William Briggs was born in 1895 in Topsfield, Maine. At age 14, he left to work in the woods with Ralph Bowker, a cousin's husband for Putnam Lumber Company along Baskaheagen Stream. In 1917, he married Elsie Hatch and they lived near Kingman, where he cut pulp for American Reality for five years. They then moved to Howland in 1922 where he did many different jobs related to the pulp and paper industry, both in the woods and in the mills. He had 11 children, seven of which were still iiving in 1972,