Daniel Chase Corbin was born in Newport, New Hampshire.  In 1860 he married Louisa Jackson; they had three children - Austin, Louise, and Mary.  Mr. Corbin was actively involved in the growth and settlement of the West by doing everything from survey work and land transactions in Nebraska, government freighting in Utah and Colorado, to banking in Montana.  All of this he did before settling in Spokane, where he quickly became a financial success.  

In 1886 after the discovery of the Bunker Hill and Sullivan mines in the Coeur d'Alene Mountains of Northern Idaho, Corbin helped erect the first concentrator at the mine sites.  Corbin then built the Spokane Falls & Idaho Railroad and the Coeur d'Alene Railway & Navigation Company, which connected the "jump off" point of Spokane with those lead and silver mining districts.  Corbin's railroads were pivotal in establishing Spokane's position as a railroad center in the Inland Northwest.  In 1888 he sold the line to Northern Pacific.  Daniel Corbin continued his entrepreneurship with the 1899 development of the Spokane Valley Land and Water Company, bringing the Spokane Valley its first irrigation project.

Mr. Corbin's first wife, Louisa, and their three children never lived in the house now known as the D.C. Corbin House.  Unhappy with life in Spokane, Louisa moved with their children to Europe.  Daughter Louise became the wife of the Duke of Oxford in England.  Austin returned to Spokane as a young adult and worked with his father.  Daughter Mary, after a brief marriage to Kirtland K. Cutter, married an English nobleman, Edward Balguy of London.  Louisa died in Paris in 1900.  Mary was later divorced and moved to California where she died in the late 1930's.