Dyson Deaton was born in the 1840s in North Carolina to Jackson and Elizabeth Deaton. His father was a farmer who owned $150 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Moore County, North Carolina. He moved to Parkersburg, West Virginia, in the 1860s, and he married a woman named Clarissa around 1869. Their son Elmer was born around 1873. He earned a living as a huckster, and he died sometime after 1880.