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Cultures of
Acadiana |
Lafayette, LA Daily Advertiser, Dec. 2,,, 2000
Daniel Dennett
:by Jim Bradshaw
Daniel Dennett - Died January 5, 1891, in Brookhaven, Mississippi, aged seventy-three years. He was born in Saco, Maine, of poor parentage, with a name "rather to be chosen than great riches." Up to manhood he went through the usual rugged routine of farm life, there offset by the advantages of their good common schools. His natural endowments must have been above the ordinary, as shown in the various positions of his checkered life. There was too much of the brain material in him to be buried up in a New England rocky farm, and he felt it so. His first step was from one extreme to the other, and we find him in the Teche country of Louisiana, in the famous sugar region of Bayou Sale. Here he began life in the almost universal toddling paths of genius and greatness as a school teacher, and soon had a good record in his vocation. To this he added the role of lecturer on temperance and kindred subjects, the outcroppings, no doubt, of his early Presbyterian training. And here, too ,he found that "pearl of great price," in the daughter of Joshua Garrett, and a happy life followed him and his Mary till he was left to finish is journey alone in 1880, away down near the foot of the hill. Of their six children, a son and two daughters survive him. Mr. Dennett's strong proclivity was for farm life in all its phases, and to be the editor of an agricultural journal was in harmony with hi nature. In 1842, he bought the St. Mary parish newspaper of Robt. Wilson and the Planter's Banner was born, which in its way was a power in Louisiana, and took the highest rank as an agricultural paper.
He ransacked every nook and corner for items of interest, often too regardless of personal expense. If sometimes he was a little to reckless in his onslaught on what he thought injurious to the best interest of the community in morals and money, he always charged it to the head, never to the heard. In politics he was a Whig, strong, but conservative as he saw it, and firm after the manner of the Whigs in those days. We have often heard it said that if his lifework in Louisiana had been done in some other State, it would have placed him in the senate or executive chair. Here then agriculture and journalism had a "hard row to hoe," when half the State took little or no interest in English literature. When "dust to dust" was said over the "grand of party" common consent placed him among the pall bearers. During our four years night of gloom no native born was truer to our cause than Daniel Dennett, ever ready for any post of danger they gave him. Peace came nine years after the war closed, and all through the period of reconstruction his sturdy blows will be remembered. But the fields of journalism, like those of the old plantation, did not respond to the tiller's toil , and the old Planter's Banner had to go down. Then Mr. Dennett was for some time in Texas, but said he always felt like and exile from home. Returning to Louisiana he became associated with the Picayune, and finally its agricultural editor. And here, in the files of that old, time-honored journal, may now be seen his mature life work. At his beautiful home near Brookhaven, Miss., his time was divided between editorials field, fruits and flowers, and here closed his long and useful life. It is all spread out now before the world. Well done, good and faithful, will be the common verdict and in fancy we hear the echo around the great white throne."