Albert Belmont Graham

Albert Belmont Graham, known as A.B. Graham, was an American educator and early leader of the Cooperative Extension System who is widely regarded as the founder of 4-H. In early 1902, while serving as a school superintendent in Springfield Township, Ohio, he organized a youth club built around hands-on agricultural and natural science projects, aiming to build pride in farming among rural young people. Over more than thirty five years he expanded that model into extension education programs that spread across many states and eventually into the federal Cooperative Extension System through the United States Department of Agriculture, growing what he began in one Ohio township into the national 4-H organization.