Archives West Finding Aid

Lucile Dana was born as Lucy Davis in Webster, Kansas in 1891. While a small child, she was moved to Oregon City, Oregon, where her father, a clergyman and teacher, had accepted a new assignment. While attending preparatory school at Pacific College in Newberg, Oregon, she adopted the name Lucile. When her family moved to Albion, Washington in about 1910, she followed to the nearby city of Pullman, where she entered the State College of Washington (now WSU). She graduated from the State College's Department of History and Economics in 1916 and became a teacher, first at Amber, Washington, and then in the high school at Davenport, Washington.

In the summer of 1920, she married Homer Dana of the WSU engineering department staff and returned to Pullman. The rest of Mrs. Dana's life was largely composed of the activities of a professor's wife in a small college town, a role through which she attempted to preserve formal social traditions. She was also concerned with volunteer activities with the Daughters of the American Revolution and the American Association of University Women. As a part of her DAR activities, Mrs. Dana served as the compiler of Volume 12 of Family Records of Washington Pioneers (Prior to 1891), Collected by the Daughters of the American Revolution (typescript, 1941-42). During much of Mrs. Dana's adult life, she was hampered by numerous minor physical and mental health problems. She died in Spokane in April 1974.