Daniel Akehurst was born in England in about 1653. A Quaker, he arrived in North Carolina by the 1680s, when he became a member of the North Carolina Council as a deputy for proprietor John Archdale. In addition to handling Archdale's affairs in the colony, he also served at various times as a customs collector for Pasquotank, as a justice of the North Carolina General Court, and as a diplomat charged with settling boundary disputes with the colony of Virginia and treating with various American Indian nations. He died in Virginia in about December 1699.