Edmund Morris

Born in 1804 and buried in Burlington, New Jersey, he worked as an editor and journalist before becoming widely known as the author of Ten Acres Enough and How to Get a Farm, and Where to Find One. Contemporary and library records connect him with newspaper work in places including Burlington and with later writing on farming and rural self-reliance.

His best-known book, Ten Acres Enough, is built around his own experience leaving business life for fruit and berry farming on a small property in New Jersey. What makes the book memorable is its mix of lived experience and practical detail: instead of romanticizing country life, it argues that careful, intensive farming on a modest acreage could offer both stability and a better quality of life.

That same practical spirit runs through his other work as well. He wrote for readers who wanted useful guidance, and his books helped shape an enduring American idea: that independence could come not from owning vast land, but from making a small piece of land work well.