Daniel Grass lost his father at age two and a half when the rest of his family were taken captive, and Doctor William R. Hynes took him in and educated him as his own son. He married Jane Smithers of Yellow Banks, now Owensboro, Kentucky, whose father William Smithers was the first settler there. In 1803 Grass came to Hanging Rock, as the Indians called it, now Rockport, to look after entering land for Doctor William R. Hynes, and on May 9, 1807 he entered land on Section 26 southwest of Rockport. He was the second man to take a land grant in Spencer County, but the first actual settler of what is now Rockport to enter a land grant there. His political career began in 1812 as Justice of the Peace, and in 1813 he became an Associate Judge for Warrick County, which then included more than half of what is now Spencer County. On January 5, 1816, after a bill was reported to the United States House of Representatives to enable the people of Indiana Territory to form a constitution, Grass was elected a delegate from Warrick County to the constitutional convention at Corydon, the capital. In August 1816 he was elected a Senator in the first Indiana State Legislature from Warrick, Perry, and Posey Counties. Through his influence, Spencer County was organized by an act of the legislature in 1817-1818, and he had the county named for Captain Spier Spencer, his warm friend who was killed at Tippecanoe on November 7, 1811, and also caused the county seat to be placed at Rockport. In 1818 Grass was elected representative from Spencer, Dubois, and Warrick Counties. In 1822 he was again elected to the State Senate from Spencer, Dubois, and part of Warrick, serving until 1826. He was appointed treasurer of Spencer County in 1818 but never served, and in the same year he was appointed County Agent; early deeds show Grass as agent of Spencer County as grantor. He was sheriff of Spencer County from 1833 to 1836, the year he died of a stroke of apoplexy, found dead in his chair by his wife after being unable for some time to lie down and resting at night in a specially made chair. He was buried on the hillside of the Old Grave Yard, not far from the hill on which he first settled.