willis mcdaniel
1844-death unknown
Life Story
Formerly Enslaved Agricultural Worker, Member of Bethel Baptist and Mount Moriah Presbyterian Churches, and Father of Richard H. McDaniel
Willis McDaniel was born about 1844 in Mississippi, during an era when slavery shaped the lives of African Americans throughout the Deep South. Enslaved within the McDaniel family of Newton County, Mississippi, Willis survived the Civil War, established a household after emancipation, and eventually relocated with his family to Hinds County.
His life is documented through the membership and disciplinary records of Bethel Baptist Church and Mount Moriah Presbyterian Church, the federal censuses of 1870 and 1880, and the recollections of his son, Richard H. McDaniel (c. 1867–1947).
Decades after emancipation, Richard participated in an interview conducted by Irene Robertson for the Federal Writers’ Project. His account preserved memories passed down by his parents concerning their enslavement, the announcement of freedom, and the difficult transition to sharecropping.
Together, these sources provide an unusually personal account of Willis McDaniel’s experiences during slavery and Reconstruction.
Early Life and Enslavement
Willis McDaniel was born around 1844 or 1845 in Mississippi. Little is known about his earliest childhood, but his son’s later recollections provide important details about his upbringing.
According to Richard H. McDaniel, his father was raised by Jim McDaniel after his mother died. Jim also raised one of Willis’s sisters, while another sister was already married when their mother died.¹
Richard recalled that his father had never been sold away from the McDaniel household. This detail is significant because the forced sale and separation of family members were constant threats under slavery.
Richard also repeated a family account of his father’s resistance to mistreatment. When Willis became angry, he reportedly threatened to stop working. According to the story, the enslaver and his wife disagreed over who could punish Willis, with each refusing to allow the other to whip him.
The recollection suggests that Willis sometimes challenged the authority exercised over him, although the account does not establish that he was protected from physical punishment throughout his enslavement.
The surviving church records identify Willis with two members of the McDaniel family.
The minutes of Bethel Baptist Church describe him as enslaved by Lucy McDaniel, while the “List of Colored Members” at Mount Moriah Presbyterian Church associates him with H. McDaniel, identified as Henry McDaniel.
Lucy and Henry are believed to have belonged to the same family, although their precise relationship remains undetermined.
Richard’s recollection of Jim McDaniel introduces another member of the enslaver family whose relationship to Lucy and Henry requires investigation.
Membership at Bethel Baptist Church, 1862–1866
On March 18, 1862, Willis, identified as enslaved by Lucy McDaniel, joined Bethel Baptist Church by religious experience.²
His admission occurred during the Civil War, when enslaved African Americans continued participating in white-controlled congregations despite the restrictions placed upon their religious independence.
Nearly four years later, on January 20, 1866, Bethel Baptist Church excluded Willis from membership on a charge of bigamy.³
The action occurred during the first year following the abolition of slavery, when formerly enslaved men and women were attempting to establish legally recognized family relationships.
The Bethel record establishes that the congregation took disciplinary action against Willis. However, the available summary does not identify the women involved or provide the testimony upon which the church based its decision.
The exclusion did not end Willis’s documented religious involvement in Newton County.
Later that same year, he appeared in the records of Mount Moriah Presbyterian Church.
Mount Moriah Presbyterian Church and the 1866 Investigation
The “List of Colored Members” at Mount Moriah Presbyterian Church identifies Willis, entry number 34, in association with H. McDaniel, identified as Henry McDaniel.⁴
On October 27, 1866, Willis and a Black woman named Mary appeared before the church Session requesting admission.
Both were examined and received into full fellowship, and Mary was baptized.⁵
The minutes do not identify Mary as Willis’s wife or provide her surname.
In December 1866, the Presbyterian Session considered an accusation that Willis McDaniel had committed bigamy.
After examining the matter, the Session reported that no testimony had been established against him and dismissed the accusation.⁶
The dismissal concerned the charge rather than his membership.
The records of Bethel Baptist and Mount Moriah Presbyterian therefore document two different disciplinary outcomes involving Willis McDaniel in 1866.
Bethel excluded him in January, while Mount Moriah found insufficient testimony to sustain an accusation considered later that year.
Whether both proceedings concerned the same marriages or different circumstances remains unknown.
Marriage and Family Life
By 1870, Willis McDaniel was living in Township 6, Range 10, Newton County, Mississippi.
The federal census enumerated him as twenty-five years old, born in Mississippi, and employed as a farm laborer.
He resided in dwelling 71 with Alsey McDaniel and two young children:
- Richard McDaniel, aged two
- Willie McDaniel, aged six months
Alsey McDaniel was identified as Willis’s inferred spouse in the census transcription.⁷
The household demonstrates that Willis had established a family in Newton County within several years of emancipation.
By 1880, the family had relocated to Cayuga, Hinds County, Mississippi.
The census recorded the household under the surname McDonald, with Willis, aged thirty-six, and his wife Elsie, aged twenty-six.
Their household included Richard, Willis, Joseph, John, Eugenia, and Cynthia.
The similarity in the adults’ ages, the names Alsey and Elsie, and the presence of sons Richard and Willis establish continuity between the 1870 and 1880 households.
The 1880 census described Willis as a farm laborer who could neither read nor write.⁸
His relocation from Newton County to Hinds County demonstrates that the family had moved beyond the community in which Willis had been enslaved, although the reason for the move is not documented.
A Son’s Recollections of Slavery and Emancipation
One of the most valuable sources concerning Willis McDaniel is the testimony of his son, Richard H. McDaniel, recorded in Brinkley, Arkansas, by Irene Robertson during the Federal Writers’ Project of the 1930s.
Richard identified his parents as Willis and Elsie McDaniel and recalled being born in Newton County during the first year following the surrender.
Because Richard was born around the close of the Civil War, much of what he knew about slavery came from stories told by his parents rather than from his own experiences.
His testimony nevertheless preserves important family memories.
Richard explained that his father was Black, while his mother was light-complexioned. He recalled that his maternal grandfather was white and that his maternal grandmother had both Indigenous and European ancestry, according to family tradition.
Richard identified his mother’s enslavers as the Wash family, naming Dick Wash as her young master.
These recollections establish another family connection for further investigation: the relationship between the McDaniel and Wash enslaver households of Mississippi.
Richard also remembered his parents’ account of the announcement of emancipation.
According to the story, their former enslaver, whom Richard called Master McDaniel, informed them that they were free. He explained that he was financially ruined and could not promise them much if they remained.
The family subsequently moved to another man’s property to work as sharecroppers.
Richard recalled his parents saying that the agricultural labor remained extremely demanding and that their material circumstances had improved very little.
Yet they recognized an important difference between slavery and freedom.
They could travel, visit others, and move about without requesting permission.
Richard remembered that his parents believed emancipation had not substantially reduced their workload, but it had changed their freedom of movement and sense of independence.⁹
His testimony offers a rare glimpse into how Willis and Elsie understood freedom in their own lives.
Although they continued working under difficult agricultural conditions, they no longer belonged legally to another person.
Richard also stated that neither his father nor the former enslaver he called Master McDaniel had served in the Civil War.
Reconstruction and the Changing World of Freedom
The years following emancipation brought both opportunities and difficulties for Willis McDaniel and his family.
The federal census identified him as an agricultural laborer in 1870 and again in 1880, demonstrating his continued dependence upon farm work.
His son’s recollections provide additional context for that experience.
According to Richard, the family entered sharecropping after leaving the former enslaver’s property. The arrangement required continued agricultural labor, and Richard remembered his parents describing how difficult it was to improve their economic circumstances.
Richard also recalled the violence and intimidation associated with the Ku Klux Klan during his childhood.
He described seeing men associated with the Klan and hiding because he feared them.
These recollections document the atmosphere of insecurity experienced by Richard as a child during the postwar period. They do not establish that Willis personally experienced a particular Klan attack.
The testimony nevertheless places the McDaniel family’s experiences within the broader realities of Reconstruction: agricultural dependence, racial violence, and the struggle to exercise newly acquired freedoms.
An Unresolved Question Concerning Richard’s Mother
An important genealogical question emerges when Richard H. McDaniel’s interview is compared with his death certificate.
During the 1930s interview, Richard identified his parents as Willis and Elsie McDaniel.
However, his Tennessee death certificate, issued following his death on January 5, 1947, identified his mother by the maiden name Mary Adams.¹⁰
The certificate was completed many decades after Richard’s birth, and the maternal information was supplied by an informant rather than Richard himself.
The discrepancy raises the possibility that Mary Adams was Richard’s biological mother and that Elsie (Alsey) McDaniel was a stepmother who raised him.
The appearance of a woman named Mary alongside Willis in the October 27, 1866, Mount Moriah church minutes makes this question especially important.
However, no record presently establishes that Mary Adams was the Mary received into the church or identifies the women involved in Willis’s 1866 bigamy proceedings.
The possibility of an earlier marriage and a later marriage to Elsie remains a subject for further investigation.
Later Years and Death
The 1880 federal census is the latest record presently identified that conclusively documents Willis McDaniel.
At that time, he was living in Cayuga, Hinds County, Mississippi, with Elsie and their children.
His exact date and place of death have not been established.
No confirmed death certificate, burial record, or gravestone has yet been identified.
The family continued into the twentieth century through his son Richard H. McDaniel, who eventually settled in Arkansas.
Richard died on January 5, 1947, at John Gaston Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and was buried in Brinkley, Arkansas, the following day.
Legacy
Willis McDaniel’s life illustrates the transition from slavery to freedom experienced by African American families in nineteenth-century Mississippi.
The church records document his participation in two congregations during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The federal censuses establish his household, occupation, and relocation from Newton County to Hinds County.
Yet the most personal evidence of his experiences survives through the testimony of his son.
Richard H. McDaniel remembered his father’s childhood, the death of his grandmother, the family members who remained together during slavery, and stories of resistance to mistreatment.
He also preserved his parents’ recollections of emancipation and their decision to leave the former enslaver’s property for a life of sharecropping.
These memories provide something that census schedules and church minutes seldom preserve: the experiences of formerly enslaved people as remembered within their own families.
Although freedom did not immediately bring economic independence, Richard’s account demonstrates that Willis and Elsie recognized the importance of being able to move and visit without asking permission.
Through the surviving church records and his son’s testimony, Willis McDaniel emerges not simply as a name in a membership register or census household, but as a man whose family remembered the struggles of slavery and the meaning of freedom.
His story contributes to the larger history of African Americans who remained in Mississippi after emancipation, worked to establish households, and passed their experiences to succeeding generations.
Chicago-Style Footnotes
- Irene Robertson, interview with Richard H. McDaniel, Brinkley, Arkansas, Federal Writers’ Project, Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1938, Arkansas Narratives, vol. 2, pt. 5, interview no. 30561, 15–16, Library of Congress.
- Records of Bethel Baptist Church, Newton County, Mississippi, January 1839–August 1870, March 18, 1862, admission of Willis, enslaved by Lucy McDaniel; Newton County Historical and Genealogical Society, Decatur, Mississippi; discussed in “The First Black Slaves and Freedmen at Bethel Baptist Church”.
- Records of Bethel Baptist Church, January 20, 1866, exclusion of Willis for bigamy.
- Mount Moriah Presbyterian Church, “List of Colored Members,” entry 34, Willis, associated with H. McDaniel; Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Jackson, microfilm roll 36108.
- Mount Moriah Presbyterian Church, Session Minutes, October 27, 1866, admission of Willis and Mary and baptism of Mary.
- Mount Moriah Presbyterian Church, Session Minutes, December 1866, investigation of an accusation of bigamy against Willis McDaniel and dismissal of the charge for insufficient testimony.
- 1870 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Township 6, Range 10, Newton post office, dwelling 71, household of Willis and Alsey McDaniel.
- 1880 U.S. census, Hinds County, Mississippi, Cayuga, dwelling 104, household of Willis and Elsie McDonald.
- Robertson, interview with Richard H. McDaniel, 15–16. Richard’s account includes family recollections of emancipation, the McDaniel enslaver household, sharecropping, and freedom of movement.
- Tennessee Department of Public Health, death certificate for Richard McDaniel, January 5, 1947, Shelby County, Tennessee; mother’s maiden name recorded as Mary Adams, informant O. P. Miller.
Resting Place
Unknown
Photos/Albums
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