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Draft: Hiram Wheeler Leffingwell
Hiram Wheeler Leffingwell (May 3, 1809 – August 28, 1897) was a civil engineer and real estate developer known for his development of the city of St. Louis, Missouri and Ellenton, Florida.

Early life
Hiram Leffingwell was born on May 3, 1809, in Norwich Hill, Massachusetts to parents, Andrew Leffingwell and Prudence Wheeler Leffingwell. In 1819, he and his family moved to Meadville, Pennsylvania where his father was the principal of Meadville Academy.

Career
In 1838, Hiram left Meadville and settled in St. Louis, Missouri where he was intimately connected for many years in the development of the city. A street in that metropolis was named for him. He was largely engaged in surveying and laying out the city and various suburbs. He was principally interested in procuring St. Louis’s magnificent Forest Park, and was a member of the first Board of Forest Park Commissions.

When he first came to St. Louis he was employed in the recorder of deeds office. Along with real estate agents Richard Elliot, he came up with the idea of building a suburb for people who were moving out of St. Louis. They formed an association (Kirkwood Association) to investigate buying land along the route of the Pacific Railroad for their new suburb. The land they bought was 13 miles west of St. Louis and they named it Kirkwood.

Grand Boulevard was originally platted and named by Hiram in 1850. He envisioned a broad parklike thoroughfare extending from Carondelet to Bremen, along a high ridge line. Such an idea was too advanced for the County Court, which limited the street to its existing width of eighty feet. Kingshighway is so-called from the custom of naming the public roads giving access to the ends of the common fields, as the Rue Royale or King's Road. It remained relatively unimportant until 1903 when the City's Kingshighway Boulevard Commission planned it as part of the fifteen mile Kingshighway Parkway system.

Forest Park began as a visionary dream of Hiram W. Leffingwell. Leffingwell astutely assumed that the direction of the City's growth would be westward and that his proposed park would ultimately be surrounded by an urbanized area. In 1870, he had a plan prepared for a 2754 acre park more than a mile west of the City and secured 1890s aid from Nicholas M. Bell and other state legislators to back the idea in the legislature. In spite of intense opposition from owners of land in the proposed park site, Bell finally secured enactment of the bill in 1872.

Personal Life
Hiram married Laura Simons (1808-1849) on April 21, 1833 and had two children.

Hiram then married Susan Miles Brooks (1823-1882) in August 1850 and had seven children, four of whom died young.

Hiram then married Mary Ellen Patten (1842-1915) on April 22, 1886 in Tampa, Florida.

In 1897, Hiram died in Ellenton, Florida at age 88. His burial is unknown.