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John G. Cook 172 Weston Road Lincoln MA 01773 Phone: 781-259-0392 Fax: 781-259-1303 E-mail: jgcook@aol.com
November 10, 1999 Mr. Charles Gray
Hancock County Historical Society
P.O. Box 312
Bay St. Louis, MO 39520
Dr. Marco J. Giardino Earth Observation Research Office John C. Stennis Space Center Stennis Space Center, MS 39529
Caroline and I greatly enjoyed our recent visit to Hancock County, and appreciated the time you both gave us. I am enclosing some material on the lineage of Judge Lewis Daniell and of Publius Rutilius Rufus Pray, both early settlers (1823+/-) in Hancock County...probably much more than you want...and a little bit about their descendants! Pray and his wife Maria Learned came from a long line of English settlers in New England going back as early as the ?second ship? in 1621; and Daniell came from an equally long line of early South Carolina Welsh, British and French Hugenot settlers, some as early as the ?first fleet? to Charleston in 1670. Most notable of the Daniell ancestors was Landgrave and Governor Robt. Daniell, the first of the family in this country, who emigrated about 1670, also probably with the first fleet. I?ve enclosed some information about Governor Daniell. The proper spelling of the name was ?Daniell,? but as you have seen it is often spelled Daniel or Daniels or Daniells.
Governor Daniell received huge grants of land from the Lords Proprietors...about 100,000 acres in all. However, it?s not clear that there was much money in the family by the time of Lewis Daniell?s generation, although apparently enough for Lewis to buy Clifton as soon as he came to Hancock County. I know that his younger brother Josiah, living in New Orleans, had very little in the way of assets in the 1840s & 50s.
The person who has done a lot of the Daniell family history work, and published a book on the subject, is Clara Daniell Williams, PO Box 135, Lithia Springs, GA 30057; 770-948-5748. I was last in touch with her in 1996. However, she is descended from a Daniell that went early to Georgia, so has little information on Lewis and his descendants...but a lot on his ancestry.
P.R.R. Pray?s son Rufus Otis Pray married Lewis Daniell?s daughter Sarah Hamlin Daniell. I have based the enclosed on the ancestry of their son Washington Daniell Pray, since most of the Pray descendants in your part of the world are descended from his twelve children (which children haven?t been entered into our database). I?m descended from ?Wash? Pray?s sister Eugenia Amelia Pray, who married her first cousin once removed, Charles Walker Daniell of


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