His father, William Daniel Sr. (1770-1839) was a lawyer, legislator and beginning in 1813 judge of the general court in Cumberland and Campbell Counties based in Lynchburg.

Campbell County voters at three separate times elected Daniel as one of their (part-time) representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1831, 1835 and 1837.

Traders could reach it both from the north/south Wilderness Road which eventually crossed the Appalachian Mountains through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, and a more mountainous but direct west-east route reached the James River Canal and downstream to the state capital at Richmond (although the western section through what eventually became West Virginia would be eclipsed by railroads).

[10] On January 14, 1832, Daniel argued against the gradual emancipation bill being contemplated, which would have freed children born to enslaved mothers,[11] a crucial issue to the important slave trade and that became one of the hallmarks of his jurisprudence.

Months later, President (Chief) Judge Allen relied upon this decision in deciding Williamson v. Coalter's Executor, which overturned the will of Judge John Coalter's widow who wished to free the slaves she inherited from her father after Coalter's death and who sought legal advice in light of that court's growing disfavoring of manumission (although the real estate at issue has been preserved and the National Park Service now operates both Chatham Manor and Ellwood Manor), and Judges Daniel and Lee concurred in that decision.

Although his son John Warwick Daniel remained a powerful politician in Lynchburg, Virginia and even the national scene for his advocacy of the Lost Cause, his younger sister Elvira had married Col. Charles Ellet Jr. who remained loyal to the Union, designed crucial armored ships used on the Mississippi River, and died of his war injury at Cairo, Illinois in 1862.

[18] His other sister became the wife of Wood Bouldin who began his service on the Virginia Supreme Court months before Daniel's death.

Rivermont, the mansion that Daniel built across Blackwater Creek from Point of Honor, was listed on the national register of historic places in 2000, three years after the Lynchburg Redevelopment Authority deeded it to an entity; it is also the name of the surrounding historic district and avenue leading from Rivermont bridge to Daniel's Hill, as the area was developed in the 1890s.