He spent his life in voluntary poverty, enthralled by the study of nature. Two years, in the prime of his life, were spent living in a shack in the woods near a pond. Who would choose a life like this? did, and he enjoyed it. Who was , what did he do, and what did others think of his work? was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12, 1817 ("Thoreau" 96), on his grandmother's farm. Thoreau, who was of French-Huguenot and Scottish-Quaker ancestry, was baptized as David Henry Thoreau, but at the age of twenty he legally changed his name to He ....