NAPOLEON JACKSON TECUMSEH DANA
DANA, NAPOLEON JACKSON TECUMSEH. Major-General Dana is a member of a good old New England family, and is of the eighth generation in descent from Richard Dana, who settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640. Two of his uncles, James F. and Samuel L. Dana, were somewhat distinguished as chemists; and his father, Nathaniel G. Dana, was a captain in the United States army. His maternal great grandfather, Woodbury Langdon, a member of the Continental congress, was a judge in the New Hampshire Superior court. Born in Fort Sullivan, Eastport, Maine, April 15, 1822, Mr. Dana spent his first ten years of life in various military garrisons. Captain Dana died in 1832, and his widow, Mary Ann L. H. Dana, returned to her native town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where her son spent six years in the local academy, while his moral and spiritual character was carefully fostered under his mother's loving influences. Moved by a natural desire to adopt his father's profession, and aided by the powerful influence of ex-President Jackson, he entered the military academy at West Point in 1838, graduating in 1842 and beginning his military career as second lieutenant in the 7th infantry. His regiment was on garrison duty in the several forts along the Gulf coast until the beginning of the Mexican war, when it marched to the Rio Grande, and took part in the campaigns from the siege of Fort Brown until the capitulation of the Mexicans at Monterey. The 7th then joined the army of General Scott, and Lieutenant Dana was present at the several engagements from Vera Cruz to Cerro Gordo, where he received so severe a wound that he narrowly escaped being buried with the dead, rescued by a comrade from a burying party about to inter him. His "gallant and meritorious conduct" here was afterward rewarded with a brevet commission. Recovering from his wound he served for several years as captain, in the country of the Sioux and Chippewa Indians; and he resigned his commission in 1856.
