Leonard Bernin Dalton was born on March 14, 1893, in McDowell County, North Carolina. Dalton was a laborer at Clinchfield Cotton Mill Company in Marion, North Carolina, when he registered for the draft (World War I) in June 1917. He was subsequently inducted into the service in July 1918 and served with unassigned infantry at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, until honorably discharged in October 1919. Dalton died in Mountain Home, Tennessee, on September 26, 1946.