Thornton W Burgess was born in 1874 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He was known as a conservationist and writer of children's books. Burgess loved the beauty of nature so much that during a fifty-year span he wrote 170 books and 15000 stories centered on nature and animals. Peter Rabbit and Jerry Muskrat are two of his most memorable characters. The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver was written in 1917. Paddy the Beaver and his animal friends have adventures in the Green Meadow.