Photograph by Edward L. Williams

Location: 100 block of SW 1st St. at S. Colket St., Kerens, Navarro Co., Texas

Josiah Martin Daniel
(January 27, 1880 - Februry 20, 1968)

Josiah "Joe" Martin Daniel was born in Wadeville to Theophilus Smith Daniel and Lelia Wisener Daniel.  He was reared in Kerens and attended military school in North Carolina, graduating in 1900.  He attended the University of Texas at Austin, but left in 1904 when a boll weevil infestation in Navarro County destroyed his family's cotton crop and their finances were diminished.

Daniel worked at the First National Bank of Kerens and married Nellie Mae Hines of Tyler, widowed in 1907, he married Jessie Mae Johnson of Corsicana in 1911. By 1913 he was a partner in the insurance firm of Daniel & Stockton.  He joined the Texas National Guard and Became Mayor of Kerens.  He was reelected twice and resigned in 1916 to go on active duty for the National Guard.  He was called up to the U.S. Army in its operations in West Texas in pursuit of the Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa.  During World War I he served in the Army's 36th Division and was discharged as a captain..

Joe Daniel went to work for the Lone Star as Company about 1929.  He moved to Abilene in 1931, and to Corsicana in 1937.  During and after World War II Daniel served in the Texas State Guard, retiring in 1954 with the rank of Colonel.  Daniel assisted Gov. Beauford Jester of Corsicana in creating the Veterans Affairs Commission in 1947.  As its first chairman, he led the commission in providing valuable services to more than one million Texas veterans.  Joe and Jessie Daniel returned to Kerens in 1952, shortly after his retirement from Business, and his Veterans Commission term ended in 1953.  Daniel served Kerens and Navarro County in a variety of civic, economic and historic preservation activities.