Daniel Dyer Leach was one of the six children of Apollos and Chloe (Dyer) Leach. He was a descendant by several lines from many of the first settlers of his birthplace, Bridgewater, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. His father, a carpenter and builder, owned a profitable farm.
Daniel's early education in the school near his home, under the direction of George Chipman, was supplemented by the varied activities presented by the home life of the period. He was a studious, selfreliant, and original boy. When sixteen years of age he left the Bridgewater Academy. He was graduated from Brown University in 1830 and later studied divinity at Andover Theological Seminary.
While studying Leach engaged for a time in business in Boston. In 1833 he was ordained an Episcopal clergyman. He preached for five years in Quincy, Massachusetts, and retired from this parish to take up what proved to be his life work in education.
From 1838 to 1842 he was principal of the Classical High School in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and from 1842 to 1848 he conducted a private school. His interest in popular education led to his employment as an agent of the Massachusetts State Board of Education from 1848 to 1855. While holding this position he inspected more than a thousand schools and schoolhouses, noting their defects, and advising with local committees regarding ways and means for betterment. In the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education (1854) Leach presented plans for an improved system of ventilation which was soon widely installed. This episode emphasized one of his characteristics. To him the recognition of an undesirable condition was a direct challenge to his resourcefulness in devising means for improvement.
In 1855 he was appointed superintendent of schools for Providence, Rhode Island. At this time the Providence school system consisted of a committee numbering at times sixty-three, a staff of two men and one hundred women teachers, a clerk, and about seven thousand children. With his horse and chaise the superintendent was able to keep in close touch with all of his classrooms. In this little laboratory of practical pedagogy Leach dealt at first hand with the perennial problems of school administration. With insight, resource, and a rare grasp of psychological principles, he initiated experiments, created methods, and set standards that had a constructive effect upon the schools of his own and later times.
His reports to the Providence school committee, extending through thirty years, reveal educational insight and vision that make them profitable reading to a later generation of educators. A series of pamphlets, Directions to Teachers (1873), "embracing the best methods of teaching reading, spelling, object lessons, etc. , with judicious counsel on the administration of discipline" contributed to the advancement of teaching over a wide area. His methods for teaching spelling resounded even in the English Parliament in the reports of an inspector sent by the British government to observe the schools of the United States and Canada (James Fraser, Report on the Common School System of the United States and . Upper and Lower Canada, 1866).
From 1870 to 1889 he was a member of the Rhode Island State Board of Education, and in 1877 he was elected a trustee of Brown University for life.
Leach was a pioneer in methods of public-school administration, making his way along untried paths in a profession lacking traditions and having few precedents. His textbooks on arithmetic, geography, and spelling were widely used as standard texts for elementary schools. A memorial tablet in honor of Daniel Leach and of his brother, Col. Franklin Leach, was placed in the memorial building of the Old Bridgewater Historical Society with appropriate historical addresses of dedication on November 26, 1927.
In 1834 Leach married Mary H. Lawton, daughter of Capt. Robert and Penelope (Brown) Lawton, of Newport, Rhode Island. There were three children.
