Daniel Decatur Emmett (October 29, 1815 – June 28, 1904) was an American songwriter, entertainer, and founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition, the Virginia Minstrels. He is most remembered as the creator of the song "Dixie"Dan Emmett was born in Mount Vernon, Knox County, 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 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.