Teofil Magdziński was born in the city of Samter (present day's Szamotuły), then in the Grand Duchy of Posen, on 13 October 1818.

[2] After passing his secondary school examination (Abitur), he decided to turn to Law, but after a few months he was removed from the list of students.

[4] Ludwik Mierosławski, commander-in-chief of the coming Greater Poland uprising (February 1846) appointed him as the leader of the movement in Żmudź (today's a Lithuania region).

To that aim, Teofil left for Königsberg (in Prussia) at the end of January 1846 and sneaked into the Russian territory under a false name.

Back to his hometown, he joined the Liga Polska ("League of Poland"), a political and cultural organization founded by August Cieszkowski in Berlin in 1848, promoting the ideas of social solidarity.

[2] Teofil Magdziński married in 1851 and installed his couple in the Imielinko estate in the Wągrowiec County, living as a gentleman farmer.

In the end, he had to leave Prussia-controlled Grand Duchy of Posen in 1853 and transferred to Russia-occupied Congress Poland, in a village of the Łęczyca County (today north of Łódź).

Ten years later, he took part in the January Uprising: after Russia's victory he moved back in 1864, to Prussian Greater Poland soil.

At the end of the 1860s, he settled in Bydgoszcz (then Prussian Bromberg) at "28 Posener straße" (today Poznańska street)[7] and developed an intense nationalist activity.

On his and Julian Prejs's initiative, on 27 October 1872, was created the Towarzystwo Przemysłowego w Bydgoszczy (English: Industrial Society in Bydgoszcz), bringing together local notables, craftsmen, workers and small industrialists.

In 1871, he opposed the project of the municipality to organize celebrations on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Poland's joining the Kingdom of Prussia: he argued that highlighting the date of this "crime" would be wicked and irritating Polish minds.

[4] He was an active member of the "Towarzystwo Naukowej Pomocy dla Młodzieży Wielkiego Księstwa Poznańskiego" ("Society of Scientific Aid for Youth of the Grand Duchy of Poznań") for which he was the treasurer.