Daniel Axtell (1640-1683)
of "Newington" Summerville, Dorchester Co.; 1st Landgrave of South Carolina
His father was famously hung for treason for his role in the execution of King Charles I in 1660. Daniel was a "substantial merchant" in London but when his house in Stoke Newington was searched for seditious libel in 1678, he fled from England to South Carolina where in the same year he had received a grant of 3,000-acres from King Charles II. In 1681 he was raised to the colonial aristocracy on being named Landgrave by the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas. It was Axtell who convinced Ralph Izard and Robert Cuthbert to emigrate in 1682. The Newington plantation on the Ashley River cultivated rice and indigo but Daniel did not live to see the manor house completed, a task overseen by his widow in 1690, although it was burned to the ground in the Yamassee Indian War (1715). It was their grandson, Col. Joseph Blake, who would build the stately brick mansion at Newington ("the house with a hundred windows”) in 1730. Daniel married Rebecca, daughter of Cornelius Holland, and they had seven children (listed).
