Salma Dane (1833-1910) and Albert B. “Bert” Dane (1876-1972)
52 Weeks 52 Ancestors Week 13 Prompt: In the Newspaper
A tiny newspaper clipping changed the way I looked at the
relationship between these two men. The story is so charming—the type of story that
one assumes only happens in fiction, but as this newspaper article showed me,
truth is stranger, and in this case, sweeter, than fiction.
Salma Dane is my third great-uncle, the brother of my second
great-grandfather Jerome Dane. Salma was born in 1833 in New York to David Dane
and Sally Randall, the eighth of their nine children. Following David’s death
when Salma was two, the family relocated to Wisconsin. Salma met and married
Hannah “Hattie” Comstock in Wisconsin, and by the 1860 census, they had settled
in Oakfield, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin. Their first child, a daughter
Hattie, was born there in 1859. Sadly, Hattie died just days after her first
birthday.
Salma and Hattie moved to Minnesota, settling in the Waseca
area, and then in Janesville, Minnesota where Salma worked as a carpenter and
joiner, and also farmed. They had two
more sons. Freddie was born in 1868, and David was born in 1873. Tragically,
both little boys died. Freddie died in 1874 at age 6, and David died a year
later at age 2. They are buried together in the Janesville cemetery under a
single white marble marker.
A year later, a newspaper story in the February 15, 1876
Janesville Argus described a little miracle that brought joy for the Danes
after so much loss. The newspaper reported that the previous Tuesday, February
8, someone left a baby boy in the entryway of Mr. H. S. Bown’s house.
The story states, “The little waif was very cold, having
been long in the night air probably. Mr. Brown heard the door open and the
child cry, but caught no glympse (sic) of the party.”
Another newspaper noted that Mr. Brown was apparently long
past the age of fathering a child. The story joked that “Generally speaking,
there’s nothing unusual in finding a baby in most Minnesota families, but our
friend H. S. Brown of Janesville has reached that period in life where he
expects nothing of the kind.”
The story notes that the baby “is a fine healthy boy some
two months old and has been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Salma Dane. It could not
have fallen into better hands and is undoubtedly better off than if left to the
tender ? care of its inhuman parents.” Obviously the community had felt sorry
for the Danes, and supported their adoption of the abandoned child.
The second newspaper was a bit kinder to the birth parents,
noting that the boy was “snugly wrapped up and laid in the [back] room” of
Brown’s house. The paper also stated there was “no clue to the donor.”
I can’t fathom the desperation and despair that must have
driven Albert’s mother to abandon her son. The community of Janesville was very
small, and it would been nearly impossible to have hidden a pregnancy and
birth, much less care for the baby for six weeks to two months without others
in the community finding out. Therefore, I suspect the parents were from
outside the community. They must have ridden a horse or buggy to the edge of
town and chosen a house that looked occupied.
Luckily, given the frigid
temperature of a Minnesota February, the baby was discovered in time, and was
taken in by eager adoptive parents. By this point, Salma and Hattie were
getting too old to conceive again, so I imagine they were thrilled to get another
chance at parenthood.
Apparently, the little boy thrived under Salma and Hattie’s
care. The state issued a new birth certificate for the baby, listing him as
Albert B. Dane and giving him a birth date of February 9, 1876, which is
probably the date the Danes took him in. Given the birth record, without the newspaper
article posted by one of my distant cousins on Ancestry, I never would have
known that Albert wasn’t Salma and Hattie’s natural child.
Salma died in 1910, and left his property divided between
his wife and Albert, a sign that the family was on good terms.
Albert eventually left farming and became a salesman for a
drugstore company. He went on to marry and had a daughter, Dorothy Zaida Dane.
His wife died at some point before the 1930 census. By then daughter Dorothy
was married and launched on her own life. Albert remarried, and by 1935 he had moved
to California. The 1940 census states he
was occupied as a candy maker for his own confectionary business! He died
January 31, 1962 in Los Angeles at age 85. He came a long way from being a
foundling left in the back room of a house in small town Minnesota.
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