Henry Clay Dane 1833-1895 (both years approximate)
While
reviewing my Dane family ancestors, I noticed that I didn’t have a death date
for my First Cousin 4x Removed Henry Clay Dane. (Relationship: his father was my paternal third-great-grandfather David Dane's brother.) I decided to fix that. When a
preliminary Ancestry records search failed to provide information, I turned to
Google, and that’s when things got interesting.
Google
pulled up an Ancestry Message Board request from 2008. An Australian researcher
was asking for information “regarding an American man named Henry C. Dane, a
former Massachusetts resident who is confirmed to have married an Australian
woman. He is referred to as a "Major", possibly in the American Civil
War, as he is said to have served in either the 41st Mass Infantry; or may have
been a 1st Lieut. in Co C, 3rd Mass Cav.; 1861-1865. He may have been born
around 1833. Before his military service he was said to have been a lawyer. He
became a resident of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia in 1875.”
Australia?
What was Henry Dane, a Maine native who ended up working as an attorney in
Washington D.C. and Boston after serving in the Civil War, doing in Australia
in 1875? This was a man who was truly “out of place”.
Following
up on leads contained in the message board led me to some fascinating resources
and information. I was able to confirm the Australian Henry Dane was in fact my
ancestor Henry Dane. His path to Australia was quite amazing, and taught me
about a nineteenth century form of entertainment of which I was unaware.
Henry
Clay Dane was born in Fayette, Maine in either 1833 or 1834. Fayette is a small
town in Kennebec County in the Winthrop Lakes region near the center of the
state. His father, Massachusetts native John Dane, had moved there after his
1812 marriage to Sarah Sutton of New Hampshire. John farmed and was a tanner
according to census records. He and Sarah had several children—other people’s
Ancestry trees list eight children although the records on some of them are
very sparse. Henry was the second youngest of their children.
Henry
abandoned farming and Fayette while quite young. By age 16, he was living with
his older sister, Sarah Augusta Dane Newcomb and her husband Josiah Newcomb in
Norton, Massachusetts. His younger sister Eliza was also living there. It is
unclear if his parents weren’t able to care for them, or if they were in
Massachusetts for educational or work opportunities. Henry’s brother-in-law was
listed on the 1850 census as a “housewright”, a builder of wood houses, and
Henry was listed as an apprentice, so perhaps he was living there to learn
Josiah Newcomb’s trade.
1850 Census entry
By
1855, Henry was 22 years old, and had apparently relocated to Otsego, New York
where he was boarding with an unrelated family. The census record identifies
him as H.C. Dane, and states he was born in Maine and was a student. I found historical
records from the Otsego area describing the Cherry Valley Academy, an
apparently well-respected school that employed several lawyers as faculty
during the 1850s. Since I know that Henry eventually worked as an attorney, I
hypothesize Henry was in the Otsego area to train in the field of law.
Henry returned to Massachusetts at
some point in the 1860s, for he was in Cambridge when he enlisted in the Union
Army on October 4, 1862. He mustered in as 1st Lieutenant in the Massachusetts
41st Regiment, and later received a commission as Captain of Co.
"F", Third Massachusetts Calvary Regiment. He was promoted to Brevet
Major 13 March, 1865. He later claimed to have participated in the capture of
New Orleans, the siege of Port Hudson, the Red River Expedition and operations
in the Shenandoah Valley during his war service. I will have to find his Civil
War service record to confirm those claims.
Maj. Henry C Dane, Civil War
Following the war, he returned to
Cambridge and set up a legal practice in Boston. He married a young Cambridge
woman on November 5, 1867. He was 34; his bride, Angeline E. Parker, was only
22. The marriage was short-lived; Angeline died in 1869.
Henry remained in Boston until at
least 1876; a city directory lists him as a lawyer with offices at 30 Kilby, a
downtown address that now houses a high rise building. Another source states he
was in practice with another attorney and the firm was called Dane & Baker.
At some point between 1876 and the
1880 census, Henry left the practice of law and became a professional lecturer.
During the late nineteenth century, public lectures were popular
entertainments, and companies were formed to hire interesting speakers and
arrange the bookings. Henry joined one of these companies, the Redpath Lyceum
Bureau.
Maj. Dane's speaking bureau photo
He had several speaking topics, including descriptions of his travels
in Europe under the titles “Up the Rhine and Over the Alps with a Knapsack” and
“Constantinople, the Queen of the Levant” as well as a speech on the female sex
cryptically titled “The Heroic in Womanhood”.
His most popular speech was based
on his Civil War experiences, and was titled “The Great Naval Battles of the
American Rebellion.” An Australian reporter described it as follows: “The
furious engagements between the Confederates and the Federal ships were
depicted in the most graphic language, which completely riveted the attention
of the audience for the two hours the lecture lasted, while the drily humorous
sallies which the lecturer occasionally indulged in created a good deal of
merriment.” The Daily Advocate of Newark Ohio was equally complimentary,
stating that “Major Dane is simply matchless in his style of oratory. He has
the quality known as ‘ideal presence’ in a greater degree than any other
speaker we have listened to.”
Handbill promoting three of Dane's speeches in Australia, 1887
I found several newspaper reports
of his performances around the country. He was a very popular speaker, and,
according to a letter he wrote a friend in 1887, “I have advanced somewhat up
the line of my class, and now stand among the head chaps.”
Speakers
for the Redpath Lyceum could command good fees for the era. Minor speakers
could get $200 per engagement, while famous individuals could command up to
$800 or so. Presumably, Henry Dane fell somewhere in the middle range. He
traveled extensively across the country, ending up on the West Coast in the
late 1880s. He was being courted by Australian venues, and after receiving
assurances “that many who had come to this land have had all expenses paid and
received more than that”, he set sail for Sydney on a steamship. He was excited
by the beauty of the country, writing to
friend Henry Allison of Massachusetts on August 18, 1887 about his experiences
in Australia, and assuring him that “I am safe in the land of former savages
and convicts.”
Letter from Henry to friend Henry Allison
During his travels, he met a young woman named Jeanie
Grahame Cook, the daughter of Samuel Cook, the longtime general manager of the
Sydney Herald newspaper. They married July 14, 1891 in what was described “the
wedding of the week”. The ceremony took place in the backyard of the Cook home
under “a large tree where a floral rail and altar had been erected, the guests
watching the proceedings from the balcony”.
It was a true May-December romance: Major Dane was 58 years old, and his
bride a tender 24!
Following
a honeymoon in Tasmania, the couple moved to the United States, where Henry
returned to his speaking engagements. They traveled back and forth to Australia
over the years, and on one of their return trips somewhere between 1895 and
1898 (have not found death records), Henry died on board the ship Mariposa and
was buried at sea somewhere in the Pacific. Jeanie moved back to Australia. She
never remarried, becoming an advocate for early childhood education and universal
kindergarten.
Obviously,
I have more research to do on this fascinating man, who was truly “out of place”
not just geographically, but professionally as well. Henry Clay Dane was a
daring, unique man who turned a love of travel, adventure and performance into
an unusual career.
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