Ernest Thompson Seton was born in South Shields,
England on Aug. 14, 1860.
He moved with his family to Canada in 1866, settling on a farm near
Lindsay, Ontario. He then studied at the Royal Academy of Painting and
Sculpture in London as a scholarship student, all the while pursuing
his interest in natural history. Upon his return from England in 1882,
in ill health, he joined his brother on a homestead in Manitoba just
east of Carberry. He always regarded the next five years as his “golden
days,” as he walked around the Carberry countryside taking notes and
making sketches.
At Carberry he also began to write. In 1891 he published The Birds of
Manitoba, which in 1892 led to his appointment as Provincial Naturalist
by the Manitoba government. In the early 1890s he made several trips to
Paris to study art, discovering upon his return to Manitoba, that
settlement had disrupted much of the natural habitat.
While living in the Carberry area he wrote several articles for the
Manitoba Historical Society:
“The Prairie Chicken. Scientific Description of the Bird and its
Habits. Hints on Rearing and Domestication”; “Prairie
Fires”, and “A List of the Mammals of Manitoba”.
Seton moved to the United States in 1896, and married Grace Gallatin
that same year. They eventually settled in New Mexico.
Wild Animals I Have Known (1898) was the publication that made Seton
famous. It was the first successful attempt to present animals
realistically in story form.
In 1902 he organized the Woodcraft Indians an organization later merged
with the Boy Scouts. Thompson helped to write its first manual.
He was expelled from the organization in 1915, after constantly
criticizing its militarism, officially because he was not an American
citizen. However, he continued to publish books about woodcraft
throughout his life.
He died at his home near Sante Fe, New Mexico on 23 October 1946. He is
commemorated by a plaque in Seton Provincial Park.
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