William Floyd Steuber Jr. was born on 5 November 1904 in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin to William F. Steuber Sr. (also known as Wilhelm Hriedrich Jakob Steuber) and Louisa Steuber (née Luice Wintermantel).
William F. Steuber Sr. was born the son of an immigrant German stonemason in 1861 in Sauk, Wisconsin. As an adult, William F. Steuber Sr. took up the trades of stonemasonry and bricklaying. On February 25, 1886, he married Louisa Wintermantel and the couple moved to Prairie du Sac, where William F. Steuber Sr. constructed a brick house and ran a lime yard. The Steubers had five children: Helen (born 1888), Milton C. (born 1889), Elda (born 1891), Lillian (born 1895) and William F. Jr. (born 1904).
In 1911, the Steuber family moved to Madison. William F. Steuber Jr. attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he majored in engineering and English, earning a bachelor's degree in 1930. While a student in 1926, Steuber found summer work doing surveys and planning for the Dane County Highway Commission. He began working as a drafter, then worked as an instrument man, and finally became chief of a survey party. In 1927, he also freelanced for the Kinegrams newsreel company. After graduation, he began working for the State Highway Commission and was sent to the La Crosse district.
While in La Crosse, Steuber met vocational schoolteacher Marie F. Droster, also a Madison native and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate (1929). In 1935, Steuber was transferred to District 1 back in Madison, where he married Droster.
In 1937, Steuber became Associate Director of the State Highway Safety Division. There, he began writing professionally, authoring pamphlets on highway safety. Steuber appears to have published technical articles “on the side” through the 1940s and 1950s, as well. Over the course of his engineering career, Steuber published articles in engineering and popular science journals, including Highway Magazine, Public Roads, Popular Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated. As part of his work for the Highway Safety Division, Steuber began to make highway safety films.
In 1941, Steuber was promoted to Executive Secretary of the Highway Advisory Committee to the War Department. Then, in 1943, he took a leave of absence for a war service appointment as an editor and technical writer for the United States Forest Products Laboratory.
After the war, Steuber returned to the State Highway Commission, where he worked as assistant to the state highway engineer and as a technical writer, garnering a prize in a 1953 General Motors essay contest. In 1955, Steuber became the first chief of the newly formed Public Information Section. In 1958, he was promoted to assistant state highway engineer, where he remained until his retirement in 1970. During the last years of his career as a state highway engineer, Steuber served as unofficial division historian, working to maintain and preserve records and photographs pertaining to Wisconsin highways.
As early as 1933, Steuber began writing short fiction in his free time. Steuber handwrote his manuscript drafts while his wife Marie edited and typed them. He tried, without success, to publish his stories in periodicals like Harper's and The New Yorker. Steuber wrote his first novel, Us Incorporated, a coming of age story that takes place in a small Midwestern town, over the course of eight years between 1945 and its 1953 publication. In 1957, Steuber published his best-known work, The Landlooker, a Friends of American Writers award-winning historical novel about the Peshtigo fire of 1871. He published his third and last novel, Go Away Thunder, a historical novel about the Menominee tribe before European colonization of the Americas, in 1972. Steuber promoted his novels through public speaking appearances in the Madison area.
In addition to his fiction work, Steuber authored historical articles for the Wisconsin Magazine of History and various local newspapers. Steuber also developed many puzzles and word-games, as well as one board game, all of which he sought unsuccessfully to copyright and distribute.
Steuber was a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers, the Wisconsin Society of Professional Engineers, the Wisconsin Regional Writers' Association, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Society of Midland Authors. He served as secretary of the Wisconsin Mississippi River Parkway Planning Committee, as vice-chairman of the Natural Resources Council of State Agencies, and as chairperson of the Historical Markers Committee. He also served on the Menominee Indian Study Committee.
Steuber died on October 27, 2005 at the age of 100.
Professional Timeline
| 1926 |
Begins working for the Dane County Highway Commission
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| 1927 |
Freelance news filmmaker, Kinegrams Newsreel Company
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| 1928-1930 |
Chief of Survey Party, Dane County Highway Commission
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| 1930 |
Bachelor's degree in Engineering and English, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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| 1930-1935 |
Chief of Party/Junior Assistant Highway Engineer, State Highway Commission Division 5, La Crosse, Wisconsin
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| 1935-1937 |
Junior Assistant Highway Engineer, State Highway Commission, Division 1, Madison, Wisconsin
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| 1937-1941 |
Assistant Director, Highway Safety Division
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| 1941-1943 |
Executive Secretary, Highway Advisory Committee to War Department
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| 1943-1946 |
Technical writer and editor, Forest Products Laboratory (war service appointment)
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| 1945 |
Begins Us Incorporated
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| 1946-1955 |
Assistant to State Engineer, State Highway Commission of Wisconsin
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| 1953 |
Us Incorporated published
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| 1955-1958 |
Chief of Public Information, State Highway Department
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| 1957 |
The Landlooker published
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| 1958-1970 |
Assistant State Highway Engineer, State Highway Commission of Wisconsin
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| 1966 |
Begins Go Away Thunder
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| 1972 |
Go Away Thunder published
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