Daniel Leaming was born on 3 Nov 1821, in Indiana, probably in Delaware County, where his father had been commissioned Justice of the Peace in 1820. He was the son of Judah Leaming and Eunice Griffin.
In 1834, two years after his father had moved the family to a new frontier area of Indiana, in Springfield Township, LaPorte County, Daniel's mother died on Christmas Day, 25 Dec 1834, when Daniel was 13. His father remarried ten months later, on 15 Oct 1835. Daniel's step-mother was a widow, Rosanna (Shippee) Reynolds.
In 1850, Daniel was living in his father's household in Dallas County, Iowa.
Daniel married Mary Elizabeth Spear, the daughter of John Spear and Mary Osborn, on 15 Aug 1851, in Clark County, Missouri, before Sam Bedell, Justice of the Peace. They had seven children:
1. Hannah Leaming (b. ca. 1852, Iowa; d. before 1860)
2. Caroline "Carrie" Leaming (b. 4 Sep 1854, Iowa)
3. Jane Leaming (b. ca. 1856; d. before 1860)
4. Francis Leaming (b. 28 Jun 1859, Missouri)
5. Moses Leaming (b. ca. 1861; d. before 1870)
6. Martha Leamiing (b. ca. 1864, Thayer County, Nebraska Territory)
7. Wesley John Leaming (b. 4 Jan 1868, Thayer County, Nebraska)
In 1860, Daniel and Mary were living near what later became the town of Ravenwood, in Nodaway County, Missouri, where Daniel had a farm not far from the one Mary's brother, Moses, had established.
Homesteading: Nebraska Territory
In about 1863, Daniel moved his family to southern Nebraska, where he established a homestead near the Kansas border, in Thayer County, on land described as:
"East half of the North West quarter and the South West quarter of the North West quarter and the North West quarter of the South West quarter of Section thirty one in Township one North of Range one West in the District of lands formerly subject to sale at Brownville now Beatrice Nebraska Containing one hundred and Sixty acres."
His Homestead Certificate was dated 5 Jun 1868. His Patent was issued in Washington, D.C. on 1 Sep 1869.
In 1870, the ranch Daniel and Mary had developed in Nebraska was valued at $2,000.
Westward to Washington Territory
In the early 1870s, Daniel moved his family westward once again, this time along the Oregon Trail and then north into Washington Territory.
In May of 1876, Daniel petitioned the court in Walla Walla County, Washington Territory, for a divorce from Mary on the grounds of abandonment. His petition was granted on 12 May 1876, and Daniel was awarded custody of the couple's two surviving minor children: Martha Leaming, age 12, and John Wesley Leaming, age 8. (Their other two surviving children, Caroline and Francis, were both married by 1876.)
In his later years, Daniel moved between the homes of his surviving children. In 1900, he was living with his daughter, Carrie, her husband, Grant Hamblen, and their five-year-old daughter, Gladys, in Pampa Precinct, Whitman County, Washington. On 14 Jun 1908, at the age of 86, he had recently come to live with his daughter, Francis Logsdon, in Endicott, Whitman County, Washington. He rose in the middle of the night, looking for the door leading to the outhouse, but turned in the wrong direction and fell down the cellar stairs. He survived a broken neck but died on 20 Jun 1908, of pneumonia. He was buried in the Endicott Cemetery on 21 Jun 1908.