692 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SKETCH OF SAMUEL LUTHER DANA. 



SAMUEL LUTHER DANA, tjie second son of Lucy (Gid- 

 dings) and Captain Luther Dana, was born July 11, 1795, in 

 the town of Amherst, not far from Nashua, N. H. He was de- 

 scended from Richard Dana, who came to this country and set- 

 tled in Cambridge about 1640. His father was a native of Groton, 

 Mass., and in the latter part of the Revolutionary War entered 

 the navy of the United States as a midshipman, he being then 

 seventeen years of age. Soon after his marriage in 1788 he took 

 up his residence at Amherst and engaged in mercantile business. 

 This not proving successful, he took to the sea again, becoming a 

 shipmaster in the merchant service. He followed the sea until a 

 few years before his death, in 1832, and made about seventy voy- 

 ages to ports in Europe, Asia, and America. Captain Dana was 

 fond of knowledge, and took pleasure in collecting objects of 

 natural history, many valuable specimens being given by him to 

 the Marine Museum at Salem, Mass. He had no faith in the 

 superstitions, with which seafaring men are haunted, and rather 

 preferred to go out of port on Friday. On one of his most suc- 

 cessful voyages he left Salem on a Friday, called at two Euro- 

 pean ports, reaching and leaving both on Fridays, and it was on 

 a Friday that he finally reached home. His daughter-in-law, 

 Mrs. James Freeman Dana, has described him as " tall and well 

 formed, with a sensible, frank, cheerful countenance. He had 

 clear blue eyes, dark -brown hair, which became silvery white at 

 an early period of life, and a fair complexion, somewhat em- 

 browned by exposure." She also speaks of him as ever ready to 

 assist any who might require aid one whom the weakest or low- 

 liest might appeal to with the certainty of receiving a kind re- 

 sponse. Lucy Giddings was married to him when she was sixteen 

 years of age. She was very handsome and vivacious, and man- 

 aged the affairs of her home and family during her husband's 

 long absences at sea with rare judgment and tact. 



As Captain Dana's residence was not confined by his calling to 

 any particular place, he changed it twice for the benefit of his boys. 

 In 1804 he removed to Exeter, N. H., in order to give them the 

 educational advantages of Phillips Academy, and five years later, 

 when the two oldest had been prepared to enter Harvard College, 

 the family removed to Cambridge. Samuel passed through col- 

 lege in the same class with his older brother, graduating in 1813. 

 From a pamphlet privately printed, containing memoirs of sev- 

 eral members of the Dana family, it is learned that the two 

 brothers were endowed with the same love for natural science, 

 and entered upon the study of certain branches of it with great 



