Major Daniel McGary was born on 23 November 1770 in North Carolina to Colonel Hugh McGary Sr and his wife, Mary Buntin. He was named for frontiersman Daniel Boone; the McGary family migrated with the Boone family in the fall of 1775, when Daniel was five years old. Daniel married Nancy Berry, 9 January 1790, in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Daniel was required to receive permission to marry by his father, as he had not yet reached the age of 21. Daniel and Nancy's children were Mary, Tolliver, Elizabeth, and Samuel Goode Hopkins McGary. The McGarys lived on Richard Davis's property in Clark County, Kentucky, ca 1792-93. In 1794, Daniel sold 100 acres of land on the waters of Shawnee Run in Mercer County to his father. The McGary family migrated to Henderson (now Hopkins) County, Kentucky, with Daniel's brothers in 1798. Daniel and his brother, Robert McGary, were active in the area's beginnings. The committee to form Hopkins County met on the lawn of the McGary farm. Daniel later donated 20 acres to assist in forming the town of Madisonville. He and his half-brother, William McGary, were trustees of the town. As of 1939, Daniel and Nancy's home in Madisonville was still standing. A one-story brick house with a gabled ell, it was downtown, facing Main Street. The McGary family migrated again, ca 1800, to Hopkins (now Bath) County, Kentucky. The family appeared on the U.S. Census of 1800 and 1810 in Hopkins County. Daniel was the county's first jailer. When Nancy's father died in 1811, Daniel became guardian of her two youngest sisters, Mahala and Mary Berry. Daniel and Nancy also raised their orphaned granddaughter, Mary Elizabeth Harvey, after their oldest daughter died. In 1809, Daniel was a major of the 1st Battalion of the 76th Regiment. He served with the Kentucky Mounted Riflemen during the War of 1812. On the Census of 1820 and 1830, the McGarys appeared with a large family in Hopkins County. Daniel was widowed when Nancy died in 1834; he appeared alone on the Census of 1840. Some said Daniel McGary was a "trifling, gambling sort of fellow, but most remembered him as being a trusted member of the community." Daniel wrote his will on 24 May 1847, claiming that he was "in a bad state of health but (of) sound mind." Major Daniel McGary died, September 1847, aged 76, in Madisonville, and was buried with his wife at Flat Creek Cemetery in Mortons Gap, Kentucky, near the now extinct settlement of McGary's station.