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Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott
for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/
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Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott
All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded.
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Excerpt from:
   "Iron Brew, A Century of American Ore and Steel"
    by Stewart H. Holbrook; pub. MacMillan Company, N.Y., 1939

    [p. 57-58]

       Another fabulous character at Ishpeming was BIG DAN DONOVAN.  BIG
    DAN was probably the biggest, strongest man ever to drive pick into the
    Marquette Range.  MIKE NEVINS, still on the range in 1939, remembers
    BIG DAN.  He estimates DAN to have been close to seven feet tall and to
    have weighed three hundred pounds, none of it fat.  But BIG DAN wasn't
    very bright in the head.  They didn't want him underground, for a fool
    in a mine can readily kill an entire crew without half trying.
       They set BIG DAN to breaking ore on the surface, at the Burt mine,
    and to loading it into railroad cars.  NOw, DAN could strike a terrific
    blow with pick or hammer, a giant's blow, but he didn't know how to
    strike the ore to break it easily; and CAPTAIN JOHN McENCROE had made
    the rule that no piece of ore that two men could not lift should go
    into a car.  That is, three or more men were prohibited from ganging-up
    on a tough piece of ore and loading it unbroken.  Big hunks would not
    go through the hoppers at the Marquette docks.
       Not long after BIG DAN went to work, however, cars that should have
    been wholly empty were being returned with huge boulders in them - re-
    fused at the docks.  CAPTAIN JOHN stalked up and down the line of ore
    loaders, pouring his best invective onto them.  The men protested that
    they had not loaded any large chunks.  Suspicion fell on BIG DAN, who
    often worked alone.
       CAPTAIN JOHN set a man to watch.  That afternoon he saw BIG DAN
    pound away on a huge hunk of magnetite.  DAN struck mighty blows,
    grunting loud enough to be heard at the dryhouse, a hundred yards away;
    but the ore remained intact.  BIG DAN let go an oath as big as the
    boulder or ore.  Calling down all manner of imprecations from St.
    Patrick, St. Michael, and the Holy Mother of God, he picked up the
    small mountain of ore and tossed it into the car, which all but bounded
    from the rails at the impact.
       The mystery was solved, and CAPTAIN JOHN put BIG DAN at other work.
    Ever a curious man, CAPTAIN JOHN had the DAN DONOVAN Boulder weighed
    before it was broken up.  It tipped the scales, so honest men tell, at
    four hundred and twenty pounds.

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