Darling H. Chadbourn was born around 1826 in Waterboro, Maine, to Nathan and Betsey Chadbourn. By the late 1850s, he was working as a railroad conductor in Huntsville, Alabama. He married Elizabeth J. Hamilton on July 15, 1858, and they had at least three children: Bailey, born around 1862; Augustus, born around 1864; and Maud, born around 1869. They lived in Dunkirk, Wisconsin, and Chadbourn worked as a farmer. By 1860, he owned $100 of personal property. They moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the 1860s, and Chadbourn earned a living as a machinist. He died of consumption in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on March 1, 1886.