Doan, Daniel, 1914-1993

Dates

• Existence: 1914 - 1993

Biography

Born February 23, 1914, in Summit, New Jersey, Daniel Doan was a summer resident of Orford, New Hampshire until 1929, when he and his widowed mother moved to Hanover. He graduated from the Clark School and entered Dartmouth College in 1932. He married Ernestine Crone in 1935. After graduation from the College in 1936, the Doans raised poultry on farms in Orford and Belmont, New Hampshire. Doan was also trying to learn to write for the lucrative magazine market. Doan moved to Laconia in 1940, to work at the Scott & Williams manufacturing plant, where he stayed for 25 years. He sold several short stories and articles, and in 1952 his first novel, The Crystal Years, was published. It was followed by Amos Jackman in 1957. Doan retired from Scott & Williams in 1965 in order to write full-time. He was asked to write an outdoor guide book by the New Hampshire Publishing Company of Somersworth, and in 1973, Fifty Hikes in the White Mountains was published. An immediate success, the book was followed in 1978 by Fifty More Hikes in New Hampshire. Both books have been through several editions. Doan's wife, Ernestine, died in 1982, and in 1984, he married long-time friend and fellow hiker, Marjorie Kneeland, and moved to Jefferson. One month before his death in 1993, Doan's memoir, Our Last Backpack, was published by Backcountry Press of Woodstock, Vermont. Another book, Indian Stream Republic, will be issued by the University Press of New England in the summer of 1996.

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