Person:Daniel Howard (9)

BIOGRAPHY: A History of Isaac Howard of Foster, Rhode Island and his Descendants Who have Borne the Name of Howard By Daniel Howard, A. M. Windsor Locks, Conn. 1901 Page 21 Hon. Daniel Howard was born in Foster (then a part of Scituate), R.I., July 20, 1752. He attended school two winters - six months in all - which was the only schooling he ever received. The tuition for this he paid himself after he had grown to manhood. He supplemented this education by private study, and was in the fullest sense a self-made man. He married, February 14, 1776, Dorothy Clarke (b. June 6, 1758), youngest daughter of William and Mary (Medbury) Clarke. By his father's will he received a legacy of one hundred dollars. He acquired possession of forty acres of his father's farm, to which he added by the purchase of adjacent land; built a house upon the forty-acre tract, which, after his death, was the home of his son Gardner and is the first residence south of the Howard Hill schoolhouse. In personal appearance he is said to have resembled President Jackson. His height was six feet five inches. In the Revolutionary War he was a militia man.

  It is shown by the records of the Bureau of Pensions at Washington, D. C., that he first enlisted in 1775; that he performed short terms of service, usually for one month, each year from 1775 to 1781, aggregating fourteen month and ten days, under Captains Stephen Sheldon, William Howard, Jonathan Wright, Isaac Hopkins, and Samuel Wilbur; that obtained the rand of Sergeant. His widow made application for a pension September 3, 1836, and was pensioned at $71.66 per annum from March 4, 1831.
 His name also appears on Manuscript Document No. 492 of the Rhode Island Military Papers on file at the rooms of the Rhode Island Historical Society. This document is the muster roll of the company commanded by Capt. Allen Johnson in Lient.-Col. Thomas Tillinghast's regiment. From this roll it appears that on August 8, 1781, Daniel Howard enlisted in the service of the United States for one month. Part and perhaps all of his military service was rendered in the vicinity of Newpor, R. I.
  In civil life he was preeminent among his townsmen. He was for fifteen years justice of peace, and important office under the system then in vogue. He represented his town in the General Assembly, serving in that capacity in 1790, the year that Rhode Island ratified the Constitution and joined the Union. In 1803 he was elected town clerk of Foster, and to this office he was reelected twenty-four times, and on but one of these elections was there any opposing candidate.  He was serving his twenty-fifth year at the time of his death. In 1802 he became judge of the Rhode Island Court of Common Pleas, which position he held till 1809. His knowledge of the law was deep and extensive. Governor Fenner once said of him: "He is right ninety-nine times out of one-hundred." He was argumentative yet patient in disposition and calm in judgment. He died September 14, 1827. His widow died January 19, 1843. Their graves are in the family lot on the original estate of his father in Foster.