Ann’s first teacher in South Carolina, Rev. Joseph Travis, a Methodist preacher, remembered Ann, her mother and the entire Daniel family with great fondness, “ . . . Miss Ann Daniel . . . if she . . . should read this sketch . . . let her . . . read that her old friend and teacher has not forgotten her . . . .” Recalling 1814-1816 when he was schoolmaster and teacher at Marion Academy, he wrote about the family, starting with Chesley who
. . . was the means of my going there [Marion] . . . . His pious and excellent mother, of the Presbyterian Church, was universally esteemed and beloved by all who knew her. His sisters, Mrs. [Martha] Giles, Mrs. [Jane Beverly] Evans, Mrs. [Eliza] Williams and Mrs. [Ann] Turpin were all amiable, pious, and devoted Christians. . . . It would truly gladden my heart if I could but once more visit Marion – once more to see and converse with . . . Jane Evans and Ann Turpin and their excellent sisters. 7
The “means” by which Chesley helped Rev. Travis could have included housing subsidy, relocation expenses and salary supplement. But they certainly included the school itself. Chesley had preceded his mother to South Carolina by several years. He and others had asked the state for approval to establish the school and asked to be given unclaimed land on which to build it. 8 An important fact Rev. Travis revealed was that Martha’s children had means. Chesley was a lawyer. Martha married a medical doctor. 9 Jane Beverly and Eliza married planters. 10 Even Ann who married a traveling preacher cannot be ruled out. 11 7 Thomas E. Summers, D.D., editor, Autobiography of the Rev. Joseph Travis, A.M. (Nashville: E. Stevenson & F.A. Owen, Agents for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1853), 90-94, 250-51, 259. 8 South Carolina General Assembly Petitions, South Carolina Department of Archives and History (https://scdah.sc.gov : 13 July 2019), digital image, “Petition for the Establishment of Marion Academy, and Asking to be given Escheated Lands in support of said Academy,” 10 Evans, History of Nathaniel Evans , 37-38. Also, 1840 U.S. census, Abbeville District, South Carolina, p. 51, Thos [Thomas] W. Williams; digital image, Ancestry.com (access through participating libraries : 1 November 2018); citing FHL microfilm 0022508. 11 “[Ann] Turpin,” obituary, p. 7, col. 2. C. Daniel and others, 3 December 1811. 9 Evans, History of Nathaniel Evans , 48.
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