There appear to have been no Beavers family in Pittsylvania County Virginia before William Beavers married Nancy McDaniel here on February 8, 1790. Nancy was the daughter of Anne McDaniel, widow of Capt. William McDaniel of Halifax County. Anne’s husband owned 482 acres of land on Sandy Creek of Dan River when he died in 1778. Anne and her unmarried children moved to this land northwest of Danville just after the Revolutionary War. Nancy’s oldest brother was killed in 1776 in Tennessee and another brother Capt. William McDaniel, the younger, served during the Revolution. A third brother, Capt. John Clement McDaniel participated in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse and was present at the surrender at Yorktown.
On August 5, 1792, William Beavers bought a 285-acre tract, which was east of and adjoining Anne McDaniel’s land. A short time later, a jury met on September 29, 1792 to view the land where Anne McDaniel who owned land of both sides of the creek proposed to build a water powered grist mill. William, Anne’s deceased husband, built and operated a mill on the Banister River in Halifax County. McDaniel owned 38 slaves, some of which undoubtedly worked at his mill. Anne was a wealthy widow who had the means to buy equipment for the mill, but it is likely that William Beavers oversaw the construction. When the mill was rebuilt twenty years later in 1812, a court document approved and application for William Beavers to rebuild the mill “formerly built by him.” William and Nancy Beavers had two children before she died in 1795, just five years after their marriage. The first child was Mary Beavers who married James Gatewood on July 28, 1800. Their son William Beavers Junior inherited all his father’s lands on Sandy Creek. This tract with a sawmill and gristmill increased to 782 acres (565 acres after a dower for his stepmother) before William Senior died.
