Elias Dayton ( May 1, 1737 – October 22, 1807 ), father of Jonathan Dayton, was born in Elizabeth, Union County, New Jersey.

During the French and Indian War, he served first as a lieutenant and then as a captain in the New Jersey militia. During Pontiac's War, in 1760, he served as a commander in the Detroit region. After the wars, he returned to Elizabethtown, New Jersey, where he became a mechanic, merchant and colonial official.

In 1774 the First Continental Congress called on the colonies to resist Parliament's recent tax policy by joining in an association to boycott goods imported from Britain. Dayton served on Elizabethtown's enforcement committee and allied himself with the local Revolutionary movement. When the state turned against Royal Governor William Franklin in 1775, the New Jersey's Provincial Congress chose the Elias Dayton to lead the 3rd New Jersey Regiment. In the spring of 1776 he and his troops (including his young son Jonathan) were sent to support an invasion of Canada, but were diverted to New York's Mohawk Valley where Colonel Dayton was put in charge of constructing fortifications to protect the colonists from Tory and Indian insurections. These fortifications included Fort Dayton in what is now Herkimer, New York.

In 1778, he was a delegate to the Continental Congress from New Jersey, and in 1791 he was a member of the New Jersey state legislature. He was interred at the First Presbyterian Churchyard in Elizabeth, New Jersey.