Richard Henry Dana III

Dana was the son of Richard Henry Dana, Jr.; he married in 1878, Edith Longfellow (1853–1915), the daughter of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They had four sons, Richard Henry Dana IV and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, Edmund Trowbridge Dana III, and Allston Dana. In 1922 he remarried to Helen Ford Mumford[1] (1865–1934).

Dana graduated from Harvard University. In 1874, he looked back on those years: "Days in college were happy-go-lucky times, even for the most studious and athletic."[2]

Dana was the author of the Massachusetts Ballot Act of 1888, the first state Australian ballot (secret ballot) act passed in the US.

Dana wrote a substantial biography of his father, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. He became a friend and financial adviser to Hosea Ballou Morse,[3] whom he introduced to Theodore Roosevelt.[4]

The papers and photographs of Dana, together with material relating to him collected by his son, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, and his sister, Elizabeth, are held at the Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site. [5] Some family financial records are held at the Houghton Library, Harvard, these include correspondence between Dana and William Penn Cresson, relating to the Cresson's biography of Francis Dana.[6] A number of letters are in the Abernathy Collections at the Middlebury College library, though these may be by his father. [7] A substantial collection of family papers (including 293 bound volumes and 81 boxes) is held at the Massachusetts Historical Society.[8] Family papers are also found at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library.