Index

 Table of Contents

 

NAN AND RICHARD

1. Introduction

My First Discovery of Nan in the Back Pages

The well-dressed, well-coiffed prospectors John Albrecht and Nan Morenus examining some of their mineral finds in their hotel room in Prince Albert. Prince Albert Daily Herald, March 21, 1950.

 

 

"I have become a collector of shards. Shards of memory, things passed down: told to me at the end of this long line of telling. I want to catch these shards, these half-lit, often, paste jewels. I don't know how authentic they are, does it even matter? For me it doesn't matter. I am making anew, building something from the remains. Wanting to honour the fleeting: the fragment, fractured histories and stories. Not passed down, but dredged up."

    - Terri-Ann White (2004) [Source: Theodore and Brina: An Exploration of the Myths and 

    Secrets of Family Life, 1851-1998", Journal of Historical Geography 30 (2004).]

 

"Prospecting May Be Tough But To Nan It's All Just Fun." As I perused back issues of the Prince Albert Daily Herald in search of content for my newspaper column called PAssages back in 2018, that headline - and the accompanying photograph - caught my attention. I read on and discovered that in March of 1950 an unnamed reporter from the same newspaper had a fortuitous encounter with Nan - Evangeline Annette Danke/Dorland/Morenus - and her partner John Erdmann Albrecht as the couple was passing through Prince Albert. I say “fortuitous” because Nan was not only a former radio star from New York City, she was Saskatchewan’s only active woman prospector at the time. 

 

Nan, or Mrs. Morenus as she was called, was the primary focus of the Herald reporter's story. "Prospecting in the rugged Northland of Saskatchewan is tough," the reporter writes, "but it's doubly tough when the prospector is a woman. Despite the drawbacks of being a female in the all-male land of jagged rock, bushes and jackpine, Nan Morenus, an attractive redhead, finds that prospecting is an exciting - and often profitable - way to earn a living." The reporter was clearly enchanted by Nan's red hair - it is mentioned three times in the short article. The former actress was indeed one of the more glamorous figures to have turned up in northern Saskatchewan in the late 1940s.

 

Nan and John told the Herald that they were flying to Regina and Toronto to check out their find of base metal from their northern stake. Their journey had a more urgent purpose, however. As I reveal in my PAssages blog, I soon discovered that, unbeknownst to the reporter, Nan was four months pregnant.

 

My Project Begins

Why pursue Nan Dorland? After all, she was not famous - although she came close. Nan is actually a fairly obscure figure. But her life was unusual and intriguing, so even 70 years after her death, I believe she deserves to be remembered.

 

Have you wanted to learn more about strangers that you see in a photograph? It happens to me all the time, but I found the Herald photo shown above particularly captivating. I began to investigate and quickly learned that both Nan and John have fascinating life stories that intersect for an all-too-brief period of time. Nan's life story, or as much as I can learn of it, is the subject of this blog.

Portrait of Nan Dorland, c1935. Photo courtesy Rabeea Shhadeh.

 

Who was Nan – or Mrs. Morenus – the actress-turned-writer-turned-prospector from New York City via northern Ontario? How did she end up in northern Saskatchewan? Where was Mr. Morenus and what was the nature of Nan's relationship with John Albrecht? Where in northern Saskatchewan did they call home? I have found out the answers to some of these questions and am still trying to find the answers to others.

I embarked on this investigative journey knowing full well that the outcome would be unpredictable. Unsure that what I might learn about Nan would fill a book, I decided to tell her story in this series of blog posts. In the end, all I may achieve may be nothing more than providing what I hope will be an interesting online account of this woman's life.

I have posted a Table of Contents which will allow readers to go back and forth between posts. I will update it every time a new post goes up. You can find that index HERE

 

Stitching Together Fragments of Nan's Life

Hindsight being 20/20, I now know it would have been much smarter to choose a subject who a) did not die 70 years ago, b) has some living relatives, and c) left a lot of evidence of their life behind. With the passing of time, so much of Nan’s life story has gone missing. I jumped into my “Nan project” with both feet, however, so I was left with no choice but to turn my attention to what IS present and what CAN be found. My journey in writing Nan’s life story ended up being a complex stitching together of fragments of her life, attempting to construct a portrait both from what remains and what is missing.

Research, Research, Research

Being a fairly decent researcher, I started by scouring the Internet for all things "Nan." I searched archival databases, genealogical sites, high school yearbooks, and newspaper collections. From there, I developed a list of possible contacts, including Nan's family members. As she was an only child, and as her only son, John Danke Albrecht, passed away in 2015, the list of family contacts was short.

Letters and emails to potential contacts followed. It is with much gratitude that I share my most fruitful contacts to date: 

• Martin Beerman, one of Nan's distant cousins, provided me with a number of useful documents. 
• Tim Brody, editor of the Sioux Lookout Bulletin, published my letter to the editor requesting information about Nan and her first husband Richard Morenus.
  
• Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield, current owners of Winoga Lodge on the island that Nan and Richard Morenus lived on near Sioux Lookout, Ontario. After reading my letter to the editor in the Sioux Lookout newspaper, The Bulletin, Kim and Richard sent me a box containing hundreds of photographs of Richard Morenus. They had received this box from Randolph Trumbull. 
  
• Curtis Lee of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, sent me a copy of his father's memoirs. Bob Lee was a close friend of Nan's second husband John Albrecht and his memoirs contain a number of useful pieces of information about Nan, including her final resting place.
• Dr. Klaus Lehnert-Thiel of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. During the 1970s while working as a geologist for Uranerz Exploration and Mining Limited based in La Ronge, Klaus became close friends with John Albrecht, calling him the adopted grandfather of his two teenaged sons. I have met and interviewed Klaus, and we have maintained an email correspondence over the years.
  
• Dick MacKenzie, former newspaper editor in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, linked me to numerous contacts and provided me with much useful information about the area. In addition, Dick very kindly agreed to proofread all my blog posts!
• Dorothy Maskerine of Dryden, Ontario. Dorothy, 94 years old in 2021, met Nan and Richard Morenus is Sioux Lookout during the 1940s. Dorothy, a teenager at the time, remembers Nan coming to her parents' house for dinner every Thursday while Richard attended Rotary Club meetings. Dorothy shared her memories of Nan with me during several telephone calls.
  
• Dr. Cynthia B. Meyers, Professor of Communications at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, Riverdale, New York, with a special interest in the history of radio. Not only did I read Dr. Meyers works, but she also sent me links to other resources on the history of radio in the 1930s and '40s, especially as they relate to performers and writers.
• Les Oystryk of Creighton, Saskatchewan with his in-depth knowledge of the history of northern Saskatchewan, has been an invaluable resource for my project especially as it relates to trapper and prospector John Albrecht. For example, Les connected me with Darlene Studor in La Ronge (see below). 
• John and Kate Rich of Western Australia who knew John Albrecht in La Ronge, and who travelled by canoe to Selwyn Lake near the Saskatchewan-Northwest Territories border and searched for John and Nan's cabin in 2014. Click HERE for their story. We have corresponded since then and shared what we know about the cabin site.
  
• Rabeea (Robert) Shhadeh, a good friend of Nan and John's late son, John A. Danke, shared stories about John and sent me Danke family photos.
  
• Darlene Studor of La Ronge, Saskatchewan found letters to Nan from author Kathrene Pinkerton tucked inside a copy of Pinkerton's book Wilderness Wife. This got me excited! I am grateful to Darlene for sharing scanned copies of the two letters with me. I then contacted the University of Oregon Archives where Pinkerton's papers are housed, but, to my great dismay, there were no letters from Nan to Kathrene in that collection.
• Natalie Thompson of La Ronge Precambrian Geological Laboratory provided me with documents about Nan and John's prospecting activity in northern Saskatchewan, and helped me solve the mystery of Nan's "De Leo" name. 
  
• Randolph Trumbull of Suttons Bay, Michigan, his sister Martha (Trumbull) Halloran, and her husband Terry Halloran, both of Rancho Santa Fe, California. The Trumbulls' mother was Richard Morenus' first cousin, and they have some distant memories of him visiting their home.
• Heidi Walczuch in Germany, John Albrecht's niece, who provided me with family photos.
  
• Numerous archival institutions and government agencies, including: the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan (documents and photos); the Wisconsin Historical Society (collection National Broadcasting Company Records, 1921-1976); University of North Dakota, Department of Special Collections (some of Richard Morenus' correspondence); Ontario Title Search (records of Nan and Richard's land in northern Ontario); Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre, Health Records Department (Nan's admission record to the Sioux Lookout hospital in 1947); Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (Nan and Richards' immigration records); the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois (Nan and Richard's divorce records).
  

Despite these efforts, I have to date uncovered relatively little in the way of records of Nan's life. She did not leave much behind, due, in part, to her travels to remote locations, and also in part to her premature death immediately following the birth of her son in 1950. 

"Many biographical 'facts', subject of course to interpretation, do often exist and lie around quietly in archives of all forms waiting to be turned into stories."
    - Terri-Ann White (2004)

To complicate things further, I was not able to visit any archives due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I have not uncovered any diaries, manuscripts, letters, photographs, or other memorabilia that may still be waiting to be discovered. With the assistance of online finding aids and several terrific archivists, however, I have found some useful material.

Nan published two magazine articles listed below. Any of her other writings have disappeared or remain to be uncovered. I am not going to include a complete bibliography here. References are included in each blog post as appropriate. Here is a list of some of my most useful sources:

• Dorland Morenus, Nan. “Jim Chief,” in MacLean’s, October 15, 1946, pp. 9, 51-56.
  
• ---------. “The Woman’s Bushed,” in MacLean’s, August 15, 1947, pp. 23-26. 
• Downes, P. G. Sleeping Island: The Narrative of a Summer’s Travel in Northern Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. Ottawa: McGahern Stewart Publishing, 2011. (First published in 1943.)
• Gold and Other Stories as told to Berry Richards, W. O. Kupsch and S. D. Hanson, eds. Regina, SK: Saskatchewan Mining Association, 1986.
• Lee, S. E. (Bob). The North Called Softly. Prince Albert, SK: Self-published, 1977. 
• Morenus, Richard. Crazy White Man. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1952.
• ---------. “Dogs on Ice,” in MacLean's, September 15, 1948. 
• ---------. “From Broadway to Bush,” in MacLean’s, September 1, 1946. 
• Pinkerton, Kathrene. A Home in the Wilds [formerly Wilderness Wife]. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., [1939], 1967.
• ---------. Woodcraft for Women. Sportsman’s Vintage Press, [1916], 2014.

 

 

SPECIAL THANKS TO DICK MACKENZIE FOR REVIEWING THE DRAFTS OF EACH BLOG POST.

 

NEXT: Nan's Family Background: CLICK HERE

 

INDEX TO BLOG SERIES: Click HERE

©Joan Champ, 2021. All rights reserved.