James Leal Greenleaf

James Leal Greenleaf was an American landscape architect and civil engineer. Early in his career, he was a wellknown landscape architect who designed the gardens and grounds of many large estates in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. He was appointed to the United States Commission of Fine Arts in 1918, and served until 1927. He was the landscape architect for the Lincoln Memorial , and a consulting landscape architect for the Arlington Memorial Bridge .

Greenleaf was born in 1857 in Kortright, New York. His father, Thomas Greenleaf, was a member of the prominent Greenleaf merchant family, but had retired to Kortright due to failing health. His mother, Eleanor Leal, was of Dutch and Scottish descent. He was the fourth of five children, and the only son, born to Thomas and Eleanor. The Greenleafs were Huguenots who fled France, anglicizing their family name to Greenleaf. Greenleafs greatgreatgreatgreatgrandfather, Edmund, was born in 1574 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England. His greatgreatgrandfather, Enoch, was born there in 1647, and the entire family emigrated to Salisbury, Connecticut, in 1650. His greatgrandfather, Thomas, was the founder and editor of Greenleafs New Daily Advertiser. He was a distant relative of James Greenleaf, the infamous Washington, D.C., land speculator and whose sister married Noah Webster . Greenleaf later credited his childhood in the Catskill Mountains for giving him a love of landscape architecture.

Source: Wikipedia