Harry E. Dankoler (originally spelled Damkoehler) was born March 30, 1863 in Sturgeon Bay Township, Door County, Wisconsin in a log cabin, to Ernest and Mathilda Damkoelher, German immigrants. His father Ernest Damkoelher, who was a soldier in the Union Army, died the following year in service. At the age of eight, the boy was placed in the Soldiers' Orphans' School at Madison. The orphanage was discontinued 1874 and he returned home to Sturgeon Bay. Dankoler married Annette Reinacke in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1890. They had one son, Harry Slyvester "Sly" Dankoler in 1895, who died just before his twelfth birthday in 1907. Annette died just a few months later on March 20, 1908.
Harry Dankoler worked as a printer's devil, editor, publisher, and writer for the Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Daily News, The Saturday Star, South Milwaukee Star, Milwaukee Daily Record, and Peck's Sun.
In 1888 Dankoler left the Milwaukee
Sentinel to join with others in the publication of the Milwaukee Daily News. A year later, he began the publication of
three weeklies, the Saturday Star, the
South Milwaukee Star, and the Milwaukee Daily Record. While Geroge W. Peck
served as governor (1891-1895), Dankoler took over publication of Peck's Sun. Dankoler's wife also wrote for the Sun. In 1893, Dankoler sold his newspaper interests and spent the next few years writing for magazines and the Milwaukee Sentinel, using the pseudonym, Harry Dee.
After the death of his wife and son in 1908, Dankoler bought and developed an acreage near
Sturgeon Bay, later using it as a tourist home in the summers. In 1909, and again in 1919,
he worked on the staffs of Our Young People
and American Young People, magazines for
the "deaf mute" community. Through the years, he usually spent his winters working for the Manufacturer's Appraisal Company of Cleveland and Philadelphia.
After his retirement about 1930, three projects occupied much of Harry Dankoler's time:
- In 1933 and 1934, because he was refused space in the local papers, Dankoler published
22 issues of the Free Press: Published for the
Benefit of the depositors of the Two Closed Banks, in Door County. Copies of the
newspaper are available in the Library of the Wisconsin Historical Society (Microfilm
P02-3301).
- The establishment of the Door County Museum, formed between 1935 and 1939. After the dedication of the building in 1939, he was made curator, a post at which he served until his death at the age of 92 on October 25, 1955. His entire estate of $4,987 was left to the Door County Museum to be used as interest-bearing money for future purchase of exhibits.
- About 1940 he published a lengthy history called The Ice Age and the History of the Earth, giving his theory, held by few, regarding a change in the polarity of the Earth.
