Early Life and Career
The father of Josephus Daniels, a shipbuilder, was killed before the boy was 3. A native of Washington, North Carolina, Daniels moved with his mother and two siblings to Wilson, North Carolina after the father, whose Union sympathies were notorious, was shot and killed by a local sharpshooter when he attempted to leave with Federal forces evacuating Washington during the Civil War. He was educated at Wilson Collegiate Institute and at Trinity College (now Duke University). He edited and eventually purchased a local newspaper, the Wilson Advance. Within a few years, he became part owner of the Kinston Free Press and the Rocky Mount Reporter. He studied law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was admitted to the bar in 1885, but did not practice law. After becoming increasingly involved in the North Carolina Democratic Party and taking over the weekly paper Daily State Chronicle, he was North Carolina's state printer in 1887-93 and chief clerk of the Federal Department of the Interior under Grover Cleveland in 1893-95.
In 1888, Daniels married Addie Worth Bagley, the granddaughter of former Governor Jonathan Worth.
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Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
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