.'I] ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



NORMAN BRUCE CRITCllFIELD was'boiu in Somorset couuty, July 20, 1838; 

 was educated in the public and normsjl sclioois of his native county, and at the 

 Ohio University, located' at Athens, Ohio; he is by occupation a farmer; during 

 the Civil War ho served nine months in the One Hundred and Seventy-lirst Penn- 

 sylvania Militia, and at the close of his term entered the Twenty-eight Penn- 

 sylvania Volunteers, with which regiment he continued until the close of the 

 war; he has held in his own county the position of school director, county superin- 

 tendent of public schools, prothonotary and clerk of courts; elected to the Senate, 

 November 4, 1890; appointed judge in the Department of Agriculture at the 

 World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and served as vice president and chair- 

 man of the board of judges in said department; was re-elected to Senate in 1894, 

 and appointed Secretary of Agriculture, February 24, 1903, and re-appointed by 

 Gov. Stuart, February 25, 1907. 



J. D. DpyPRICH'S knowledge of agriculture, as a science, dates from 1882, since 

 which time has has been availing himself of all the bulletins, magazines and 

 books relating to soil, crops, dairying, breeding and rearing of dairy animals. 

 This together with information furnished by the colleges and experiment stations, 

 he has put into practice, and the result has been a satisfactory and profitable 

 system of extensive farming. 



W. M. C. DRAKE was born in Lawrence county, August 16, 1860. He was edu- 

 cated at the public schools and a normal school at New Castle, Pa., passing a 

 teachers' examination. He has spent all of his life on the farm ; was president 

 of the Farmers' Alliance in Lawrence county one term. He has been for several 

 years past in partnership with his brother, operating 600 acres of land, besides 

 a market garden and an extensive orchard. 



J. A. ESCHBACH was born May 19, 1854, at Fallowfield on the farm he now 

 owns near Milton, Northumberland county, Pa., His education was in the com- 

 mon schools, with a little finishing up at Academy at McEwensville, Pa. Married 

 at twenty-one and has always been engaged in farming, has always taken an 

 active interest in local affairs of his section, serving s school director for thir- 

 teen successive years ; served as President of Board of Directors of Milton Fair 

 Association ; is at present chairman of good roads movement in his own county and 

 member of State Board of Agriculture in same. He has been a success as a 

 farmer and stock-raiser. Breeding-horses, cattle and sheep and hogs, together 

 with raising all the general farm crops raised in his section. He has always taken 

 active interest in Institute work in his county and is at home on all agricultural 

 topics. 



F. H. FASSETT, Meshoppen, Pa., was born June 3, 1855, in Windham township, 

 Wyoming county. Pa.; moved to Meshoppen township in 1869 to the farm where 

 he now resides ; was educated in the common schools and a course in select schools 

 in Meshoppen borough ; has been actively engaged in the growing of tree fruits 

 with marked success for the past 25 years ; all up-to-date methods of orchard 

 treatment, spraying and pruning have been in use ; took up the business of growing 

 small fruits for the market some 12 years ago and has met with fair success. Is 

 President of Wyoming County Horticultural Society and in close touch with the 

 fruit interest of this section. 



WILLIAM FREAR w-as born in 1860, in Reading, Pa. He was educated in the 



public schools of that city and of Norristown, entered the preparatory and later 



the collegiate department of Bucknell University, graduating in 1881 ; pursued a 



