Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 78, number 4, summer, 1995

              The Other Builder:
Daniel S. Durrie and
the State Historical Society ofWisconsin
By Leslie H. Fishel, jr.
DANIEL STEELE DURRIE was a know¬ ledge-seeker with a penchant for detail, a dedication to hard work, an am¬ bition to build enduring monuments, and an imaginative drive which under- girded all of these impulses. Reserved and respectful but not reticent, he as¬ sisted and complemented the expansive and egocentric Lyman Copeland Draper, who, as the institution's first "correspond¬ ing secretary," energized a fragile State Historical Society of Wisconsin in its early years. Working in tandem, these two men helped to create the foundations of a dynamic research institution which came to rank with the best of the breed around the globe.
Durrie came to his appreciation for books and history in part through his early business association with bookselling and his keen interest in family history. His parents, Horace andjohannah Steele Durrie, lived in Albany, NewYork, where he was born onjanuary 2, 1819. His fa¬ ther, a paper hanger and brush factory manager, died seven years later, leaving little record of his own life. Durrie at¬ tended the Albany common school for his early education and then went to a school in South Hadley, Massachusetts,
before returning to complete his educa¬ tion at the Albany Academy.'
In 1844, he started working in the bookseller and stationer's store estab¬ lished by his mother's father, Daniel Steele. Durrie's uncle, Oliver Steele, con¬ tinued in the store after the elder Steele's death in 1828. By 1848, Durrie's uncle had pretty well retired, but Durrie kept the Steele and Durrie name. The same year he entered the store, Durrie married Anna Holt, one of nine surviving chil¬ dren of David and Elizabeth Hempstead Holt of Herkimer, NewYork. The first two of six Durrie children were born while they were still in Albany.^
' James Davie Butler, "Daniel Steele Durrie," in the Proceedings of the 40th .Annual Meeting: The State Historical Society ofWisconsin (1892) (Madison, 1893), 73; The Albany Directory for 1820, 1821, 1822, 1823,
1824, 1825, 1826 (Albany, 1820, 1822, 1823, 1824,
1825, 1826), 27, n.p., 29, 32, 34, not listed.
- Daniel S. Durrie, A Genealogical History of the Holt Family of the United Stales; more particularly the descendants of Nicholas Holt of Newbury and Andover, Mass. ... (Albany, 1864), 274-275; Daniel S. Durrie, Steele Family: A Genealogical History of fohn and George Steele... and Their Descendants... (enlarged ed., Madi¬ son, 1862 [original ed., 1859]), 22, .38-39, 64; Wis¬ consin State fournal, September 1, 1892.
C:opyright © 199.5 by the Slate riistorical Society of WiscoiisiTi .\\\ rights of reprodtiction in any form reserved.
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