Frederick Tompkins Dane     1853 - 1857

 

Born:   1853, Nova Scotia.

Died:   June 8, 1857 in Nova Scotia.         

 

Place of burial?:  Riverside Cemetery, Appleton, Wisconsin, Lot 65, Block D or in Nova Scotia.  See below.

 

Father’s name:  Thomas Dane                                            Birth place:  Yarmouth, Nova Scotia          

Mother’s name:  Elizabeth Frances (Locke) Dane           Birth place:  Lockeport, Nova Scotia

Siblings:         Frances “Fannie” Locke (Dane) Fletcher

                        Atilla Dane

                        James Locke Dane

Leona Suberville (Dane) Briggs

Mary Maud Dane

Peter Eugene Dane

                        Ina (Dane) Hawthorne 

Zerviah (Dane) Benoit

                        Oscar Thomas Dane

 

Who is Frederick Tompkins…

 

According to handwritten notes left by Ina Frances (Briggs) Neller, “Frederick Tompkins is the 7 yr old son of T.W.B.”  T.W.B. is referring to Theodore Wood Briggs.  Therefore, Frederick should have been born after July of 1880 because he does not appear in the 1880 census.  However, I have not been able to corroborate this fact. 

 

There is a strong suggestion from A Bit of Grandma’s Life that he was rather a son of Elizabeth Frances (Locke) Dane and Thomas Dane, Ina’s grandparents, making Frederick to be Ina’s uncle.  On a different page of  Ina’s notes, she mentions some confusion about the whereabouts of a grandson when describing her grandmother’s gravesite, but she then applies a different name, George Fletcher *(See below).  The Freddie referred to in A Bit of Grandma’s Life was crippled with curvature of the spine, had a nurse who was a “slave” from the West Indies, and died at a young age.  Ina says that Freddie is buried alongside Robert Cornell Briggs, who died in 1855.  To me this suggests that he was living with sister Leona, rather than his mother and father.  Mom Elizabeth Locke Dane died in 1886 and father Thomas Dane returned to Nova Scotia the same year right after her death.  Brother Peter E. Dane, who also lived in Appleton, died in 1880 and would never have known his little nephew given the date of birth speculated above.  It is understandable how Ina may have been confused about just who Freddie’s parents were if indeed Freddie was born about 1880 and living with Leona. 

 

Huge problem with all this is that it makes mother Elizabeth having Freddie when she was 66 years old…and that seems quite unlikely!

 

A different source says:

 

Yarmouth Genealogies (By George S. Brown) shows a Frederick Tompkins Dane, with Thomas and Elizabeth Dane as his parents, having been born in 1853 and died June 8, 1857!  This would have been entirely while the Dane family lived in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.  And, while time-wise this makes considerably more sense, we then have this problem…How did his body end up being buried in Appleton, Wisconsin?  My answer is that it isn’t.  So now I need to try to find the gravesite in Nova Scotia.

 

Sorting it out…

 

I do not have any birth or death records for this child.  I do have the first hand comments from Leona and Ina.  I do have a burial record from Riverside Cemetery showing that he is in the Briggs plot as noted above, and more specifically, in grave number 2.  Grave number 1 is Robert and Mary Briggs together, and their burial record states they were moved from the old Evergreen Cemetery that preceded Riverside, sometime after 1861, but before 1888.  (It is not more specific.)  The burial records unfortunately do not indicate Frederick Tompkin’s last name, nor born and died dates, nor parents, nor date of burial.  Ah, the frustration of dealing with old records.

 

The other thing I need to examine is, was Ina was right about Frederick Tompkins being a Briggs, specifically son of Theodore W. Briggs and his wife Leona. 

 

When Theodore’s son Jay (Jeremiah Briggs) died in a dramatic accident in 1891, the newspapers clearly stated that he was the 3rd of Theodore’s sons to die, evoking much sympathy for the family.  The second son to die was Curtis Eugene Briggs passing in 1888 at age 26.  I had believed that the first was Frederick H. Briggs who died at age 19.  However, he actually passed in 1907!  Too late to be one of the 3; he was rather the 4th son to die!  Curtis and Jay are definitely 2nd and 3rd.  Who was the first?  Was it Frederick Tompkins just as Ina stated?   No.  The Pioneer Record, published in 1898 (Available through Fox Valley Memory.), gives us the name of the first son, Fred J. Briggs, who passed in 1873.  Digging deeper into the cemetery’s records, there is a J. Fred Briggs whom I believe is one and the same.  (I’ve entered this child’s information on father Theodore Wood Briggs page.)   

 

Conclusions:

I believe that Frederick Tompkins is a Dane and not a Briggs.  It is most likely that he is buried in Nova Scotia and that his life was as Leona Dane Briggs described it in A Bit of Grandma’s Life.  I looked for additional information regarding Frederick when I traveled to Nova Scotia in June of 2008, but I was unsuccessful.  He is not in Yarmouth’s Mountain Cemetery, he died before the cemetery was even established.  (Ironically, Mountain Cemetery was established following a resolution made by his father Thomas Dane in 1859 that the town should stop using the old burial ground.  This led to the Yarmouth’s establishment of Mountain Cemetery and its opening in 1860.)  I was not able to find any records at the Yarmouth County Museum & Archives that could shed any light on this child.  We do know that Frederick’s family lived next to the old burial ground and that his Great Grandfather Thomas is buried there.  In A Bit of Grandma’s Life, Leona (Dane) Briggs (Frederick’s sister) describes their Yarmouth home as, “Next to our house was an old burying ground and across from the house was the commons on which the soldiers drilled.”  Their home may be the two story house nestled in the trees between the park and the ship in the picture below.  (More information regarding Frost Park can be found on Great Grandfather Thomas Dane’s page.)

I believe that Frederick Tompkins Dane was buried in the old burial ground that was next to their home, near his Great Grandfather Thomas Dane.  There is no marker for Frederick.  This cemetery has lost many markers due to time and weather.  A close examination of Thomas’ marker shows much erosion and the possibility that an additional inscription once existed on it. 

 

    

The entrance to Yarmouth’s Mountain Cemetery (left) with marker (right) showing incorporation in 1860.

 

    

Left: Frost Park, formerly known as Victoria Park, off Main Street in downtown Yarmouth.

Right: Looking towards the Dane plot.  Frederick’s Great Grandfather Thomas is the only Dane family marker located to the left of the large tree in the center. 

 

    

Great Grandfather Thomas Dane’s marker.

 

Close-up of the marker.  You can see that a line of text has eroded away.

The missing text most likely read, “Aged 76 years”.

The two horizontal marks may have been a break between Thomas’ inscription and that of another family member.

Was Frederick Tompkins Dane the other inscription?  We can not know.

 

Victoria Park, now Frost Park, in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia as seen from the Grand Hotel in 1895.

Photo courtesy of Yarmouth County Museum & Archives.

Dane family once lived in the area to the left in this picture.

 

Additional notes:

 

Buried in Riverside Cemetery in Appleton, WI is Fred J. Briggs, the first of what were eventually 4 sons of Theodore Wood Briggs to die.  Confusing the issue is a 1958 record in Riverside Cemetery offices that illustrates the Briggs plot in detail and it identifies grave #2 as belonging to “Frederick Tompkins”.  This is most likely where Ina got her information and therefore the wrong “Fred”.  Riverside’s 2006 survey does not concur with the earlier record, but rather shows grave # 2 as unused or unidentified.  So where is Fred J. Briggs buried?  Please see my comments regarding Fred J. Briggs here.  It is worth your time because the story takes another unexpected twist.

 

George Fletcher is the son of Frances “Fannie” Locke (Dane) Fletcher and her husband, Capt. Richard Harding Fletcher.  Frances is a daughter of Thomas Dane and Elizabeth Frances (Locke) Dane, so George is a grandson to Elizabeth and Thomas.  Ina is correct about that detail.  And this is a separate issue from the Frederick Tompkins Dane confusion.

 

In Yarmouth, on November 8, 1846, a Rev. Frederick Tompkins arrives and forms the Congregational Church.  Was this man possibly a namesake for our Frederick Tompkins Dane?  (There is some more information on Thomas Dane’s page.)

 

 

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