The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:
When Bill McDaniel decided to start a brewery, he didn’t know that his direct ancestor, William McDaniel, had made a living serving food and drink.
McDaniel, a native of the Buffalo Mountain area of Floyd County, was stationed at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C. As his Air Force retirement neared, McDaniel made plans to start a brewery in Floyd. While researching the brewery business, around 2012, he heard about a 1700s-era tavern in Dumfries, Va., run by a William McDaniel.
There were no family stories about a tavern-keeping ancestor, but McDaniel did a little research and connected the dots. The McDaniel who served up alcohol in late 18th-century Dumfries was indeed his forebear, and probably a military veteran as well. A muster roll from 1777 lists a William McDaniel as a private in the 7th Virginia Regiment.
William McDaniel was born around 1745. It’s not known whether he inherited the tavern building, bought it or built it. The location may have been where present-day U.S. 1 crosses Powells Creek, two miles north of Dumfries.
He was in business sometime before Sept. 12, 1786, the date the building burned. Two months later he placed a notice in the Virginia Journal & Alexandria Advertiser: “SINCE the burning of my tavern on the 12th of September, I have fitted another house for that purpose, where any gentleman traveling through this place may again be well accommodated; and as for my stables they are equal if not superior to any in the State. Any gentleman that will favor me with their custom may rely on a faithful acknowledgement, by their humble servant.”
Around the same time, a brick building was built in Dumfries, on present-day U.S. 1. That building, now called Williams Ordinary, still stands, and houses the Prince William County Office of Historic Preservation.
Many of Prince William’s records were burned in the Civil War, but “it does seem like William McDaniel is either the person who builds Williams Ordinary or within a year is running Williams Ordinary,” said Bill Backus, a preservationist with Prince William County. Williams Ordinary was named for George Williams, one of the people who ran it after McDaniel.
A traveler who visited Williamsburg in 1765, quoted in a study produced by Colonial Williamsburg, said “there is no distinction here between inns, taverns, ordinaries and public houses; they are all in one and are known by the appelation [sic] of taverns, public house or ordinary…” He observed that “they are all very indifferent [i.e., mediocre] indeed compared to the inns in England.”
Indifferent or not, Williams Ordinary was apparently good enough for the cream of Virginia society. “When Dumfries was a busy seaport, the inn undoubtedly housed many notables, among them George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Comte de Rochambeau, and the Marquis de Lafayette,” according to “Prince William: A Past To Preserve,” published by the county historical commission. (French nobleman Count Rochambeau helped Washington and Lafayette force Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown.)
Williams Ordinary was originally thought to have been constructed c. 1765, and when Bill McDaniel toured the building he was shown graffiti believed to date from the Revolutionary period. That was disproved when a mid-2010s study dated the building’s timbers to the mid-1780s.
William McDaniel died in 1800. His son Alfred moved to Bedford County and later to Floyd County.
Though overshadowed by neighboring Franklin County in moonshine fame, Floyd was a big producer of white lightning. Bill McDaniel, however, always preferred beer.
“My father was an old moonshiner,” McDaniel said. “He was, ‘why don’t you make whiskey, boy?’ Whiskey wasn’t my thing.”
McDaniel converted a house on Webbs Mill Road (Virginia 8), north of the town of Floyd, to a brewpub, Buffalo Mountain Brewery & McDaniel’s Tavern. It opened in 2018. The menu includes items that probably weren’t served in the 18th century, such as lemony herb tavern hummus and spinach and artichoke dip. But the human element of the tavern business hasn’t changed much since his ancestor’s day.
“I love people,” McDaniel said. “Beer is a social lubricant. If you put 100 people in a room and no beer, and they don’t know one another, they don’t do a lot of talking. We have music back here, it’s like an old Irish or Scottish pub. The Ruritan Club meets here. Lots of different things will use this as a community space. That’s really what I love about it the most.”
