librarian, author, b. Palermo, Sicily. He migrated with his parents to America in 1869, and settled in La Crosse in 1873 where he was educated in the public schools. After moving to Milwaukee in 1878, he worked on the Milwaukee Sentinel, successively, as reporter, city editor, and editorial writer. Legler served as a Republican member of the Wisconsin Assembly (1889-1890), and secretary of the Milwaukee school board (1890--1904). He helped found the Parkman Club, Milwaukee, in 1895, to which he contributed two historical papers: "Chevalier Henry de Tonty" and "A Moses of the Mormons" (Park-man Club Papers, 1896- 1897). As secretary of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission (1904-1909) he greatly expanded Wisconsin's traveling library system, helped develop the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Library, founded a training school for librarians, which later became the library school of the Univ. of Wisconsin, and opened institutes throughout the state for training librarians. He actively promoted the Univ. of Wisconsin extension service, and was its first director (1906-1909). He was the author of: Leading Events of Wisconsin History (1898), Early Wisconsin Imprints (1904), and other books and papers on historical and bibliographical topics. After moving to Chicago in 1909, he was librarian at the Chicago Public Library (1909-1917), and a prominent member and president (1912-1913) of the American Library Association. H. E. Legler Papers, Wis. Hist. Soc. Lib.; H. E. Legler Papers in Hdgrs., Amer. Lib. Assoc., Chicago; E. M. Danton, ed., Pioneering Leaders in Librarianship (Chicago, 1953); Natl. Cyclopaedia Amer. Biog., 24, (1935); Dict. Amer. Biog.

The Wisconsin Historical Society has manuscripts related to this topic. See the catalog description of the Henry Edward Legler Papers for details.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]