Preceded by W. O. Rogers Party Democratic Party | Name Robert Daniel | |
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Spouse(s) Mrs. Eloise Hughes Smith (1914 - divorced 1923)Mrs. Margery Durant Campbell (1923 - divorced 1928)Mrs. Charlotte Bemiss Christian (1929 - 1940) Children Margery Randolph DanielRobert Williams Daniel, Jr. Died December 20, 1940, Richmond, Virginia, United States | ||
Robert Williams Daniel (September 11, 1884 – December 20, 1940) was an American banker who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, and later served in the Senate of Virginia.
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Early life
Daniel was born on September 11, 1884 in Richmond, Virginia, the son of James Robertson Vivian Daniel, a Richmond lawyer, and Hallie Wise Williams.
A descendant of William Randolph he was related to many prominent Americans. His great-grandfather Peter V. Daniel, was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and his great-great-grandfather, Edmund Randolph, was the seventh Governor of Virginia, the first Attorney General of the United States and later served as Secretary of State.
Daniel graduated from the University of Virginia in 1903 and embarked on a career in banking and management. He was first employed in the traffic manager’s office of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad, where his grandfather Peter V. Daniel, Jr. had served as president from 1860 to 1871. He then entered the insurance business around 1905, becoming attached to the firm of Williams and Hart. He would eventually succeed Mr. Williams as district superintendent for the Maryland Life Insurance Company.
In 1906, Daniel and a fellow district manager of Maryland Life, Charles Palmer Stearns, formed the insurance firm Daniel and Stearns.
By 1911, Daniel was employed as a banker and living in Philadelphia. Business travel would sometimes take him to to Europe, and in late 1911 while he was staying at the Carlton Hotel in London, the building caught fire and Daniel managed to save the life of a friend who was also staying at the hotel.
Survivor of the RMS Titanic
Daniel was en-route back to Philadelphia from another European business trip with his newly-purchased French bulldog when he boarded the Titanic in Southampton as a first-class passenger on the morning of 10 April 1912. Daniel had purchased the champion dog, named Gamin de Pycombe, for £150 (the equivalent of $17,000 in today’s prices).His dog was lost in the sinking.
Daniel survived the tragedy which followed, though the precise manner of his escape from the Titanic remains a controversial matter. Descriptions varied in the press reports that followed; in at least one account it was claimed that he swam completely nude in the frigid North Atlantic for a number of hours before being hauled aboard a lifeboat barely conscious. It is possible – and much more plausible given the below freezing water temperature – that he simply climbed into one of the early lifeboats being launched from the starboard side of the stricken liner. At that point few passengers thought the ship would actually sink so the early lifeboats found few takers and some left the ship half-full. Some men were allowed into lifeboats filled with women and children ostensibly to man the oars. The Sinking of the Titanic quotes Charles Lightoller as saying that after the sinking Daniel was rescued from the water by "a passing lifeboat".
Daniel was interviewed by multiple New York newspapers giving his recollections of the Titanic disaster, including the ship's last moments.
The April 20, 1912 edition of the New York Times stated that Daniel saw First Officer Murdoch commit suicide:
he [Daniel] jumped, struggling among the ice-floes until rescued. He was articulate and adamant; it was Murdoch, he said, who had shot himself in the temple. "I was not more than ten feet away, I do not believe the stories that Captain Smith ended his life. He stuck to his post to the last. He was a brave man."The New York Herald quoted Daniel in its April 19, 1912 edition as claiming to have seen Titanic's Captain Edward John Smith drown in the wheelhouse on the bridge when it was engulfed by the icy sea:
Captain Smith was the biggest hero I ever saw. He stood on the bridge and shouted through a megaphone, trying to make himself heard.': I saw Captain Smith on the bridge. My eyes seemingly clung to him. The deck from which I had leapt was immersed. The water had risen slowly, and was now to the floor of the bridge. Then it was to Captain Smith's waist. I saw him no more. He died a hero.This account seems to corroborate the accounts of several other survivorswho said they saw Smith enter the ship's wheelhouse on the bridge, and die there when it was engulfed.
While aboard the rescue ship, RMS Carpathia, he met fellow Titanic survivor, Eloise Hughes Smith, daughter of U.S. Representative James A. Hughes, whose husband, Lucian P. Smith, died during the disaster. Daniel and Mrs. Smith were wed in a quiet ceremony in August 1914, but Daniel soon left for London on business and became stranded in England for two months when the the First World War broke out in Europe. Upon his return the couple settled in a house called Rosemont in Philadelphia. When the US entered World War I in 1916 Daniel was commissioned an officer in the US Army and by 1918 the couple had separated.
In contrast to his willingness to speak to reporters immediately after the sinking in 1912, in later years Daniel refused to talk about the Titanic disaster. Perhaps it was the traumatic nature of the event, or it could have been related to the stigma that many surviving male passengers felt as survivors of a tragedy that had claimed the lives of so many women and children.
Military service
Daniel served in the U.S. Army during World War I and rose to the rank of Major.
Bank executive and subsequent marriages
Daniel was later Vice President of Liberty National Bank in New York City. Sometime before 1923, Daniel and his first wife divorced. On December 6, 1923, Daniel married Mrs. Edwin Rutheven Campbell (nee Margery Pitt Durant; 1887-1969), daughter of William C. Durant, an automobile manufacturer who founded General Motors, in the Halsey Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey. This marriage produced one daughter, Margery Randolph Daniel (November 2, 1924 – May 23, 2013). The Daniels purchased the Brandon one of the James River Plantations in Prince George County, Virginia in 1926, and restored the 18th century mansion. The couple divorced in September 1928, but Daniel kept the historic estate where he operated a dairy farm and maintained a stable of horses.
Daniel ascribed his second divorce to a charm which he had unintentionally broken at the old estate. According to a Harrison family legend a bride of long ago who was married beneath the chandelier in the stately main room of the mansion died on her wedding night. Her wedding ring was embedded in the plaster ceiling and the legend was created that whoever disturbed it would meet with bad luck in love.
After purchasing Brandon 1926, Daniel ordered renovations made to the dilapidated 160 year old mansion. While workmen were repairing the ceiling a piece of plaster fell to the floor containing a wedding ring. The workmen took it to Daniel, who had it cleaned and polished and placed back beneath the chandelier. He said he was aware of the legend and feared the results of disturbing the ring. Two years later he was divorced.
On October 10, 1929, Daniel married, for the third and final time, his distant cousin, Mrs. Frank Palmer Christian (nee Charlotte Randolph Bemiss; 1890-1968) of Richmond, Virginia. Mrs. Christian's first husband had died in 1918 while in the service At this time, Daniel was chairman of the board of the Richmond Trust Company. Their son, Robert Williams Daniel, Jr. was born in Richmond in March 1936.
Senate career
In 1935 Daniel, a Democrat, was elected to the Senate of Virginia representing the 6th District. He held the seat until his death.
Death and burial
Daniel died of Cirrhosis of the Liver on December 20, 1940 in Richmond and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. His son would later serve in the United States Congress.