THORNTON W. BURGESS (1874 - 1965) Thornton Waldon Burgess wrote 170 books and 15,000 stories for the daily newspaper column for young children. Burgess was born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, on January 17th a descendant of Thomas Burgess one of the original settlers of Sandwich. Also, the same year his father died. He died on June 5th at the age of 91. Brought up by his mother in Sandwich they lived in humble circumstances. Often an author's writings come from his own life. As a youth, he worked tending cows, picking mayflowers or berries, shipping water lilies from local ponds, selling candy, and trapping muskrats. William C. Chipman, one of his employers, lived on Discovery Hill Road, a wildlife habitat of woodland and wetland. This habitat became the setting of many stories in which Burgess refers to Smiling Pool and the Old Briar Patch. Thornton's first job after graduating from Sandwich High School and a brief stay in one of the Boston colleges he moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. Where he accepted a job as an editorial assistant at the Phelps Publishing Company. His first stories were written using the pseudonym W. B. Thornton He had two wives during his lifetime, his first Nina dying within a year and leaving him a son to raise. The second wife Fannie who had two children of her own shared her life with him for thirty-nine years. They bought a home in Hampton Massachusetts This became his permanent home by 1957 and later became the Laughing Brook Wildlife Sanctuary. A middle school in Hampden is named after Burgess in honor of his work for conservation, some people are trying to close at the time this book is printed. The Thornton W. Burgess Museum in Sandwich closed to the public October 2012. However, The Thornton W. Burgess Society operates the Green Briar Nature Center in East Sandwich, Massachusetts. Note: Some corrections have been made for ease of reading. Such as any one to anyone, some one to someone. Commas were also added. The Flesch Kincaid Grade Level of 5.0 was given for this reading.