Robert E. (Robert Eugene) Pinkerton

Born in Arena, Wisconsin, on March 12, 1882, he studied at the University of Wisconsin for two years before going into newspaper work. Early in his career he was a cub reporter on the Milwaukee Free Press and later a telegraph news editor for The Journal in Milwaukee.

He and his wife, Kathrene Pinkerton, became a writing team, producing fiction and nonfiction and spending several years living in a log cabin in the Canadian woods. That experience seems to have fed both their wilderness-themed magazine work and his practical, outdoors-focused books, including The Canoe: Its Selection, Care and Use.

His books also reached into history and nature writing, with titles such as Hudson's Bay Company, The First Overland Mail, and Nature Roundup. Archive records from the University of Oregon describe both Robert E. Pinkerton (1882–1970) and Kathrene Pinkerton (1887–1967) as writers working primarily in Canada.