It is of course impossible to present a complete account of the activities of the Dania Society through all the years of its existence, but we want briefly to draw a picture of it from the beginning of the interesting history of the Society. We also want to stress the importance of that historic Sunday, the twenty-third of November, 1862, which will forever remain sacred and unforgettable to the people of Dania.

The material at hand is quite voluminous. Many letters from immigrants have been a valuable source of information, and a quantity of data from old newspaper files has been used.

In the early sixties, only a few hundred Danes had settled in the primitive Chicago of that day. Nor were the surroundings very attractive. Chicago in 2early years was a bottomless mud-hole, poorly lighted and far from beautiful. The East was still considered the section to find work and go into business; and it was the great desire of the immigrants who came west to reach the Pacific coast, where gold again had been discovered. But a number of Danish immigrants had nevertheless built their houses and established their businesses in our growing metropolis, and among these pioneer heroes we find the founders of the Dania Society.

Two great waves of immigration in the fifties and sixties brought a couple of hundred artisans to Chicago, and the newcomers, as those Danes had done who were already here, settled in the vicinity of La Salle and Kinzie Streets, where rents were low, and the district was not overcrowded. In a short time, Kinzie Street, from La Salle Street all the way out to the bridge over the river at what is now Grand Avenue, had taken on quite a Danish appearance. The dilapidated buildings were soon repaired and remodeled; the window sills were covered with blooming plants; and small elegant stores with well-tended gardens and summerhouses in front, shining knockers, and white-scoured steps, told the 3Americans here where the Danes of Chicago lived.

The best known of all the inns in the vicinity was the Kinzie Inn, at the corner of Kinzie and LaSalle Streets. It was the meeting place of a great many Danes, who received their mail there and would sit in the long winter evenings and read Foster's newspaper, a two-month-old issue of Berlinsske Tidende, from the homeland.

Johan Foster, whose name will be mentioned first in the annals of Dania, was already at that time a well-known and important man. He was called a Norwegian, a Schleswig-Holsteiner, a German, and a Dutchman, but he was born in Copenhagen, as were the majority of the founders of Dania. It was Johan Foster who announced that first important meeting at the Kinzie Inn on November 23, 1862. He carefully selected the men who with him signed the resolution,--"we are today founding a Danish society in Chicago, and that the name of said society shall be the Dania Society."

It is regrettable that the accounts of this great moment are meager and few. It was committed to writing that a mailbox should be provided for, as well as some decks of cards, and some spittoons. Space must have been valuable to the secretary, since this is practically all that is written in his minutes. These first records would have been valuable and precious if the deceased first secretary, P.C. Petersen, could have recorded the thoughts and sentiments which came to life on this memorable evening in the smoky little room on Kinzie Street, and we would gladly have undertaken to include them in these brief notes.

The first members of Dania, besides Johan Foster and P.C. Petersen, were E. Sallins, Peter Allen [the first Dane to settle in Chicago], Brodt Hagen, Hoffman, Peder Moller, Christoffer Johnsen (Dania's first treasurer), Bendixen, Skov, T. Moller, Mikkelsen, J. S. Petersen, H. V. Hansen, and Consul N. P. Petersen. Brodt Hagen and Hoffman were charged with the task of writing Dania's constitution. The initiation fee was two dollars, and the monthly dues were fifty cents. A meeting was to be held every Sunday, and a general membership meeting with election of officers was to occur every three months. And the last decision 5of that first meeting was that the second meeting, on the following Sunday, was to be held in the later famous Wilken's Cellar on LaSalle Street.