Edwin B. Quiner, newspaperman and author, was born in April 1816 at New Haven, Connecticut. He learned the printer's trade in the East, became a journeyman printer, and in 1839 moved to Wisconsin, where he worked for a time in the office of the Milwaukee Sentinel. In 1850 he moved to Watertown and purchased the Rock River Jeffersonian, which he edited as the Watertown Democratic State Register (1850-1853). Originally a Democrat, Quiner became dissatisfied with the scandal charges growing out of the administration of Governor William A. Barstow, and in 1853 made his Watertown newspaper independent in politics. From 1853 until the paper's suspension in November 1864, it was published by Quiner as the Watertown Weekly Register. He later published several short-lived campaign newspapers supporting the Republican Party, and was unsuccessful in two attempts to establish a temperance newspaper (1854, 1861). In 1858 Quiner moved to Madison, where he served as a claims agent during the Civil War. He was the author of A Military History of Wisconsin (1866), a volume relating the history and organization of Wisconsin regiments during the Civil War. In 1867 he moved to Baraboo, where he died on February 28, 1868. (Taken from the Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1960, p. 295.)
