Daniel E. Wegner was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1946. He is the son of Edwin and Deoldine Wegner. He has one sibling: Ruth Miller.

Wegner attended Houghton College, New York from 1964-1966, Wheaton College, Illinois from 1966-1968 (BA in History), North American Baptist Seminary, San Diego from 1971-1973 (Master of Arts-Christian Education), Clemson University from 1978-1979 (Master of Recreation and Park Administration), and Texas A&M from 1979-1986 (PhD-Philosophy).

Wegner taught at Clemson as a graduate assistant from 1978-1979. In addition, Wegner taught at Texas A&M from 1980-1986, Howard Payne University from 1987-1990, Southwest Texas State University from 1990-1996, and California State University, Long Beach from 1996-2001.

Wegner served in the Army and was stationed in both the U.S. and Turkey from 1969-1971.

Daniel E. Wegner served the National Park Service by working at Glacier National Park, Montana 1973-1976, Death Valley National Monument, California 1975-1976, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina 1979-1981, and Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, Florida 1987.

As part of the research for his 1978 master's thesis Recollections of Life in a Southern Textile Mill Village, Wegner conducted a series of interviews with eight residents of the Newry community of Oconee County, SC on sixteen cassette tapes. Newry was a typical southern mill village with resident mill owners and local labor. The interviews focus upon life in the small rural mill village during the first decades of the twentieth century. The individuals who grew up in the village and recount the everyday life and unique character of the community are: Claude Anderson, Ellis Benson, Helen Brock, Henry Cater, John L. Gaillard, Odessa B. Gaillard, Horace Kirby, and A. Richey Ramseur.

Captain William Ashmead Courtenay was granted a state charter in 1893 to incorporate a firm for the manufacturing, spinning, dyeing, printing, and selling of all cotton and woolen goods which was capitalized at $300,000. That year, he purchased land in Oconee County and began building the textile mill at a place he called Newry; this was in memory of his father's home in County Down, Ireland. The following year, on June 14, 1894, the Courtenay Manufacturing Company began operations using water power. By 1903, the firm was producing fine sheeting for converting purposes with 19, 440 ring spindles and 635 forty inch looms.

Captain Courtenay died in 1908, leaving his sons, Ashmead and Campbell, as president and general manager of the firm. The Courtenay family continued to manage the business until the 1920's when the firm was sold to Isaqueena Mills of Central, SC with C.W.L. Gassaway as president and treasurer. It produced pajama checks and carded broadcloth with 25,344 spindles in 1927 and used a combination of water and steam generated power from three boilers. In 1930, the stock and property was sold to Cannon Mills in North Carolina which had served as its selling agent prior to the purchase. At that time it employed 365 people and purchased 5,500 bales of cotton.

The Abney Company bought the mill in 1939 and by 1943 employed 450 people producing cotton warp, rayon and cotton, and rayon filling using 6,500 bales. After World War II, Courtenay Manufacturing operated as a unit of Abney producing print cloths until its closure in 1975. The mills houses were sold in 1959, primarily to their tenants.