♂Hans Christian Anton Jensen

Hans Christian Anton Jensen (7 April 1869 – August 1893) was a Danish-born emigrant who died young at Hot Springs, South Dakota, where he was known about town as “the donkey man”. He was the younger brother of Bothilda Catharina Jensen (1851–1925), the great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007).

Early life

He was born on 7 April 1869 at Jejsing, in Hostrup parish near Tønder, in the far south of Jutland. The region had passed from Denmark to Prussia five years earlier and returned to Denmark in 1920. He was the fifth of the six children of Peter Nikolai Jensen (1819–1894) and Christine Marie Bossen (1829–1911). Five of the six children emigrated to America. Only his brother Peter Nikolai stayed behind, as a builder at Rothenkrug. By the early 1890s Hans had joined his brother Christian Lauritz Jensen (1855–1930) in the Black Hills. Christian had run a stage line out of Deadwood since 1876 and later settled at Hot Springs.

Hot Springs and death

At Hot Springs, then a growing spa town, Hans drove the donkeys that carried visitors about. The Hot Springs Weekly Star of 25 August 1893 reported that “Hans Jensen, the donkey man” was very sick and had nearly bled to death from a nasal hemorrhage. The same issue added that he was “considerably better”. A week later the paper printed his obituary. It said that ten days earlier he had been “on our streets running around, a strong hearty boy, driving the donkeys to accommodate the guests”, and that nearly everyone in the town knew him. He died of what the paper called “mountain fever”, after several days of delirium. His brother Peter came down from Rapid City by train but arrived too late to see him. A sister in Chicago was told but could not come. He was a member of the Masonic order, which took charge of his funeral at the Presbyterian church on 1 September 1893.

Notes

The obituary does not give the day of death. A family compilation of 1994 gives 27 August 1893, which agrees with the newspaper’s account. The funeral home’s own record places his burial in Evergreen Cemetery, Hot Springs. It gives his death as 20 August, but the newspaper reported him alive and recovering on 25 August. A memorial there for a Hans Jensen bears the year 1892 and is most likely his grave, with the year mistyped. His father’s burial entry in April 1894 counted four living children in America, one fewer than had emigrated, which agrees with his death the year before.