DANIEL D. HARRIS, Postmaster and general merchant at Shelbyville Station, is classed among the active and enterprising young business men of Allegan County, who are so potent in sustaining and extending its commercial and other interests. He is a native of Southern Michigan, born in the town of Galesburg, May 5, 1859. His father, D. Harris, and his grandfather, James Harris, who were both natives of New York, the former born in Otsego County in 1825, were both early pioneers of Kalamazoo County, where they settled in 1834. The grandfather was one of the first to settle in Charlestown Township, that county, where he took up a tract of land from the Government. He was a son of an Englishman who came to America when a young man and made his home in the Empire State. The father of our subject was but a boy when his parents settled in the forest wilds of Kalamazoo County, and in after years he was there married to Miss Adeline Ralph, a native of that county. Her parents, George and Hettie Ralph, who are natives of England, are honored in the annals of that county as pioneers of Charleston, where they settled in 1835. They have attained the venerable ages of ninety-one and eighty-nine years respectively, and have enjoyed an unusually long wedded life of sixty-nine years. The parents of our subject have four children, three sons and one daughter. Their son Willard died at the age of seven months; their son Jay is clerking for his brother Daniel, and their daughter Cora is also with him. D. D. Harris is the second child and the second son of the family. He passed his boyhood in his native town, and was well educated in its schools. He gained his first experience of the mercantile business as a clerk in the store of Messrs. Schroder & Olin, of Galesburg, with whom he remained eighteen months. He then went north to Keweenaw County, where he clerked in a general store a like length of time. Returning to this part of Michigan, he located where he now resides, and formed a partnership with Mr. Schroder, Jr., to conduct a general store. They were together two years and nine months, and then Mr. Harris bought his partner's interest in the concern, which he has since carried on alone. He has a neat and well-arranged establishment, which is completely stocked with a fine assortment of dry-goods, groceries, crockery, paints, oils, etc. He has built up an extensive and profitable trade on a solid basis,as he has a thorough understanding of his business, gives it his undivided attention, has a keen comprehension of what is best suited to the wants and tastes of his patrons, who always find him courteous and obliging, and strictly reliable in all his transactions, his credit standing high in financial circles. Mr. Harris, as before mentioned, adds the duties of Postmaster to his other business, having been appointed to that position in 1889. He began life with but little means, and though still in the prime of early manhood has already won an assured place among the monied men of this section of the county. He is popular socially, and is a member of Prairie Lodge, No. 92, A. F. & A. M., at Galesburg. He was at one time Justice of the Peace. In his political relations he stands with the Republican party. Mr. Harris was married in his native town in April, 1882, to Miss Louise, a daughter of Luke Keith, of that place. They have established one of the coziest homes at Shelbyville Station, and their pleasant household is completed by their three children: Lavern, Floyd and Leone. Their little son Jay died at the age of four years. Portrait and biographical record of Kalamazoo, Allegan and Van Buren counties, Michigan 1892 P. 391