Our History

Founding the Friends

Why the Friends?

The Friends of the Madeline Island Museum formed in 2021–2022 to be a voice from the Island community to carry on the legacy of Bella and Leo Capser’s vision for a museum that tells the local story of the Island’s long and rich history.

What Happened?

In 2021, twenty founding members volunteered their time, energy, and expertise to launch the Friends.

Founding members included year-round and seasonal residents with resumes from museum management to legal expertise to board membership on a state historical society. All of our founding members love island history and value the museum’s role in sharing it with the public. Dedicated to a full representation of the people of Madeline Island, founding board members include representatives from local tribes.

The board met with Madeline Island Museum (MIM) and Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) staff and began to negotiate a Memorandum of Understanding to define how they might effectively collaborate to support the museum. They sought advice from other Friends groups as they filed legal papers to officially form as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization registered in the state of Wisconsin. Early on, the group solicited, and was awarded, its first financial grant of $5000 from the Apostle Islands Historic Preservation Conservancy to support start-up costs such as developing a website. 

What’s Next?

The Friends organization looks forward to expanding its membership and to planning programs and activities with its overall goal to support the museum and its mission.

The Capser Legacy

St. Paulite Leo Capser first came to Madeline Island in 1903, when he was 11, and developed a life-long love for the island and its surrounding waters. He married artist Bella Harmon in 1935, and after they sold Villa Saint Croix, a stone castle they built on the St. Croix River, in 1953, they turned to planning a museum for the island. 

They collected artifacts as they drove through Wisconsin to the island and as they took outings to the other Apostle Islands in their beloved boat, the Guben. Their friend and caretaker, Al Galazen, an amateur archaeologist, helped them in their pursuits. 

At the same time, Leo’s childhood friend Ham Ross, Sr. was writing the first comprehensive history of the island, La Pointe: Village Outpost, and the Capsers based the museum’s exhibits on the framework Ross developed in the book: the Ojibwe migration, the French fur trading period, white settlement, and summer tourism. 

The Capsers also collected buildings to house the museum, including the only remaining building originally used by the American Fur Company, the old village jail, August (Gus) Dahlin’s barn and the old “Sailors’ Home,” a refuge for sailors that Olaf Anderson had built in memory of a drowned brother. 

Al Galazen supervised the museum’s construction as well as donating his own collection of artifacts. Bella cleaned the artifacts, arranged the exhibits, and hand-lettered all the exhibit labels. 

The museum opened to great local excitement in 1958. In 1968, the Capsers donated the museum and a trust fund to support its collections to the Wisconsin Historical Society. After Leo died in 1975, Bella continued her interest and involvement in the museum until her death in 1986. The original rooms and exhibits of the museum remain a testimony to the Capsers’ love of island history. 

  • Bella and Leo Capser Inside the Museum

    In the old American Fur Company building, where the original entrance to the museum was located; circa 1965.
    Photograph from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection.

  • Al Galazen, Leo and Bella Capser

    With 1868 bell from Chequamegon Point Lighthouse, donated by the US Coast Guard, October 9, 1964.
    Photograph from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection.

  • Islanders and Coast Guard Donors with Bell

    The bell is now on the front lawn of the museum.
    Gram Johnson and island children in front. Coast Guard donors in back.
    Photograph from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection.

  • Leo Capser, Maggie Heersema, Al Galazen and Crew of the Outer Island.

    After retrieving anchor and chains from the wreck of the Pretoria, 1961.
    Maggie Heersema was the first museum curator.
    The anchor and chains are now on the front lawn of the museum.
    Photograph from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection.

  • Bella and Leo Capser

    Enjoying their boat the Guben, circa 1965.
    Photograph from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection.

  • Constructing the Madeline Island Historical Museum

    The original Madeline Island Historical Museum in La Pointe consists of four separate buildings.
    L-to-r: the old La Pointe Jail, a surviving American Fur Company building, Gus Dahlin's barn, and the Old Sailor's Home. The museum opened in 1958.
    Photograph,1956, from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection: IM3538.

  • Madeline Island Museum

    Photograph, 1958, from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection: IM49123.

  • Ray Sivesend, Bella and Leo Capser

    Ray Sivesend was Director of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
    Photograph from the Wisconsin Historical Society collection.