Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815 - 1882)

Born 1 Aug 1815 in Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 6 Jan 1882 at age 66 in Rome, Italy

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Kate P [send private message]

Biography

Richard Dana Jr. is Notable.

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (August 1, 1815 – January 6, 1882) was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family, who gained renown as the author of the American classic, the memoir Two Years Before the Mast. Both as a writer and as a lawyer, he was a champion of the downtrodden, from seamen to fugitive slaves.

Dana was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 1, 1815[1] into a family that had settled in colonial America in 1640, counting Anne Bradstreet among its ancestors. His father was the poet and critic Richard Henry Dana, Sr.

Education

As a boy, Dana studied in Cambridgeport under a strict schoolmaster named Samuel Barrett, alongside fellow Cambridge native and future writer James Russell Lowell.

In 1825, Dana enrolled in a private school overseen by Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom Dana later mildly praised as "a very pleasant instructor", though he lacked a "system or discipline enough to insure regular and vigorous study." In July 1831, Dana enrolled at Harvard College, where in his freshman year his support of a student protest cost him a six-month suspension. In his junior year, he contracted measles, which in his case led to ophthalmia.

In 1836 he enrolled at what is now Harvard Law School, then called the Dane Law School. He graduated from there in 1837 and was admitted to the bar in 1840. He went on to specialize in maritime law.

Sea Voyage

Fatefully, the worsening vision inspired him to take a sea voyage. But rather than going on a fashionable Grand Tour of Europe, he decided to enlist as a merchant seaman, despite his high-class birth. On August 14, 1834 he departed Boston aboard the brig Pilgrim bound for Alta California, at that time still a part of Mexico. This voyage would bring Dana to a number of settlements in California (including Monterey, San Pedro, San Juan Capistrano, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara and San Francisco). After witnessing a flogging on board the ship, he vowed that he would try to help improve the lot of the common seaman.

Selected Works

n 1841 Dana published The Seaman's Friend, which became a standard reference on the legal rights and responsibilities of sailors, He defended many common seamen in court.

During his voyages he had kept a diary, and in 1840 (coinciding with his admission to the bar) he published a memoir, Two Years Before the Mast. The term, "before the mast" refers to sailors' quarters, which were located in the forecastle (the ship's bow), officers' quarters being near the stern. His writing evidences his later sympathy for the oppressed. With the California Gold Rush later in the decade, Two Years Before the Mast would become highly sought after as one of the few sources of information on California.

Dana became a prominent abolitionist, helping to found the anti-slavery Free Soil Party in 1848 and represented the fugitive slave Anthony Burns in Boston in 1854.

Note: Dana and his wife had six children, one son and five daughters - source the book "Two Years Before the Mast" written by Richard Dana and published in 1840. Also a Reader's Digest version published in 1995.

Death

Dana died of influenza in Rome at the age of 67 and is buried in that city's Protestant Cemetery.

His son, Richard Henry Dana III, married Edith Longfellow, daughter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sources

• Wikipedia: Richard_Henry_Dana,_Jr.
• http://www.sandiegohistory.org/online_resources/dana.html
• Dana, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Dana Saga, Three Centuries of The Dana Family in Cambridge (The Cambridge Historical Society, 1941) Page 39-54.