President Truman Came to ZEBULON NC

The E.C. and Elvah Daniel House at 205 E. Sycamore Street in Zebulon is an excellent and intact example of a Craftsman Foursquare, popular in Wake County’s small towns in the early twentieth century. The house was built as the family home of E.C. and Elvah Daniel and their son Clifton. The dwelling stands at the northwest corner of E. Sycamore and N. Gill Streets in the residential area northeast of the railroad tracks and the town’s commercial district. E.C. Daniel owned a drugstore in Wakefield with Dr. Z. M. Caviness, later relocated to Zebulon. By 1912, Daniel was full owner of the drugstore, renaming it the Zebulon Drug Company, and by 1913, he was a pharmacist as well. Daniel also served as Zebulon’s mayor in the first decades of the twentieth century and around 1924 owned the town’s movie theater. He went on to assist in establishing the North Carolina Pharmaceutical Research Foundation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the School of Pharmacy there as well. He was the state’s Pharmacist of the Year in 1951 and served a term as president of the North Carolina Pharmaceutical Association.

Elbert Clifton Daniel Sr. and Elvah Jones Daniel’s son, Elbert Clifton Daniel Jr. wanted to be a journalist from the age of 12 and wrote for the local paper as a teenager. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked for papers in Dunn and Raleigh. He eventually worked as a foreign correspondent and managing editor for the New York Times and in 1956 married Margaret Truman, only child of President Harry Truman and Bess Truman. President Truman and his wife Bess visited the Daniels, in their house in Zebulon, in October 1958 and Harry returned for a second visit in December 1960.