Daniel Bemis was born around 1849 in Ohio to Reuben Bemis and Mary Jane Rowley. His father was a laborer who owned $800 of real estate and $300 of personal property by 1860. Bemis grew up and attended school in Milan, Ohio, and he married Catherine Pulver on April 20, 1871. They had two children: Ella, born around 1873; and Reuben, born around 1879. They lived in Berlin, Ohio, and Bemis worked as a laborer. He apparently suffered financial hardship in the late 1870s, and he was unemployed for at least four months in 1880. By 1900, he was working as a manufacturer. He died in 1906.