His ancestors included John Rutledge, who was a governor of South Carolina as well as chief justice of the US Supreme Court and a signer of the US Constitution.
He attended the Porter Military Academy, now the exclusive Porter-Gaud School, in Charleston, South Carolina.
He wrote more than 50 books, including An American Hunter (1937), Old Plantation Days (1907) and Wild Life of the South (1935).
His poems often described his hunting and life experiences growing up on Hampton Plantation and the trips home to South Carolina in summer and for holidays.
In "Quail of the Kalmias," he writes: "When Bell drew her point in the brown stubble, I thought it would be sport to walk right in, compelling myself to take the birds at a quartering shot as they passed me to escape into their mountain haunts.