Albert W. (Albert Wadsworth) Harris

Best known as the author of The Cruise of a Schooner (1911), he turned a demanding overland journey into a firsthand travel narrative. Project Gutenberg’s record identifies the book as his work, and the story follows a trip from California toward Chicago in a prairie schooner, blending travel, observation, and personal adventure.

Reliable historical sources also place him in Chicago civic life. The Chicago Community Trust credits Albert W. Harris and his father, Norman Wait Harris, with helping establish the Trust in 1915, showing that his public role extended well beyond authorship.

Born in 1867 and deceased in 1958, he appears in archival family photographs preserved by the Newberry Library, including images from his later years. Those records help sketch a fuller picture of a writer whose name is tied both to an unusual American travel book and to early twentieth-century philanthropy in Chicago.