D: Dardanus to Dzilke 101
Donnelly, Ignatius
Born in Moyamensing, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1831,
Ignatius Donnelly became a young lawyer before moving with his new wife to
the wilds of Minnesota, near Saint Paul. There he helped found Nininger City,
named after its chief benefactor, William Nininger, but the project collapsed
with the onset of national economic troubles. A born orator, Donnelly turned
his writing and organizational skills to politics in a steady rise from state senator,
congressman, lieutenant governor, and acting governor. A futuristic reformer,
he owed no political allegiances, but regarded politics only as a means to promote
his ideals, which were often far in advance of his time, including female suffrage.
He was the first statesman to design and implement programs for reforestation
and protection of the natural environment.
Despite his busy life as a politician, Donnelly was a voracious reader, mostly
of history, particularly ancient history. Sometime before the Civil War, his sources
of information opened into a veritable cornucopia of materials when he was sent
to Washington, D.C., on state business. There he had access to the National
Archives, which then housed the largest library in the United States, if not the
world. Donnelly immersed himself in its shelves for several months, delegating
political authority to others, while he virtually lived among stacks of books. His
study concentrated on a question that had fascinated him since youth: Where
and how had civilization arisen? Although his understanding of the ancient world
broadened and deepened at the National Archives, the answer seemed just as
elusive as ever.
Not long before he was scheduled to return
to Minnesota, he stumbled on Plato’s account
of Atlantis in two dialogues, Timaeus and
Kritias. The story struck Donnelly with all the
impact of a major revelation. It seemed to him
the missing piece of a colossal puzzle that in-
stantly transformed the enigma into a vast, clear
panorama of the deep past. The weight of evi-
dence convinced him that Atlantis was not only
a real place, but the original fountainhead of
civilization.
For the next 20 years, Donnelly labored to
learn everything he could about the drowned
kingdom, even at the expense of his political
career. Only in the early 1880s did he feel suf-
ficiently confident of his research to organize it
into a book, his first. With no contacts in the
publishing industry and in threadbare financial
straits, he entrained alone for New York City,
and headed for the largest book producer heBronze bust of Ignatius Donnelly, the
founder of Atlantology, at the state
capitol of Minnesota,St. Paul..