Besides Jesuit Luis Alcazar - the actual father of modern preterism through his counter-reformation effort - one of the fathers of modern preterism may be Samuel Lee who resurrected Eusebius' writings. If not the father of modern preterism, he's certainly at least a hero of one preterist website:
http://www.preteristarchive.com/StudyArchive/l/lee-samuel.html"EVER since his translation of Eusebius's 'Theophania,' my father's mind had been more or less occupied on the subject of Prophecy, and he became convinced that the views which he entertained, known as the Preterist, were those held by the early Church. The subject was one of absorbing interest to him during the few last years of his life, and as a child
I can remember the animated conversations between him and my mother on Prophecy in their walks about our beautiful garden, or in the leisure of meal times, she holding the more general and popular opinions of the restoration of the Jews to their own land, etc. "
Which I suppose his foray into preterism was excusable for someone that lived from the 18th to mid-19th centuries, when the restoration of Jews to their/our land was still in its infancy. However the debate should certainly be over today, in the light of the fulfilled prophecies of Jews being restored to power in Israel and then Jerusalem, the fulfillment of which prophecies is even confirmed mathematically, through hindsight:
http://www.beholdthebeast.com/mathematical_precision_of_prophecy.htm#time_times_halfChristians on Zionism centuries before the related prophecies ever began to be fulfilled:
http://historyofzionism.com/zionism_in_christianity.htm
