John Burroughs -- Naturalist of West Park
John Burroughs
born 3 Apr 1837
Roxbury NY
died 29 March
1921
en route from
West
Coast to West
Park
buried: Roxbury
NY
married 12 Sept
1857
Tongore (now
Olive) NY
Ursula North
born 3 Jan 1836
Tongore NY
died 6 Mar 1907
West Park
buried: May 1907
Tongore (Olive)
NY
Descendants of John Burroughs
Julian Burroughs
born -15 Apr 1878
West Park NY
died 15 Dec 1954
West Park NY
buried Ascension
Cemetery
West Park NY
married 15
Sept1902
Keene Heights NY
now called St.
Hubert's
in Adirondacks.
Emily DuBois
Mackay
born 6 Oct 1973
died April 1974
West Park NY
buried: Ascension
Cemetery, West
Park NY
Elizabeth Burroughs
b 12 Aug 1903
West Park NY
d 15 Nov 1999
Kingston NY
buried Ascension
Cemetery
West Park NY
married
Hugh Bentley Kelley
born 25 May 1895
died January 1971
West Park NY
buried Ascension
Cemetery
West Park NY
Ursula Burroughs
born 1905 West Park
NY
d
???
buried Ascension
Cemetery
West Park NY
married
William Edward Love
Jr
,
born 28 May 1898
died Aug 1973
West Park NY
buried Ascension
Cemetery
West Park NY
John Burroughs
b 21 July 1909, West
Park NY
d
Nov 1968, West
Park NY
buried Ascension
Cemetery
West Park NY
married
Annie Reed
b ??? d ???
information derived from many sources, including Social Security





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Ancestors of John Burroughs
Ephraim
1740 - 1818 Stephen
Eden
moved to
b Feb 1695
born 1795
Stanford NY
Hiram
moved from Delaware
1827 - 1904
Stamford CT Co, NY
to
from
Olly Ann
Chauncey A Beaver Dam Bridgeport
Ruth Nichols
1829-
born 20 Dec Roxbury
CT
1803
Wilson
Roxbury NY
Curtis
died about
9 Jan 1883
Edmund
Jane
John
Burroughs
3 April 1837
29 Mar 1921
Edmund
Kelly
Eden
born 1767
1839-
Dutchess Co
with Geo
Evaline
Amy Kelly
Washington
1840 - 1852 born 1808
at Valley
died 20 Dec Forge
Abigail
1880
1843 - 1901
Lavinia
Minot
Roxbury &
Greene
County
this information pieced together from various sources
John Burroughs was born 3 April 1837 in Roxbury, New York, the son
of Chauncey Burroughs and Amy Kelly, farmers. The Burroughs were early
settlers in Massachusetts and traveled the common route from eastern
Massachusetts to Connecticut, then to upstate New York, bypassing the
Hudson Valley for the most part because the greater part of the Valley was
engaged in tenant farming, and many settlers preferred to be yeomen rather
than continue the pattern of existence they had experienced in Europe. The
land west of the highest Catskills is more adaptable to farming, and attracted
persons from central New York down through Delhi and Onteora. John
Burroughs' maternal grandfather, Edmund Kelly, of Irish descent, was born in
Dutchess County, New York; his maternal grandmother, Lavina Liscom Minot,
was a practical housewife. Their daughter, Amy Kelly, like her father was an
Old-School Baptist. Burroughs thought that from his paternal ancestry he



derived his love of peace and solitude and his intellectual impetus, and from
his maternal, his love of nature and introspective habit and idealism. John
Burroughs parents operated a farm in Roxbury NY of 320 acres. The land
stayed within the family but came on hard times. In 1913, Henry Ford
purchased the Roxbury farm as a present for John Burroughs, who had built a
cabin "Woodchuck Lodge" John's nephew, John C, the sun of Curtis
Burroughs, ran the farm from the main house.
One of John's schoolmates was Jay Gould, later to become one of the
famous "robber barons" whose country home Lyndhurst, in Westchester
County is now part of the National Trust. After both Gould and Burroughs left
Roxbury, they rarely if ever spoke. However, Gould's history of Delaware
County provides a glimpse of life near Roxbury when they were adolescents.
John became a teacher when he was seventeen and taught in several
county schools in New York, New Jersey and Illinois. One such was in
Tongore in Ulster County (now called Olive) where he saved enough money to
study for a time in the Ashland Collegiate Institute in Greene County. In 1856
he studied at Cooperstown Seminary, where his literary enthusiasms included
Wordsworth and especially Emerson. "I got him in my blood, and he colored
my whole intellectual outlook.: He taught for six months in Polo, Illinois. He
returned to Tongore. There he met Ursula North, thirteen months his senior,
the daughter of a trustee of the school. They married September 12, 1857,
but could not set up housekeeping until he obtained a position in East
Orange, New Jersey. One week after the wedding he told Ursula "If I live, I
shall be an author. My life will be one of study."
At age 23 he submitted an
essay "Expression" so Emersonian in thought that Lowell, before printing it in
the Atlantic Monthly, looked through Emerson's writings for it. It was
published unsigned, but Poole's Index attributed the work to Emerson.
Burroughs kept at teaching to earn a livelihood, but he wrote a series of
nature essays called "From the Back Country". For a short time he
abandoned teaching to study medicine with Ursula's father. In 1963 he
published his first poem "Waiting" which was reprinted many time. He began
to take a livelier interest in the study of wild flowers and birds, influenced by a
botanist named Eddy and reading Audubon's book in the library at West Point.
In 1863, he went to Washington, D.C., where for a decade he sat at a
desk in the Currency Bureau of the Treasury Department. There he formed
the most important friendship of his life -- Walt Whitman, whose poetry he had
discovered two years before. Whitman was eighteen years his senior, but
they had walks and talks together, and sometimes Burroughs accompanied
Whitman on his hospital rounds. 'I loved him as I never loved any man. We
were companionable without talking. I owe more to him than to any other
man in the world. He brooded me; he gave me things to think of; he taught
me generosity, breadth, and an all-embracing charity". Burrough's first
published book was Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person (1867) to
which Whitman contributed the title, a large part of the notes and much
detailed revision.
Upon leaving Washington in 1873, Burroughs returned to his native
country. He first looked at property on Long Island (Whitman's home
territory), then along the Hudson, finally deciding upon a nine-acre farm about
one-half mile south of the Payne property on the west shore of the river
originally owned by the Deyo family, one of the original Huguenot families in


New Paltz.
Here he began to build his house. The land slopes south and
east towards the Hudson, making it suitable to growing grapes. There was a
large pile of stone on the property. To build his house, John used stones from
the property and finished with unstained wood timbers to the gable He called
the place Riverby. In 1888 he purchased more land, bringing the total to
twenty acres more or less. He grew grapes and currants, and shipped them
to New York City via boats from the West Park landing.
During this time, Burroughs built a detached study about 150 feet
below his dwelling. He used this to read and write, turning out a book every
two years for the rest of his life. He spent the summers following 1908 at a
farmhouse "Woodchuck Lodge" on the old home farm at Roxbury, using the
hay-barn as his literary workshop.
Looking for even more remote solitude, Burroughs joined with Amassa
Martin to purchase 100 swampy acres inland from Riverby. He financed the
project and reserved twenty acres to himself. They drained the swamp, built
an entry road, and constructed a very rustic cabin, later named Slabsides
after the suggestion of a neighbor, Mrs. William van Benschoten. The cabin
was ready for occupancy April 1896. After Burroughs' death, Slabsides
became a memorial to him. Additional land was donated by the Gordons, and
the Burroughs Society maintains the property, opening the house to visitors
several times each year.
John and Ursula had no natural children, but in 1888 adopted a son,
Julian. John doted on Julian, took him along as companion on many walks
and trips, and insisted Julian attend school in Poughkeepsie, and then
Harvard, from which Julian graduated in 1901. Julian returned to Riverby,
married, and had three children. Julian acted as superintendent of the Payne
estate from 1913 until 1918, and his daughter, Elizabeth became the historian
of West Park. Her recollections of her life on the Payne estate as a teenager
are refreshing and surprising accurate. Julian returned to Riverby in 1918, as
Ursula Burroughs had died and left the property to him. (John had transferred
Riverby to Ursula in 1892.) After Julian died in 1954, the property passed to
Julian's daughter Ursula.
John Burroughs' diary recited an interesting story about Julian, which
took place November 28, 1897, when Julian was 19 years old. Julian went up
the Hudson in his boat after ducks. By 3 pm John worried that the ice floes
were loud, and it seems impossible for a boat to survive in the river. John
started up the river bank hoping to see Julian coming back. "The ice roars
louder and louder and jams and grinds harder and harder, and I become more
and more alarmed. At last I reach Esopus dock, but no Julian in sight. A man
there tells me he saw him go up about 2 p.m .... The boy with his canvas boat
will be ground to pieces, or frozen fast in the ice. I tear up the river and reach
Pell's dock, a mile further up."
"At ten minutes to six we are at home, and a
few minutes later, Julian reaches the dock."
The biographies say very little about the Burroughs marriage, but it
certainly was unusual. Ursula was described as " a self-complacent, thrifty,
and forceful young woman, thirteen months John's senior." In 1892, John
himself wrote: "It is the oft-told story. A crude, undeveloped young man
marries a girl older and more experienced than himself. He develops, she
simply hardens, and their interests diverge. In middle life they are far apart;
she know him not at all, does not share his real life, only his kitchen life. The


things he lives for are nothing to her; she has no mental or intellectual or
social wants, hardly any religious wants. One supreme want she had, to
which she sacrifices everything --- health, hospitality, friends, husband, child --
- the want to be free from dirt and disorder. She is one of those terrible
housekeepers with whom there is no living -- a housekeeper, but not a
homemaker .... "
"I am not blameless. I have my own sins to answer for -- sins she had
driven me into -- but she has not been true to any of my higher wants and
needs -- has trampled them all under foot, though ignorantly and blindly, I
admit. She has no self knowledge at all -- I never saw her like in this respect.
She thinks herself a model wife. .. . I don't see how I can live here much
longer. I should like a year or two of real peace and sunshine before I die .
... Oh, what a boon is good nature! Like sunshine, like a genial climate."
The 1910 census tells its own story. John Burroughs is listed alone at
36 Albany Post Road, as an author of literature. His son Julian is listed
separately at 40 Albany Post Road, together with his wife Emily and their
children Elizabeth, Ursula and John Jr. Emily MacKay is listed as born in
Pennsylvania of an Irish father and a mother born in Ohio. Ursula Burroughs
is listed separately at 41 Albany Post Road together with two servants.
In his last years, when he was regarded not only as a naturalist but
also as a sage and prophet, all manner of persons made the pilgrimage to
"Slabsides", including Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Ford,
Harvey Firestone, Oscar Wilde, Theodore Dreiser, John Muir and Ida Tarbell.
Via photographs (for which he rarely refused to pose) his erect, substantial
figure, steady eyes, long rustic beard, and pervasive air of repose, formed an
image familiar to readers, an image that blended easily with a background of
woods and pastures and long sloping hills.
Burroughs also traveled extensively -- the Western and Southern
states, Jamaica and Bermuda, Hawaii, Canada, the Maine woods, Europe,
Alaska. He camped in the Yosemite woods with John Muir, and in
Yellowstone with President Theodore Roosevelt.
Burroughs will probably be most remembered as a writer by whom the
American "nature essay" was definitely established as a literary genre. This
form blended the Transcendental emotional interest in nature and the
scientific interest manifested by naturalists and travelers. One thinks of
Thoreau and Lowell, but it was Burroughs who employed the form with the
greatest frequency and most thoroughly exploited its capacities. He brought
the nature essay into widespread vogue (but it declined after World War
One). He contributed a series of essays marked by delicate feeling, fine
observation, honest thought, and a style simple and natural without affront to
the traditions of English prose.
John Burroughs was not an devotee of formal religion, despite his
mother's Baptist background. An entry in his journal of November 6, 1891
was prophetic: " Walk up to Terpenning's for butter in afternoon. Pause in the
cemetery on my return. Already the names of so many people there whom I
know, quite a throng of them. I linger long about their graves. Consider
whether or not I want to be buried here. The old Baptist burying-ground at
Home is offensive to me. Had rather be buried beside my dogs; or else in one
of the old fields at home." In 1921 he died in a railroad car while returning




from California to New York. He was buried on what would have been his
birthday 3 April 1921 near a large rock on the old farm land in Roxbury. The
view from that rock remains serene today, and conveys the calm and peace
associated with the man. It's worth a visit!.
References:
Edward J. Renehan, Jr., John Burroughs, An American Naturalist, Post Mills
Vermont, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 1992, 356pp. I judge this to
be the most authoritative and balanced biography of John Burroughs. Ed
Renehan lived in Riverby when he was a student at SUNY New Paltz, and
developed a lasting interest in the Burroughs family.
John Burroughs, Dictionary of American Biography, New York, Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1943, pp 330-334
John Burroughs, American National Biography, Oxford University Press,
1999, vol. 4, pp. 49-51
Clara Barrus, Our Friend John Burroughs, including autobiographical
sketches by Mr. Burroughs with illustrations from photographs. Boston and
New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1914
(available in Mount Vernon Public Library and Port Ewen Public Library)
Clara Barrus, John Burroughs Boy and Man, with illustrations from
photographs and coloured plates, Garden City New York Doubleday, Page &
Company, 1920 (available in Mount Vernon Public Library and Port Ewen
Public Library)
Clara Barrus, The Life and Letters of John Burroughs, volume 1, Boston and
New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1925
(available in Larchmont Public Library)
Elizabeth Burroughs Kelley, Town of Esopus Story 3000 BC - 1978 AD,
"Esopus and West Park", pp 109 - 148, copyright 1979 by Town of Esopus
Bicentennial Commission.
Elizabeth Burroughs-Kelley, •~ West Parker Remembers When", Riverby
Books, 1987, available at Port Ewen Library.
Editor's note: Clara Barrus, M. D. originally came to treat John Burroughs,
then moved in with John and Ursula Burroughs permanently, and stayed after
the deaths of John's wife (1917) and John himself (1921). She was his
literary executor, and edited Under the Maples(1921 ), The Last Harvest
(1922), and The Heart of Burrough's Journals (1928), as well as his principal
biography.
most recent revision: November 3, 2004
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