A true son of "Liberty", his father was a Revolutionary War veteran, and his uncle John Brown died at the Lexington, MA village green as one of the first casualties of the Revolution.

Daniel moved with his family as a boy to Plymouth, VT. He married Polly Jenison in Vermont in 1800 and he served in the Vermont legislature 1805-8. In 1812 he took his family to Owego, Broome County, NY, and he later lived at Brighton, NY where he had a contract on the work of digging the Erie Canal in that area. It is believed that he later operated a ferryboat on the completed canal. The Browns pioneered in the Ann Arbor area in 1826 and their primitive farmstead was where the University of Michigan's football stadium is today.

WEEKLY MICHIGAN ARGUS, March 20, 1857, p. 2:

We have the painful duty of recording the death of one of the first settlers in this city, and one among the early pioneers of the State.

—DANIEL BROWN, Esq., died at his residence in Ann Arbor, on Wednesday, the 11th inst., [March 11, 1857] in the 82nd year of his age; closing a life full of years and of honor.

Mr. BROWN was born in the village of Lexington, in the State of Massachusetts in the year 1775. His family afterwards removed to Windsor County, Vermont, where for a long series of years he served in the Legislature of the State. Migrating to western New York, he filled for many years offices of trust and honor among his fellow-citizens.

He came to this place in 1826, when the site of our city was almost an unbroken wilderness. To his forethought, energy, and public spirit was the town indebted for the first impulse in its career of prosperity. He was possessed of a genial disposition, and social qualities of a high order which enabled him through life to win "troops of friends," whom he retained by his integrity, generosity and high sense of honor.

Born at the time and in the place where the first blood of the Revolution was spilt, his nursery tales were the stories of patriotism – and his cradle hymns were the songs of liberty. These early impressions remained indelible thro' life. He was enthusiastic in his support of the great party of popular rights, recording his first vote for Mr. Jefferson in 1796, and with a fidelity that never faltered, supported each succeeding Presidential candidate of that party, coming out for the last time to record his vote for Mr. Buchanan. It is an interesting fact in the early history of this County, that on the inauguration of President Jackson, in 1829, every "Jackson man" in Washtenaw County was invited, and most of them were present at his house, in a festival given in honor of the occasion. The lamp of his life went out peacefully and quietly. He died without disease and without pain; expressing gratitude that his time had come, and relying with unshaken confidence in a glorious immortality. The burial was conducted by the Masonic Societies of the City. He had been a prominent member of that institution for more than half a century.