John Burroughs

(1837 - 1921)

An essayist and naturalist, John Burroughs was born in 1837 in Roxbury, New York, and worked as a teacher and farmer before taking a position as a clerk in the Treasury Department. While in Washington, DC, he befriended Walt Whitman, who encouraged Burroughs’ literary pursuits. Wake-Robin, the first of numerous essay collections, was published in 1871. Together with his son, he built Slabsides, a log cabin in West Park, New York, in 1895, where he entertained guests such as Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Ford, John Muir, and Thomas Edison.