David Williston

Williston was born in 1868 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and was the second of thirteen children. He graduated Howard University Normal School in 1895, then enrolled at Cornell University to study agriculture under Liberty Hyde Bailey. At Cornell, he wrote his senior thesis on atmospheric drainage. Williston was the first African American to graduate Cornell University with a degree in agriculture (B.S. 1898), and one of the first African Americans to graduate from Cornell in any discipline. He later completed courses on municipal engineering at the International Correspondence School in Pennsylvania. ==Career==

Williston taught at several historically black colleges, starting at the State College of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1898. Booker T. Washington's home The Oaks was constructed by students as part of the Tuskegee curriculum, and Williston guided students in the landscape design of the home. ==Later career==

In 1930, Williston moved to Washington D.C. where he opened a landscape architecture firm, believed to be the first African-American-owned landscape architecture firm in the United States. ==References==