The story of the Sun, New York: 1833-1928 / by Frank M. O'Brien ; with an introduction by Edward Page Mitchell ...

CHAPTER IX

THE REIGN OF DANA
A New Era in Journalism Begun.-An Editor Whose
Only Rule was "Be Interesting." His Views on
News.-Mitchell's Picture of Him.-His Great Contemporaries.
THE life of Dana until his forty-eighth year, when
he acquired the Sun, was so full that the present
space does not permit a full record of it. It is detailed
in James Harrison Wilson's Life of Charles A. Dana.
Dana's own Recollections of the Civil War is also useful.
Dana was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, on August 8, 1819. He was the son of Anderson Dana, who
was sixth in descent from Richard I)ana, the colonial
settler. His mother was Ann l)enison, who died when
Charles was nine years old. 'lhree years later he went
to work for his uncle, William I);Da;i, in the genilral store
of Staats and Dana, Buffalo. When he was eighteen
years old his employers failed anl, with $200 he had
saved, he went to I-arvardl. In 1840 he was obligedl,
through lack of money, to leave college and teach school.
In 1841 he entered Brook Farm, the famous idealistic
community settlement at Roxbury, MaIssachusetts, and
remained there five years, working on the farm by dlay
and writing at night for magazines. He was married in
1846 to Miss Eunice Macdaniel, also a Brook Farmer.
In 1847 he became city editor of the New York Tribune
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