Sir Ebenezer Howard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebenezer_Howard

Sir Ebenezer Howard OBE (29 January 1850 – 1 May 1928) is known for his publication Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898), the description of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature. The publication resulted in the founding of the garden city movement, that realised several Garden Cities in Great Britain at the beginning of the 20th century.

This movement influenced the development of several model suburbs such as Forest Hills Gardens designed by F. L. Olmsted Jr. in 1909, Radburn NJ (1923) and the Suburban Resettlement Program towns of the 1930s (Greenbelt, Maryland, Greenhills, Ohio, Greenbrooke, New Jersey and Greendale, Wisconsin).

Howard was born in Fore Street, City of London, the son of a shopkeeper. He was sent to schools in Suffolk and Hertfordshire, and subsequently had several clerical jobs, including one with Dr Parker of the City Temple. In 1871, at the age of 21, influenced partly by a farming uncle, Howard emigrated with two friends to America. He went to Nebraska, but soon discovered that he did not wish to be a farmer. He then relocated to Chicago and worked as a reporter for the courts and newspapers. In the U.S. he became acquainted with, and admired, poets Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Howard began to ponder ways to improve the quality of life.

By 1876 he was back in England, where he found a job with Hansard company, which produces the official verbatim record of Parliament, and he spent the rest of his life in this occupation. Direct descendants of Howard include his cricket manager grandson Geoffrey Howard as well as his great granddaughter, the poet and publisher Joy Bernadine Howard.

Howard was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1924 and a Knight Bachelor in 1927.

http://www.rickmansworthherts.freeserve.co.uk/howard1.htm

http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/howard.htm "At Chicago he used his knowledge of shorthand to obtained works as a reporter for the courts and newspapers."