Leona’s Story: The Immigration of Thomas Dane and Family from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia to Appleton, Wisconsin
Leona Dane, c 1919
Victoria
Park, now Frost Park, in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia as seen from the Grand Hotel in
1895.
Photo courtesy of Yarmouth
County Museum & Archives.
The Dane family home that they left in 1860 is on the extreme far left and partially cut off.
Thomas
Dane was having a tough go of it in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia during the
1850’s. At least four of the ships he
had investments in had been lost and not insured. The railways were making inroads into the
shipping business and the trains could go where his ships could not. To make matters worse, the city council was
beginning to subsidize the building of railroads. His livelihood was threatened.
His political ambitions were
being brushed aside by the people of Yarmouth as he lost one election after
another trying to get onto the city council.
Not only was there the issue with the railroads, but there was also a
noticeable number of families leaving the community. One of his election platforms dealt with this
loss of people and community as families emigrated away from Yarmouth. He said, “…much can be done by wise and
energetic legislation to advance the interests, encourage and direct the
industry, brighten the prospects, and increase the happiness and prosperity of
the North American Colonies. And that there should be no necessity for the emigration of our
population to foreign Countries to seek a livelihood or happiness.”
The loss of family hit him
hardest though. Two of his four sons had
passed away. His third son left to seek
his fortune in Appleton, Wisconsin. And
one of his daughters married and left with her husband’s family for
Australia. In daughter Leona’s words,
her father was “feeling very poor and anxious to start life anew.” On April 23, 1860, Thomas moves with his wife
Elizabeth, his 4 unmarried daughters (Leona, Mary, Ina and Zerviah.) and son
Oscar to Appleton, Wisconsin. He chose
Appleton at the urging of his son Peter who was already there. Please see Peter
Dane’s page for more on this. (Many
of the details regarding political, economic, and historical details of
Yarmouth, Nova Scotia were found in the book Yarmouth Reminiscences: Past and Present, by J. Murray Lawson at
the [Canadian] Department of Agriculture.
Published in 1902, Yarmouth Herald
Office, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. I was
able to obtain a copy of the book through an inter-library loan from the Wisconsin
State Historical Society.)
Peter E. Dane, from the
Appleton Public Library, undated.
According to daughter Leona
(Learn more in A Bit of Grandma’s Life by
daughter Leona.), they traveled from Yarmouth
to Boston, MA aboard the Packet Schooner Melrose;
Boston to Buffalo, NY via train, then by the boat Reuben Doud to Green Bay, WI. She says the last leg of their journey from
Green Bay to Appleton was by train.
Thomas’ other married daughter Frances
“Fannie” (Dane) Fletcher and her 2 children are also travelling with
them. (However, husband Capt. Richard
Fletcher is not mentioned.) Also on the
Schooner Melrose’s passenger list is
Mrs. R. Patten and her 2 children. They
are likely related to Thomas’ Aunt Sophia (Dane)
Patten.
They arrived in Appleton,
Wisconsin by June of 1860 and the census of that year shows the family
altogether, including Peter, there in one house. (Probably 719 Lawrence Street, but I haven’t
confirmed this yet.) The house was
crowded with 13 people living in it: Thomas and wife Elizabeth, their children Atilla, Peter, Leona, Mary, Elizabeth, Zerviah (The census
mistakenly calls her Jebodiah, but still notes her as
female daughter.) and Oscar, their married daughter Frances Fletcher and her 2
children George M. and Sarah and her sea captain husband Richard Fletcher.
And
Now…The Rest of the Story
In fact checking Leona’s
story, I’ve come up with a few, oh how shall I say it, problems. First, I’m comfortable with the Yarmouth to
Boston leg of the journey aboard the Schooner Melrose, a transcript
of the passenger list is available through ISTG. Leona further described the Melrose as a “sailing packet”. Here’s a little more about the Schooner Melrose…She was built in Salisbury,
Massachusetts in 1849 weighing in at 93 gross tons. Her registration was transferred to Yarmouth,
Nova Scotia early in 1860, the same year that the Dane family made their
voyage. Earlier, the Melrose assisted in recovering debris in the days after the Steamship
Hungarian was wrecked with great loss
of life west of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia on February 19, 1860. The Melrose
herself was lost in a severe storm under heavy seas on October 28, 1861. Captain throughout her Canadian registration
was Enos Cook. More on the of the Melrose can be found in Record
of Shipping of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, compiled by J. Murray Lawson in
1876.
Leona described the trip,
…a
terrible storm came up on the way. The boat
was an open boat with berths on either side of the cabin. Although we were pretty much scared and
frightened, we arrived at Boston safely on a beautiful sunshiny Sunday
morning. As we sailed in the harbor the
church chimes were sounding and we thought we had never heard anything more
solemn and thrilling. We were sure then that
we would like our new home. The boat was
obiged to anchor in the harbor until the Custom
officers came, and I recollect how put out I was when one of the officers
laughed at my name, Leona Suberville. He said with laughter, “I never heard of such
a name!” We afterwards learned that the
sailing packet that had so safely conveyed us from Yarmouth to Bosotn went down with forty people on board, all being lost
at sea. My Uncle William Bancroft was
one of the unfortunate forty.
“Boston is a center of invention and innovation. This photograph was taken in 1860 by James W. Black from the balloon, Queen of the Air, owned by Samuel Archer King. This image is the first successful aerial photograph taken from a balloon in the United States (Black had attempted to photograph Providence Rhode Island from the air before this). The original photo is part of the Boston Public Library collection.” From Celebrate Boston Website.
The train from Boston to
Buffalo is a well established route for the New York Central Railway and its
subsidiaries. One of these subsidiaries
was the New York Central, Buffalo & Green Bay Line, which was a combination
of trains to Buffalo, NY and then connections to steamboats that sailed the
Great Lakes. When
the first railroads in New York State were constructed from the early 1800’s up
until 1855, they consisted of small, individual companies that formed loose
connections across the state. In 1855,
they were all consolidated into the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad
and this new company made great improvements in service and convenience for the
passengers.
Leona and family would not
have used the more prominent New York Central Terminal in Buffalo; that was
constructed in 1929. Nor would they have
used the original 1842 structure built for the Attica and Buffalo Railroad, a
small brick building located on Exchange Street. After several years of service, it burned to
the ground. Its replacement, built on
the same site in 1855 around the same time that the New York Central and Hudson
River Railroad was formed, is where the Dane family would have passed
through. (Details
from: The New
York Central Terminal of Buffalo, New York, 1842 - 1945.)
An 1876 railroad
map highlighting New York Central & Hudson River Railroad.
Sixteen years prior, when the Dane
family was travelling, the lines moving west were not as well developed.
Buffalo’s Exchange Street Depot,
built in 1855. Photo
circa 1925.
Drawing of Buffalo Harbor dated
1860
Paintings of Buffalo Harbor
from (left) 1868 and (right) 1870.
Leona continues her story:
The
boat we rode the Great Lakes on was named the Reuben Doud and while the boat I met Mr.
Finney whom myself and my sisters admired.
My sisters and I were considered very handsome girls and the officers on
the boat tried to get acquainted. They
were all Yankees and how I did hate to hear them talk. Asking one of the young men a question, he
answered “Hauw”.
Finally he explained to me that “Hauw” meant “What”.
I am concerned about the boat
Leona names, the Reuben Doud. (By the
way, ships on the Great Lakes are always referred to as ‘boats’.) There was a Schooner Reuben Doud, registered in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin which was built in 1873, thirteen years after the Dane family supposedly sailed on her. This schooner is likely the same one that
sank near Toronto in late August of 1906.
It could not have been the boat the Dane’s used. I have not been able to find any ship or boat
named Reuben Doud
that works within our time line.
However, the person Mr.
Reuben Doud was likely known to the Dane family while
they lived in Appleton, Wisconsin. He
was a boat owner/operator, a lumberman, and a businessman. Mr. Reuben Doud
went on to become quite successful, including serving as mayor of Racine,
Wisconsin. Mr. Reuben Doud’s celebrity name may have mistakenly stuck with Leona
as she was retelling her stories. More
information regarding Reuben Doud is available from
the Wisconsin
Historical Society.
It is more likely that the
Dane’s travelled aboard the Steamer Berlin
City, when the Master of the Ship was the then younger Captain Reuben Doud. The Berlin City was built in 1858 and was a
replacement for another steamer of the same name that was destroyed by a boiler
explosion. “In July [of 1857] a terrible
steamboat explosion occurred near Oshkosh.
The steamers Berlin City and Pearl left that city, the former bound
for Berlin and the latter for New London.
When they left the city together they began racing and when within a
mile of Lake Butte des Morts, the boilers of the Berlin City exploded, tearing the boat
to pieces, killing several persons and wounding nearly everyone else on
board.” Captain Reuben Doud was with the Berlin
City until the end of the 1860 Great Lakes shipping season, which does fit
in with our time line. Starting in 1861,
the Berlin City was under Captain
John Lynch. However, the Berlin City was exclusively used within
the Fox River system within Wisconsin.
She was not doing business in the bay of Green Bay nor on the Great Lakes. The Berlin
City, at a breadth of 17 ½ feet and a draft of 4 ½ feet, was designed to
operate within the river’s lock and dam system and the shallow lakes of the Fox
River valley. She was a 110 foot long
steamboat with an 18 foot side wheel.
Therefore it too could not have been the boat the Dane family used to
travel west out of Buffalo, New York.
Quote and details from Thomas
Ryan’s History of Outagamie County.
So what boat did the Dane
family use to travel from Buffalo to Green Bay?
They may have been aboard either the Steamboat Rocket or Comet. The Maritime History of
the Great Lakes comments, “…the propellers Rocket and Comet [were] running
between Buffalo and Green Bay in the interest of the railroad. They did a successful freight and passenger
business for three seasons.” These two
boats, built in 1857, went into service in 1858. The above mentioned railroad subsidiary known
as the New York Central, Buffalo, and Green Bay Line did employ these two
steamboats. I’ll further mention here
that there is an oral story from Leona saying that the ship that dropped them
off in Green Bay suffered a minor accident shortly after their trip. The Buffalo
Morning Express newspaper reported this story about the Comet in September of 1860, “Comet Propeller, struck a rock in [the
bay of ] Green Bay, Lake Michigan, which caused her to leak, proceeded on her
voyage with a sail under her bottom.” With
this circumstantial evidence, I believe that the Dane family travelled from
Boston to Buffalo using the New York Central Railroad, then to Green Bay aboard
their connection on the Steamboat Comet. For more information regarding the Comet, including her wreck near
Whitefish Point in Lake Superior, please see the Whitefish Point
Underwater Preserve website or Superior Trips
website for wreck diving.
Green Bay,
and Wisconsin in general, were experiencing a period of growth. “The grain trade in 1860 promised to be
larger than ever before. In preparation
for the heavy shipments from the Green Bay port the New York Central placed two
new screw steamers, Rocket and Comet on the Buffalo line, and these
with the Steamer Michigan made the
tri-weekly trip with regularity.” (History of Brown County,
Wisconsin: Past and Present, Vol I, Deborah
Beaumont Martin, S. J. Clark Publishing Co., Chicago, 1913.) The May 17, 1860 edition of the Green Bay Advocate reported the arrival
of the Comet. “The Propeller Comet, Capt. Wetmore, came in promptly on time on Sunday last. She left the port of Buffalo last evening.”
Ad from the Green Bay Advocate weekly newspaper for May 10, 1860.
Propeller Steamboat Comet in Lake Erie.
Photo of the boiler from the wreck
of the Comet in Lake Superior.
(Superior
Trips.)
Steamboat Michigan. Note the hybrid of sails and
steam.
In the early development of steam
for ships, there was insufficient horsepower from the engines, so designers
kept sails in order to assist the craft.
Sails also gave the mariners and
passengers a boost of confidence.
Here is some more information
regarding Comet. “The 181-foot (55m), 744-ton wooden propeller
ship Comet, along with her sister
ship, the Rocket, was launched in
1857 by Peak and Master of Cleveland, Ohio.
Her direct-acting vertical engine was manufactured by Cuyahoga Steam
Furnace of Cleveland. The Comet was originally built as a pure
workhorse. Upper deck cabins for
passenger accommodations were not added until the winter layup of
1859-1860.” “The Comet went through a variety of owners. She was first owned by Dean Rishmond of the New York Central Railroad.” (From Lake
Superior’s Shipwreck Coast: Maritime Accidents from Whitefish Bay to Grand
Marais, Michigan, pp. 32-36, by Frederick Stonehouse,
Avery Color Studios, Gwinn, Michigan, 1985.)
I’ve additionally learned that the wheelsman (helmsman) for Comet was G. P. “Phil” Roth, an
immigrant whose family settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “In Spring of 1860 [he] shipped as wheelsman
for the passenger steamer Comet,
building that berth throughout the season, and in the spring of the next year
was appointed second mate.” (From History of the Great
Lakes, Vol II, compiled by John Brandt Mansfield,
J. H. Beers & Co., Chicago, 1899.)
Leona states that the last
leg of their journey was by train.
Railroad service between Green Bay and Appleton, Wisconsin was
exclusively provided by the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad. However, this portion of the line did not yet
exist! The C&NW built north from
Chicago and Milwaukee reaching Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, located at the southern
tip of Lake Winnebago, in 1860.
“C&NW continued building north from Fond du Lac and reached Green
Bay in 1862.” Source for this quote was
from the Canadian National corporate website.
The site has since changed and the link will not work. Canadian National is the present owner of
this railroad line. An outline of the
building of railroads throughout the Fox Valley is available in Ryan’s
History.
1857 painting of Green Bay by Brooks
and Stevenson. (From the Wisconsin
Historical Society.)
Panoramic sketch of Green Bay dated
1863. Notice the addition of a granary
and railroad service.
So Leona could not have
travelled from Green Bay to Appleton by train.
The answer may be the aforementioned Captain Reuben Doud
and his Steamer Berlin City. That boat provided service from Green Bay,
through the Fox River, to points south, including Appleton. And this may be where the Dane family met
Reuben Doud.
It was 1856 when Mr. Doud began his steamboat
operations on the Fox River and Lake Winnebago, and it was afterwards in 1865
that he began his lumbering ventures. (Wisconsin Historical
Collections, Vol 8, Draper, 1908.)
Early ad for Reuben Doud and partner H. H. Lyon’s shipping business.
Ad from the Green Bay Advocate,
May 10, 1860.
It is interesting to note
that during the winter no transportation lines advertised, but early in the
spring the boats bloomed with new paint and attractive advertisements. (History of Brown County, Wisconsin: Past and Present, Vol I, Deborah Beaumont Martin, S. J. Clark Publishing
Co., Chicago, 1913.) There would
be high, rushing water from the spring thaw sometimes with dangerous chunks of
ice bobbing about like miniature icebergs.
In examining the Green Bay
Advocate, I confirmed that the ads for shipping lines started appearing in
late April. Notice in the ad above,
third line from the top that the schedule begins in April, and I also observed
that the earliest ad for the Berlin City
in 1860 was published on April 22. This
time frame works well for our story, since the Dane family left Yarmouth on
April 23 and Thomas likely asked the ticket agent in Buffalo about connections
to Appleton. But herein lays another
twist to our story.
Please look again at the
ad. The captain for the Berlin City is John Lynch, not Reuben Doud! Buried in the
same paper, past the ship arrivals for that week, is a notice of correction
regarding the Berlin City. It reads as follows: “Capt. John Lynch. We
see that many of our verbages speak of Reuben Doud as the captain of the Berlin City. This is a mistake. John Lynch, one of the best and
most accommodating captains on the river route, is the officer that is in
charge of matters on the quarter deck on this particular boat, and Reuben Doud, whom everybody knows is Chief Clerk of the Berlin.
If any agents come down here to the Convention Hall, they will discover
their mistake.” It appears the Reuben Doud wasn’t a captain and wasn’t on the crew of the boat
most likely used by the Dane family. He
was only mistakenly advertised as such.
And what turned out to be wrong information ended up stuck in Leona’s
mind as she retold her story decades later.
Mansfield’s History of the Great
Lakes adds this small comment regarding Mr. Reuben Doud,
“A much liked clerk on the river boats was Reuben Doud,
with ‘his pseudo-comic countenance’ who in after years became a wealthy
lumberman.”
By comparison, this similarly
named boat Berlin, was a smaller than
the Berlin City. It was built in 1851, was 95 feet in length,
had a 16 foot side wheel, but primarily operated in the upper Fox River. Both boat’s careers
ended in fires in 1870. Pay heed that
there is yet another boat, a sternwheeler, called the City of Berlin that can bring confusion. The History
of Brown County adds these tidbits…”In war times the river boats Bay City, Fountain City and Berlin City,
under the management of E. A. Buck, did a thriving business.” And, “In
February, 1862, the Appleton Belle
[sister ship to the Berlin City in
the ad] a ‘little witch of a steamer’ which used to run on the Fox between Fond
du Lac and Green Bay turned rebel and was burned on the Tennessee River on the
approach of a Federal [Union soldiers] expedition.” For more information regarding steamboats in
the Fox River Valley, see Timothy A. Casiana’s article, courtesy of the Fond du Lac Public
Library.
1856 view of Oshkosh,
Wisconsin. The unnamed sidewheeler on the left is typical of what the Berlin City may have looked like.
Sternwheeler City of Berlin.
(Both images from Steamboats on the Fox River, by D. C.
Mitchell, Castle-Pierce Press, Oshkosh, WI, 1986.)
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