William Hurlbut

William James Hurlbut was a playwright, screenwriter, and artist. The grandson of Stephen Augustus Hurlbut, his father served as mayor of Belvidere, Illinois and invented an "instantaneous camera". William Hurlbut was involved in local theater productions and graduated from Belvidere High School. He traveled with his family to New York with a stop in Peru while the Panama Canal was being constructed. In 1896 he was listed as a student at Washington University in St. Louis's School of Fine Arts.