Biographical Note
Laurence Ilsley Hewes Jr. was born in 1902 in Kingston, Rhode Island. A land reform economist, Hewes worked for various government entities including the California State Relief Administration (1935), the Farm Security Administration (1936-1943), the Japanese Land Reform Program in Tokyo, Japan (1947-1950), United States Agency for International Development (1965-1966), and the United Nations Development Program in East Africa and Southeast Asia (1967). He married his first wife, Patricia Jackson Hewes (1900-1976), in 1932. After her death in 1976, he married Martha Odle Overholser. Hewes died in 1989.
Laurence I. Hewes Sr. (1876-1950) worked as a highway engineer with the United States Public Roads Administration. Hewes Sr.’s wife, Agnes Danforth Hewes (1874-1963), was born in Tripoli, Lebanon (then Syria), and was a published children’s literature author.