78 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



such students as maj desire such course of instruction, or whose 

 parents or guardians may direct such course for them." It was pro- 

 posed to equip a farm for instruction and experiment. 



For several years, -under the leadership of Gary, the agricultural de- 

 partment appears to have thrived, but in the sixties the interest seems 

 to have begun to wane. The sessions of the college were suspended from 

 1870 to 1873, "on account of the discouraging effects of the civil war." Re- 

 suming, in the catalogue of 1873-4, the name of John A. Warder, known 

 of everj^ horticulturalist, appears as "Gary Professor of Theoretical and 

 Practical Agriculture," and the following announcement is made of his 

 incumbency: "In the catalogue of 1873-4, the 'Gary Professorship' is 

 announced. For this department the board have been able to secure the 

 services of Dr. John A. Warder. Dr. Warder's devotion to this depart- 

 ment, in all its various divisions, embracing the production and culture 

 of field, forest, garden and lawn, including pomology, and our varied 

 flora as well, is so generally known that no word of commendation from 

 us is needed to designate him as the right man in the right place. To 

 the rich stores of knowledge he has acquired at home by years of study, 

 travel and experience, he now adds the results of his observations and 

 study in Europe, on his recent tour in the service of the government of 

 the United States as Gommissioner to the World's Exposition at 

 Vienna." 



In 1884, Farmers' Gollege became Belmont Gollege. On the 31st of 

 December, 1889, the Ohio Military Institute was chartered, and on the 

 following September this institution was opened in the old site at Gol- 

 lege Hill. This institute still exists, and thus has passed away the first 

 great effort, in North America, to teach agriculture. 



Mentor and Nestor of this enterprise was Freeman Grant Gary. 

 Pioneer in agricultural education in this institution of the young and 

 growing West, his name is yet not preserved in the biographical annals 

 of our countr}'. Often the greatest and the best of men escape the 

 historian. The very unselfishness of their lives is the reason for their 

 oblivion. The historian has a prescribed horizon. There are some 

 fields which he does not care to see. Agriculture is one of these, but 

 it does not follow therefrom that the field is void of interest. Gary's 

 name will live. The man came of a long New England ancestry. He 

 was cousin of the Gary sisters, Alice and Phoebe, whose Glovernook 

 songs are pictures of the home near Gincinnati. I am indebted to Gen- 

 eral Samuel F. Gary, i3rother of our preceptor and himself long identified 

 with the Farmers' Gollege, for the following sketch: 'Treeman G. 

 Gary was born in Gincinnati, April 7, 1810. He came of Puritan stock, 

 his ancestor, John Gary, being one of the founders of the Plymouth Gol- 

 ony. When he was four years old, his parents moved to the village of 

 Gollege Hill, then a wilderness. He graduated at Miami University, 

 Oxford, Ohio, in the class of 1831. He started a classical school, Gary's 

 Academy, in 1833. He was a popular instructor, and a large number of 

 young men sought admission to the school, and he soon had more appli- 

 cants than he could accommodate. The farmers in the surrounding 

 country held a meeting and agreed to erect suitable buildings and let 

 Mr. Gary have the use of them. They obtained a charter from the state 

 legislature, and gave the institution the name of Farmers' Gollege, 

 from the course of instruction and the fact that the greater number of 

 its patrons were farmers. A tract of land was purchased and labora- 



