Wendelin's "Dan Janson"

Back in November, 2009, I posted a letter that grandpa Anton's brother Wendelin wrote as Anton lay dying at Wendelin's house in LA.  He was angry that Anton hadn't stayed in Minnesota, and, I think, that it was beginning to seem like Jansons came to California to die...on Wendelin's dime.
In the letter, he wrote that  "we can't let this thing end up like Dan Janson..." Larry and I had no idea what that meant--we hadn't discovered Daniel yet (in Rice, Mn) and what could have happened that upset Wendelin so?  
Eventually Larry and I pieced stuff together,and realized he meant his father's COUSIN Dan, the Janson immigrant who'd settled in Rice.  
"None of you would be in Buckman or St Cloud today without the help from here.  I’ll tell you again, we just can’t afford to let this end up like Dan Janson we just can’t".
Whew.  Dan Janson died in Sacramento, California November 10, 1910.  Grandpa Anton died in 1955, so Wendelin was still smarting about something that happened 45 years earlier.  Did Mom and Uncle Reinhard even know what he was talking about?


Frankly, we don't know the story either, but we can speculate:  based on the fact that even in 1955 when grandpa Anton died there, he couldn't be shipped home unaccompanied on the train.  A relative had to claim the body and go along with it--so in 1910, was Wendelin elected to take time off work, identify the body, and take Daniel home?  And oh-oh, was he expected to pay for both, plus doctor bills?  

Daniel and Wendelin would have known each other, surely, but they probably weren't close, or it wouldn't have bugged him quite so much.  Obviously it did anyway, all those years later.