Dan Emmett
American entertainer and composer (1815-1904)
Daniel Decatur Emmett (October 29, 1815 – June 28, 1904) was an American composer, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. He is most remembered as the composer of the song "Dixie".
Early and family life
Dan Emmett was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, then a frontier region.
His grandfather, Rev. John Emmett (1759–1847), had been born in Cecil County, Maryland, and after serving as a private in the American Revolutionary War and fighting at the Battle of White Plains in New York and later in Delaware, became a Methodist minister in the then-vast frontier of Augusta County, Virginia, and then moved across the Appalachian Mountains to Licking County, Ohio and also served in the Ohio legislature representing Pickaway County, Ohio in the Scioto River valley.
His father, Abraham Emmett (1791–1846), served as a private in the War of 1812 while his father served in the Ohio legislature.
Notwithstanding his grandfather's career, Dan had little formal education. He learned popular tunes from his musical mother, and taught himself to play the fiddle.
At age 13, Emmett became apprenticed to a printer and in 1836, when he was 21, enlisted in the United States Army. He became an expert fifer and drummer at Newport Barracks, Newport, Kentucky.
“Dan Emmett” enters the record as american entertainer and composer (1815-1904). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Emmett, American and entertainer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3602423. VIAF identifies the subject as 8322392. The Library of Congress control number is n82225853. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1815, 1904, 1759 and 1847.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dan Emmett” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.