Ernest W. Bowditch

William Ernestus Bowditch (1850-1918), the son of William Ingersoll Bowditch and Sarah Rhea Higginson, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1850. He later changed his name to Ernest William Bowditch. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1869. In 1870, he became a member of the United States Expedition to the Isthmus of Darien (Panama), acting as a topographer and geologist while surveying for the future Panama Canal. Returning, he entered the services of Shedd and Sawyer, civil engineers, and shortly left them to establish an office of his own. He worked as a landscape architect and sanitary engineer for many years. In 1889, he married Margaret Lyon Swann (1864-1933) and they had four children: Elizabeth Swan (1891-1923), William Ingersoll (1893-1934), Richard Lyon (1900-1959), and Sarah Higginson (1904-1966). He died in Milton, Massachusetts in 1918.

http://phillipslibrarycollections.pem.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15928coll1/id/1205