Daniel Coffee Trewhitt was the second son of Levi and Harriet Lavender Trewhitt. Daniel was born in Morgan County, Tennessee January 29, 1823. Levi, his father, was a farmer and teacher until he was elected circuit court clerk of Morgan County in 1825. In 1833 Levi obtained a license to practice law and was admitted to the Morgan County bar. The family later moved to Bradley County, Tennessee. When the Civil War broke out, Levi was an ardent supporter of the union cause. Although he was 64 years old, the elderly Trewhitt was arrested by Confederate authorities in November of 1861 and taken to Mobile, Alabama where he died in custody on January 31, 1862.

Levi's son Daniel drifted naturally into the legal profession. He studied law in his father's office at Cleveland in Bradley County. Daniel was also admitted to the bar and set up a practice at Harrison in Hamilton County, Tennessee. We don't know the name of his first wife, but she died May 4, 1861. There were two children from this first marriage, Thomas and Jennie Trewhitt.

Also an ardent supporter of the union, Daniel was widely known for his speeches in Hamilton County against secession. Later he traveled to Kentucky and was appointed Lieutenant Colonel of the 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Infantry on November 1, 1861. He resigned his commission on March 14, 1862 at Cumberland Ford, Kentucky due to poor health and distress due to the death of his father. On July 3, 1862 he again took up arms when he was appointed Adjutant General of General James G. Spears' 5th Tennessee Infantry Regiment. He resigned from that regiment on December 28, 1863, again due to poor health.

After the war Daniel resumed practicing law at Cleveland and Harrison until 1865 when he was appointed Chancellor for the Chattanooga Chancery Division, a position he held until 1870. On July 4, 1865, Daniel married Mary Malissa Hunter, the daughter of Addison and Pauline Riley Hunter. Daniel and Mary had four children: Addison Hunter born August 6, 1866; Alonzo Sharp born September 10, 1871; Paul Wordsworth born April 3, 1873 and Ellen Gahagen born September 21, 1875. In 1870 Daniel returned to law until 1878 when he was elected Judge for the Chattanooga Circuit. In 1886 he was re-elected and held that office until his death on January 4, 1891. Mary Trewhitt died July 5, 1918. His sons erected a life-size monument in his memory at the Forest Hill Cemetery in Chattanooga.

Oliver Temple had this to say about Daniel Trewhitt: " Both as a Chancellor and as Circuit Judge he was considered by the members of his profession an able and an impartial presiding officer. He grasped and solved the questions coming before him for determination with almost intuitive knowledge. His mind was singularly clear and quick. It did not require a moment's deliberation for him to decide all ordinary questions. The result was that he dispatched business with great rapidity. He was endowed by nature with the mind of a high grade lawyer and able judge. With all this he was honest, and loved justice, and was quick to discover it. He was in fact an exceptionally able and upright judge." 

Notable Men of Tennessee, From 1833 to 1875, Their Times and Their Contemporaries, by Oliver P. Temple, pages 206 - 207. New York: The Cosmopolitan Press, 1912.

Photograph and much of the information is from Leaves from the Family Tree, by Penelope Johnson Allen, published in the Chattanooga Times, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sunday, June 24, 1934, contributed by Blair Trewhitt, Atlanta, Georgia.

Daniel Trewhitt pension file at the National Archives, Washington, D.C.