WI BIO - Dane Co - FRANKENBURGER, David B.
Biographical Review of Dane County, WI. Chicago: Biographical Review Pub. Co. 
1893, Vol II, pp 636-637

Professor David B. FRANKENBURGER, A. M., LL. B., now occupying the chair of 
Rhetoric and Oratory in the Wisconsin University at Madison, well known in 
literary circles as a poet, historian and essayist, was born in Edinburg, 
Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, 13 October 1845, to Lewis and Elizabeth (KALE) 
FRANKENBURGER. Lewis was born in 1817 in Pennsylvania, and Elizabeth in 1818 
in Columbiana County, Ohio. As the name signifies, the original possessor 
was a burgher of North Germany. The paternal grandfather of the Professor 
came to America when a youth, about the year 1760, and served in the 
Revolutionary War. This ancestor afterward settled near the boundary line of 
the three states of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and his descendants 
have since lived first in the Old Dominion [Virginia], and later in the 
Keystone State [Pennsylvania]. In consequence of the custom of intermarriage 
in the country, the German characteristics are now mingled with those of the 
French, Scotch, and Irish, and the Professor may justly lay claim to a 
kinship with the world.

Lewis FRANKENBURGER was in early life a merchant, but in 1855 removed to the 
frontier, as the Territory of Wisconsin was then called, and settled on a 
farm in Green County, which he cultivated for many years. [Since Wisconsin 
was no longer part of the Territory of Wisconsin in 1855, having become a 
State 29 May 1848, the "1855" date in the original text may be a typo.] He 
eventually removed to Iowa, settled on a farm near Clarksville in Butler 
County, where the devoted wife and mother [Elizabeth (KALE) FRANKENBURGER] 
departed this life in 1891. There the father still resides in the enjoyment 
of universal esteem. This worthy couple had four children, two sons and two 
daughters, of whom the David B., the subject, is the youngest. The other 
son, Henry, is a successful educator in Fort Scott, [Bourbon County], Kansas.

David B. FRANKENBURGER was a youth of ten years when his parents came to WI. 
He was for nine years engaged in working on the farm, attending the district 
school during the winter. He prepared for college at Milton Academy, and at 
the age of twenty-one years he entered the Wisconsin University, at which 
institution he graduated in 1869 with the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy. 
He then attended the law department of the same school, where he graduated in 
1871. He was subsequently engaged for seven years in legal practice in 
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was while thus occupied that he was offered the 
chair of Rhetoric and Oratory in is alma mater, which he accepted, hoping in 
a professor's chair to find that leisure for a literary career denied him in 
the more active pursuit of the law. For, while in college and in the ten 
years succeeding graduation, he had often successfully dallied with the muses. 
In the decade of 1870-1880, he was frequently called upon to enliven with 
verse the gatherings of the Alumni, he occupying the position at the 
Wisconsin University that Dr. HOLMES held at Harvard, that of college poet. 
His poems are filled with chaste and exquisite imagery, and pervaded by 
touching pathos and delicate humor. Those which appeal most powerfully to 
the popular taste are "My Old Home," "The Bells of Bethlehem," and "Our 
Welcome Home." He also contributes to various magazines, and is preparing a 
History of The University of Wisconsin for the World's Fair. The correction 
of quires on quires of manuscript, amounting to folio [p 637] volumes each 
term, has left him no leisure for verse. In 1882 he strengthened his 
acquirements as a teacher of oratory by a course of instruction in Boston. 
By nature an energetic and conscientious worker, Professor FRANKENBURGER has 
been unsparing in his efforts to raise the standard of literary culture in 
the university.

David B. FRANKENBURGER was married 24 June 1880 to Miss Mary S. STORER, an 
intelligent and cultured lady, and a native of Portland, [Cumberland County], 
Maine, who was educated at the Milwaukee Female College and Wisconsin 
University. They have two children, Margaret and Dorothy. The Professor is 
an able and scholarly man of unremitting industry, and the university may be 
congratulated on his acquisition to its corps of teachers. [His poem, "Our 
Welcome Home," omitted here.]

Submitted by Cathy Kubly