Ernest Thompson Seton (born Ernest Evan Thompson August 14, 1860 – October 23, 1946) was an English-born Canadian-American author, wildlife artist, founder of the Woodcraft Indians in 1902 (renamed Woodcraft League of America), and one of the founding pioneers of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) in 1910. Seton also influenced Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of one of the first Scouting organizations. His writings were published in the United Kingdom, Canada, the US, and the USSR; his notable books related to Scouting include The Birch Bark Roll and the Boy Scout Handbook. He incorporated what he believed to be American Indian elements into the traditions of the BSA. Early life Seton was born in South Shields, County Durham, England of Scottish parents. His family emigrated to Canada in 1866. After settling in Lindsay, Ontario Seton spent most (after 1870) of his childhood in Toronto, and the family is known to have lived at 6 Aberdeen Avenue in Cabbagetown. As a youth, he retreated to the woods of the Don River to draw and study animals as a way of avoiding his abusive father. He attended the Ontario College of Art in 1879, studying with John Colin Forbes, then won a scholarship in art to the Royal Academy in London, England in 1880. In the 1890s, he studied at the Académie Julian in Paris In 1893-4, he was elected an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. On his twenty-first birthday, Seton's father presented him with an invoice for all of the expenses connected with his childhood and youth, including the fee charged by the doctor who delivered him. According to one writer, he paid the bill, but never spoke to his father again. In his autobiography, Trail of An Artist-naturalist: The Autobiography of Ernest Thompson Seton, he discusses the incident in detail, but, since he hadn't "a cent of money," he could not pay his father. He went immediately to work and used the money he made to leave the household forever. In 1882, he joined his brother on a homestead outside Carberry, Manitoba, where he began to write. In 1891, he published The Birds of Manitoba and was appointed Provincial Naturalist by the government of Manitoba. He continued to publish books about Manitoba for decades to come, including The Life Histories of Northern Animals: An Account of the Mammals of Manitoba and lived in Manitoba until 1930,