Lewis Mulford Dayton was born on November 30, 1835, in St. Lawrence County, New York. He eventually moved to Lancaster, Ohio, and by 1860, he was working as a clerk in a machine shop. On March 11, 1863, he received a commission as a captain and aide-de-camp in the Union army. He served with General William T. Sherman in the Army of the Tennessee, and he eventually earned a promotion to lieutenant colonel and assistant adjutant general. He mustered out on September 1, 1866. Dayton returned to Ohio after the war and settled in Cincinnati. He married Nellie Phillips sometime in the 1860s. Dayton worked as a merchant, and, as several friends later noted, he became a “prominent figure in business and social life in Cincinnati,” and he was a charter member of the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. His friends described him as a “good soldier and a good citizen.” He died of “La Grippe” in Cincinnati on May 18, 1891.