In memory of William Roberts McDanielAuthor of the memorial page is Cemetery Manager

It is not a coincidence

that McDaniel’s grave lies in the same lot as John Smith (of Wakefield). They were in-laws;

William McDaniel married Ada Smith, John’s youngest daughter, in 1895. William McDaniel was born on the Eastern Shore, but enrolled in Western Maryland College ten years after its founding, and was one of the first students to receive a Maryland Senatorial Scholarship when they were offered in 1878. He graduated in 1880 as salutatorian of his class. After graduation he taught high school for a year in Frederick County before returning to Westminster as a tutor of Greek, Latin, and mathematics at his alma mater and its preparatory school. He soon left to pursue a

doctoral degree in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, but returned to Western

Maryland early in 1885 to fill a temporary vacancy in the mathematics department

before he completed his graduate degree. The temporary position turned into a fulltime

one as professor of mathematics later in 1885, a position he held for nearly 60 more years.

During 1906-1907 McDaniel assumed the role of college president while then-president

Thomas Hamilton Lewis was away. Upon his return, Lewis commented, “I have learned that

the past year has been one of the most prosperous the College has ever enjoyed…This is no surprise to me, because I have been long convinced that we have in Vice President McDaniel a man equal to any responsibility the Board might put upon him.” At the 1911 Western Maryland College commencement, McDaniel was given an honorary degree of Doctor of Science. The degree may have made amends for the disappointment he might have felt for not receiving his doctorate in mathematics from Johns Hopkins in the 1880s. In awarding the degree, President Lewis complimented McDaniel by saying, “You have been faithful in all things, scholar, teacher,

administrator, counselor, Christian gentleman.”

In the nearly 70 years William Roberts McDaniel was associated with Western

Maryland College, it grew from an enrollment of 59 students to 600. His contributions

were immense. The college trustees were prophetic in 1942 when they eulogized him

thusly: “Somehow or other, one feels that the life of William R. McDaniel will be

interwoven into the destiny of Western Maryland College, as his life has been into

every decade of its history…” Sixty years later the trustees officially changed the

college’s name to honor this man who had done so much for so long.