Connecticut's Heritage Gateway

Agriculture in the Twentieth Century

Materials for a study of twentieth-century agriculture--what's left of it--abound. The oldest agricultural experiment station in the United States is in New Haven, the brainchild of Samuel William Johnson, the principal promoter and first director of the Connecticut Agricultural Station. A biography of Johnson has been written by Thomas B. Osborne, "Samuel William Johnson 1830-1909,” in Biographical Memoirs, Part II of Vol. VII of the publications of the National Academy of Sciences (Washington, 1911). There is a brief history of the station at New Haven in The Yearbook of Agriculture, 1975, by Paul Waggoner and Paul Gough (Washington, 1975). The station at New Haven was authorized by the General Assembly in 1875, that at Storrs in 1888 under the federal Hatch Act. The Storrs station, founded as a department of the Connecticut Agricultural College, was called the Storrs School Agricultural Experiment Station until 1892, when the name was changed to Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station. Both stations issue bulletins, and so it is customary to indicate Storrs or New Haven when citing them. The history of agriculture, not only in Connecticut but in the entire nation, unfolds in important respects through a study of the New Haven Station, where hybrid corn was developed and vitamins were discovered. The Station has an active publications program: bulletins and other publications are listed at various places throughout this bibliography. A fifty-year index was published by the Station in 1925, an author and series list is currently available, a title list will be available soon, and a subject index is in preparation. See also Margaret W. Rossiter, The Emergence of Agricultural Science: Justus Liebig and the Americans (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973).

There are nearly 500 Bulletins of the Agricultural Experiment Station at Storrs that are available in many places across the state. Most of them have such titles as The Hatchability of Chicken Eggs--with a fifty-page bibliography; Load Size and Delivery Labor Carts in Milk Distribution; and Poultry Manure, Its Nature, Care, and Use. But writings on sociological, geological, demographic, and even historical topics are published from time to time. A few of the most useful are listed below, and there is an index of the 444 published between 1888 and 1976, with an addendum for seven published later. It is Mohini Mundkur, Subject and Author Index for Bulletins of the Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 453 (May, 1979). Bulletins may be ordered from the Experiment Station at Storrs. See also Ernest Matthew Law, "The Agricultural Experiment Station Movement in Connecticut, 1840-1900," doctoral dissertation, Yale, 1951; and Walter Stemnons, Connecticut Agricultural College: A History (Storrs, 1931).

Several Bulletins from Storrs are useful.

Davis, Irving G. "Types of Farming in the Eastern Connecticut Highland." Bulletin 191 (August, 1933).

--, and Hendrickson, Clarance I. “A Description of Connecticut Agriculture." Bulletin 127 (1925)

--, and Salter, L.A., Jr. "Part-Time Farming in Connecticut: A Preliminary Survey." Bulletin 201 (March, 1935).

Hypes, J.L. "Population Mobility in Rural Connecticut." Bulletin 196 (August, 1934)

Salter, L.A. and Darling, H.D. "Part-Time Farming in Connecticut: A Soci-Economic Study of the Lower Naugatuck Valley." Bulletin 204 (July, 1995).

Rufus Whittaker Stimson, then President of Connecticut Agricultural College (Storrs), described the state of agriculture in Connecticut as it appeared in 1906 in "Husbandry, The First Step In Civilization...the Development of Agriculture As a Science and the Education of the Agriculturalist," in Connecticut Magazine 10 (1906) 4:615-30. This useful piece includes many illustrations.

There is an interesting sketch of Connecticut agriculture about 1900 in Forest Morgan, Connecticut As a Colony..., Volume IV, Chapter IX. As always, other general histories of Connecticut should be searched for relevant materials as a matter of course. See also the Connecticut State Board of Trade, Industrial, Agricultural, Historical and Other Facts Concerning A Progressive State (Stamford, 1914) for an optimistic view of Connecticut agriculture in 1914. Indeed, I.G. Davis, in a discussion of Connecticut agriculture from 1880 to 1924, Agricultural College Review (March, 1924), claimed: "There certainly has never been a time within sixty years when the opportunity for a man with the right training and character to farm with the prospect of getting a good income and attaining a high standard of life for himself and his family is as good as it is today." (Quoted in Jenkins, “Connecticut Agriculture,” p. 421.)

For a different view, write to the Connecticut Humanities Council for its booklets, audio cassettes, and films on food policy and agriculture in contemporary Connecticut. See also an unpublished doctoral dissertation written at the University of Pennsylvania by Carl Wilford Grover in 1969, "The Withdrawal of Resources From Connecticut Valley Agriculture, 1900-1965." The work is very technical, but was supervised by the distinguished economic historian Thomas C. Cochran. The withdrawal of resources from agriculture has been persistent throughout the twentieth century, but the causes changed at about the time of World War II. Withdrawal occurred in the earlier period of interregional competition, in the later period because of technological advances and a limited regional market.