THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 10, 1994 TAG: 9408100451
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WANCHESE LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
The Daniels family is hoping for a golden August moon and cloudless skies next week when more than a hundred members of the clan gather for their annual reunion at Bethany United Methodist Church on Roanoke Island.
The gathering in Wanchese every summer tends to depopulate much of the Outer Banks and even pockets of inland North Carolina, too.
For good reason:
It's hard to find anyone named Daniels from Raleigh to the coast who isn't in some way related to the Wanchese tribe.
Sixty years ago one of the founders of the annual get-together was Josephus Daniels, then the publisher of the Raleigh News & Observer and another doughty Daniels whose origins were ``back east'' on the Outer Banks. Frank Daniels Jr. and Frank Daniels III, clan members in good standing, are the present publisher and executive editor of the paper.
Some playful kinfolk have been known to hint that Sir Walter Raleigh must have been a Daniels or he wouldn't have sent his colonists to Roanoke Island. And, of course, the mysterious letters ``Croatoan'' carved long ago on that abandoned Lost Colony door post is likely a misspelling of ``Croa-Dan,'' they say, straightfaced.
One of the few visible non-Danielses next week will be Superior Court Judge Richard Parker, principal speaker at the reunion.
Former state Sen. Melvin R. Daniels Jr., an Elizabeth City banker who is chairman of this year's program, went to great effort to make sure that Parker isn't kin to any Daniels.
``In spite of that, Judge Parker is an excellent speaker and the family is indeed pleased to have him join us on this special day,'' said Melvin Daniels, whose father was for many years Dare County's register of deeds and was another founder of the reunions.
For the record, Parker is a Murfreesboro native, but he has a passport to Roanoke Island because he now lives in Manteo, said Betty Mann, Dare County clerk of the court.
State Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Dare, another Manteo resident, will introduce Parker at 4:30 p.m. at the Aug 19 reunion, which will be held in and around the old church where the only southbound island road forks on the way to Wanchese.
Basnight is a Daniels through his mother, Cora Mae, who for years played Agona, the Indian maiden in the Lost Colony.
``And, yes, I'm a Daniels, too,'' said Angie Meekins Midgett, Basnight's office manager in Manteo. She often serves as an unofficial keeper of Daniels family records and points out that anybody on the Outer Banks who is named Midgett or Meekins can probably be considered a card-carrying Daniels.
Even the Bethany Methodist Church figures in Daniels legends.
Visitors to the church are often surprised to discover that the pews seem to run ``long-ways'' up and down the major axis of the church, instead of across as seats usually do in churches. The altar is at one side of the building.
Daniels chroniclers report that the pews were built as they are because of an early Daniels sea captain who was deaf as a post.
The old skipper had amassed a considerable fortune, and when Methodist leaders in Wanchese decided to build the church they asked Capt. Daniels to help out.
He agreed but stipulated that the pews must run fore-and-aft so he could always sit in the center, close enough to the alter to hear the preacher.
So be it, then and now. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Marc Basnight
One of the Daniels kin.
by CNB