IN' MiEifOBIAM. EX-PBES. W. W. PEXDERGAST. 323 



It was conceded by all that he was the one man in ^linnesota 

 for that position during the first formative period of its existence. 

 His whole heart and soul were in the work, for which, both by 

 nature and by long years of training, he was so pre-eminently fitted. 

 It was literally a labor of love with him. more especially as his 

 youngest son. \\'arren Wendell, then a lad of fourteen, was gradu- 

 ated with the first class in 1890. He saw, with the deepest interest 

 and pride, that little school of less than fift\- members, housed in 

 one humble building, develop into a great institution with splendidly 

 equipped halls and laboratories accommodating hundreds of students, 

 whose work in practical, scientific agriculture has brought it inter- 

 national fame. His wise administration was marked not only by 

 material growth, but by unbroken harmony and enthusiasm among 

 students and faculty. Ever>- boy that graduated from the school 

 was its firm friend, and to the influence of the first principal is due 

 in large measure the unswer\-ing devotion of the alumni and the 

 loyal support of the state. 



It was with genuine reluctance that ^Mr. Pendergast resigned in 

 1893 to accept at last the oflSce of Superintendent of Public Instruc- 

 tion, which had been ofltered him several times before and was now 

 Hterally thrust upon him. He found the work both familiar and 

 congenial, and as member of the Board of Regents, he was still able 

 to labor for the School of Agriculture. But after the death, in 1897. 

 of his son Warren, then the brilliant young superintendent of the 

 State Experiment Station at Grand Rapids, all official duties became 

 irksome to Mr. Pendergast. At the expiration of his third term, he 

 was only too ready to retire to his library and the fruitful orchards 

 and trim gardens that he loved. 



In time, however, his native buoyancy and vigor reasserted them- 

 selves to some extent. He had all his life been fond of travel, and 

 now revisited many distant scenes and explored fields new to him. 

 But though now free from the hea\y debts with which others had 

 burdened him early in life, and with few business cares. Mr. Pender- 

 gast was not an idle man. 



In Dec.. 1898. he was unanimously elected president of the Min- 

 nesota State Horticultural Societ\-. a position he filled most worthily 

 for four years, when he declined re-election on account of failing 

 health. Mr. Pendergast came into the ofiice of chief executive of the 

 societA" at a crisis in its historv-, as, through no fault or neglect of its 

 management but on account of the mistaken zeal of some of its 

 friends in the state legislature, the law under which its printing was 

 being done had been ritiated two years before, and for that period the 

 printing of the reports of the society had been done upon credit with 



