.
Looks like the Daniel family of Middlesex Co., VA had most of the
participants on these lists, or at least the most active ones. Also
currently working my way through whatever I can access for Essex &
Caroline Co. records.

Thanks in advance for any information, ideas, etc.

C. Etter

Hi,
? ?Not sure if anyone on this list is researching this family, though I am maintaining an awareness of progress with research on James Daniel 1664-1742 of Essex. My Daniel family was in Essex until 1728 when Caroline County was created.
? ?Several descendants of James Daniel have taken a Y DNA test. If you go to the Results page at ?this family is represented by kits N62606-16753. There is a brief biography of James Daniel 1664-1742 on the Participants page, which also lists the matching kits for this line. If you like, I can forward your email to the contact email address for each kit.
? ?Y DNA testing has proved that James of Essex was unrelated to any other major Daniel family participating in the Daniel DNA Project. I think descendants of all of the major lines who can be proved using primary records are participating, though the lines of John Daniel of York County and Roger Daniell of Warwick County have not been proved. That being said, I have spent quite a bit of time looking at the primary records for all of the major Daniel lines and there is nothing to suggest that James Daniel of Essex had any contact or was at all related to either line.?
? ?Yes, the Conduit connection is very valuable for sorting the Essex from the Caroline Daniel families. It is very confusing as at some point, a James Daniel of Essex, perhaps a son of the James whose estate was settled in 1764 (?), moved about that time to Caroline County and settled in the vicinity of my Daniel family and his family even intermarried with the Sneed family which had been associated with my Daniels since before Caroline County was created in 1728. The Conduit connection was very useful in separating the two families in primary records, though Y DNA testing provided the final evidence. One of the Daniel men in the Daniel DNA project descends from this James.
? ? Heritage Books has reprinted the Caroline County court order books transcribed by Ruth and Sam Sparacio which go from the 1760s-1780s, as well as some land tax records also transcribed by the Sparacios. This is about all that remains of early Caroline records, most of which were destroyed during the Civil War. These records were microfilmed by the LDS but are locked down by Caroline County and not available for viewing now that they have been digitized. John Frederick Dorman transcribed Caroline court order books from 1732 to about 1760 but copies of these are scarce as hens' teeth. Caroline court order books from 1728 to early 1732 are lost. They are held by various library reference departments, but typically not available via inter-library loan. A library about an hour from where I live has some of them and another library about three hours away has the rest. You have to go there to see them. I think everything pertaining to James of Essex is in the Sparacio transcription, though I have yet to view everything from the 1750s and 1760s.
? ?Most early Essex records can be viewed at an LDS Family History Center or affiliate library. They are not available for viewing at FamilySearch.org.

Best,

Kevin Daniel

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Hi Kevin,

Thanks so much for the informative reply, very helpful.

Please do forward my email to the James Daniel (d. 1742) testers. I’ve love to see if there are any atDNA matches. Though the MRCA would be a ways back in time, so it might not be a large enough cM match to show up clearly. The problem I’ve been having is that with a surname like ‘Daniel’ there are way too many “results” to sort through in doing a surname search among the matches that I have. I can’t figure out a method to limit the results to only surnames and exclude given names.? I tested at FamilyTree and transferred to My Heritage.

I’ve been able to view records of Essex Co. (deeds, probate, court records) from home via a basic Family Search account for maybe the past month or so. View only, can’t download images, and of course no Caroline Co. at all. Guess I’d better knock on wood, quick, and hope it stays that way for Essex. But I can no longer download Essex Co. record images from a local affiliate library. Lost that ability a few weeks ago. In fact for the past couple of years there has been a group of VA counties whose records I could view and download from an affiliate library (but not from home), but starting a couple of weeks ago, it’s now view only from both the affiliate library and from home. And there are still quite a few counties besides Caroline that are FHC only, beyond frustrating!

Thanks again,
C. Etter

Yeah, autosomal DNA would definitely be hit or miss and unreliable that far back.?

Pretty cool that Essex records can now be viewed at home! That is a recent development. I downloaded everything I wanted from Old Rappahannock and Essex a few years ago at my local affiliate library. A few years ago Caroline court order books were also available for viewing at my affiliate library and I downloaded the most critical records all in one day, figuring I would have plenty of time to download the rest at my leisure. There are a lot of mentions of the Daniel and associated families in Caroline court order books. Unfortunately, the next time I went back to copy the rest, Caroline records had been locked down and I could no longer even look at them. It has been that way for several years, now.

Now I have bought most of the Sparacio transcripts of Caroline court order books which start in the 1760s and go to the 1780s and also copied part of the references to the Daniel surname from the John Frederick Dorman transcripts which start in 1732 and go to about 1770. A library about an hour away has a partial set of the Dorman transcripts. I have a three hour drive staring me in the face to get to the nearest library that has the complete set. The ones I need are not available via inter-library loan. Post pandemic, I will do that. Luckily, making digital copies is still free at the nearby library and at the other library, so it will just cost me the gas to drive there.

I just checked out the Essex records and you can still maximize the images of part of the page, right click and save that part, save an image, or images, of the rest and then use an image editor to create an image of the whole page that is legible. Laborious, but doable. Might want to make copies that way, before that option goes away. I am going to revisit Old Rapphannock and Essex to double check to make sure that I have everything I need.?

I have started building a document which contains all of the mentions of the surname Daniel and families associated with my Daniels in Caroline County, but it has along way to go. I will eventually put that on line.

I will forward your email.

Best,

Kevin

BTW, MyHeritage is about the only family history provider I have not subscribed to. I got a temporary account a few years ago and then discovered that compilers were just uploading all the bad information that was also being uploaded to Ancestry, FamilySearch and WikiTree, so blew my GEDCOM away and unsubscribed from MyHertiage and am now just focusing on getting (and keeping) my Daniels correct on FamilySearch and WikiTree shared public trees. I have my personal tree on Ancestry, too and put speculative stuff in my tree, but only what has been proved using primary records on shared public trees on FamilySearch and WikiTree. I just had a big wrestling match with someone who kept trying to make my William Daniel 1680-1765 a son of James Daniel 1664-1742. Sigh.

Kevin