Atlee was born in 1858 in Sheffield, Colony of New Brunswick, British North America but he moved to Philadelphia in 1861, where his father practiced medicine.

[3] In 1876, an 18-year-old Atlee started a mail-order chicken business out of the family home with $1,000 (equal to $29,528 today) loaned to him by his mother and a partner.

The company soon switched to primarily garden seed, but live poultry wasn't dropped from the Burpee catalog until the 1940s.

Before World War I, Atlee spent many summers traveling through Europe and the United States, visiting farms and searching for the best flowers and vegetables.

He generously supported and sat on the board of Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission which was one of the first homeless shelter and soup kitchens in America.

In his travels, Atlee met Asa Palmer, a Pennsylvania farmer who raised beans, and who thought he had one plant that was resistant to cutworms.

Another successful plant was the Golden Bantam sweet corn that the farmer William Chambers of Greenfield, Massachusetts, had grown before his death.

In another break with tradition, Burpee eliminated cultural information and put in testimonial letters and plant descriptions.