Portrait of Ursula North Burroughs, 1905-1915

In 1857, John Burroughs, a twenty-year-old itinerant schoolmaster and would be writer, married Ursula North, the daughter of a prosperous Ulster County, New York, farmer. Their marriage was unhappy almost from the start. As John became an internationally known nature writer, he became detached from his increasingly critical wife. The two, however, stayed married until Ursula's passing in 1917.