Daniel Dulany was born in 1685. He was descended from a medieval Irish family, the O’Dulaneys, was born in Queen’s County, Ireland. His father was Thomas Delaney. His mother, of whom not so much as her maiden name is known, died before his emigration with two brothers, William and Joseph, to Port Tobacco, Maryland, where he arrived, a well- educated but penniless youth, about the year 1703.
He received financial aid from George Plater, a former attorney-general of the province, studied law under his direction, and was admitted to the bar of Charles County in 1709.
The following year he was admitted to plead before the provincial court, and in 1716 was enroled as a student of Gray’s Inn, London.
Prosperous in his profession, Dulany acquired several thousand acres of wheat land in the valley of the Monocacy, and by encouraging German Palatines to settle there he promoted an industrial revolution in a province that had been producing little except tobacco.
In 1721 Dulany removed permanently to Annapolis and in the following year was chosen a representative of that city in the popular branch of the Maryland Legislative Assembly. He was at once appointed a member of the most important committee of that body, the Committee on Laws, and, holding also the office of attorneygeneral, he rapidly assumed the leadership of those in opposition to the measures of the proprietor, governor, and council. The chief controversy for ten years immediately following his entrance into the Assembly was regarding the extension of English statutes to Maryland. The proprietor, in 1722, vetoed a bill which he thought seemed by implication to introduce all the English statutes into the province, and he indicated his view that none should be introduced without his consent. Dulany contended that the people of Maryland could not without the English statutes enjoy the privileges which were guaranteed by the Maryland charter.
In 1728 he published his arguments on this subject in a small pamphlet entitled, The Rights of the Inhabitants of Maryland to the Benefit of the English Laws. Four years later he offered a compromise which was accepted by the proprietor and regarded as favorable to the popular cause. With a view to winning Dulany from the leadership of the opposition, the proprietor, in 1733, appointed him his agent and receiver general, and the same year he and Benjamin Tasker were appointed jointly to the remunerative office of commissary general.
In 1734 he was appointed judge of the admiralty, and, in 1736, he was made sole commissary general but was succeeded by Benjamin Tasker in the office of agent and receiver general. Having served for twenty years in the popular branch of the Legislative Assembly, he was sworn into the Governor’s Council, September 25, 1742, and was a member of that body until his death in Annapolis eleven years later.
In 1743 he drafted an able address to the proprietor on the need of regulating the tobacco industry, and he successfully advocated the enactment of the inspection law of 1747 which improved the quality of Maryland tobacco and resulted in the floating of a stable paper currency.
Dulany married three times: first, Charity, daughter of Colonel John Courts of Charles County; second, Rebecca, daughter of Colonel Walter Smith of Calvert County, and mother of his son, Daniel Dulany; and third, Henrietta Maria, daughter of Philemon Lloyd of Talbot County, and widow of Samuel Chew.
