Willie McDaniel’s paternal grandparents, Joe McDaniel and Kesiah Edmond McDaniel, were born before Emancipation and don’t appear as free Black people in the 1850 or 1860 federal censuses.

They do appear together in Fairfield County, S.C., in 1870, at ages 26 and 24, as farm laborers. Mahala McDaniel, listed as 40 and part of their household then, might be related. (Jim Edmonds is referred to in some newspaper stories as Willie McDaniel’s uncle; he’s more likely a great uncle or cousin, through grandmother Kesiah.) 

They were still in Fairfield County in 1880, with young son Ephraim (who would become Willie McDaniel’s father) and other children. By 1900 (1890’s census was lost in a fire), Joe and Kesiah rented farmland, still in Fairfield County, and Ephraim lived and farmed next door with his wife, Mattie. 

By the next census, Ephraim with Mattie and four children — Isaac, James, Willie and Mamie — had moved to neighboring Chester County, renting a house and working as farm laborers. The 1910 Census is the only one in which Willie McDaniel appears.

Ten years later, Ephraim appears to have been widowed and remarried, and had another daughter, Janey. He rented farmland in this year, and was still doing so in 1930. This isn’t surprising: In 1930 in Mecklenburg, for example, when about 30 percent of the county was Black, more than 90 percent of its Black farmers rented, rather than owned, the land they farmed.

Willie McDaniel’s immediate family appears to have stayed in Chester County through 1930. That year’s census shows siblings James and Janey in the mill village of Lando, living with Mamie and her husband, Lee McCrorey; James and Lee both worked in a cotton mill, while Mamie was a cook and Janey was listed as a washer woman. Willie’s father Ephraim died in 1932, in Chester County. His brother James’s death, recorded in Chester County in 1933, is the last clear documentation of Willie’s immediate family.

Do you think you might be a relative of Willie McDaniel? Reach out to us at charmeckremembers@gmail.com.