68 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



cultural education. Three are worthy of special interest: early 

 agricultural schools ; agriculture in schools for homeless children 

 and in schools for delinquent children; and agricultural educa- 

 tion in foreign countries. 



An account is given of probably the first agricultural school in 

 the United States. It was founded in 1797 at Lethe, S.C., by Dr. 

 John de la Howe. He left a will which provided for the endow- 

 ment of "an agricultural or farm school in conformity, as near 

 as can be, to a plan proposed in the Columbian Magazine for the 

 month of April, 1787, for educating, boarding, and clothing 

 twelve poor boys and twelve poor girls of the Abbeville District." 

 The endowment consisted of 500 acres of farm land and 1,000 

 acres of forest (88). 



An account of another early school is of interest because it 

 anticipated some of the present notions of industrial education. 

 The following is a quotation from a letter of a Mr. Coe to the 

 son of Josiah Holbrook, the founder of the school : 



He [Josiah Holbrook] had long cherished the idea of endeavoring to 

 found an institution in which the course of instruction should be plain and 

 practical; an agricultural school, where the science of chemistry and me- 

 chanics and land surveying should be thoroughly drilled into the minds 

 of the pupils by practice. With these views the agricultural seminary was 

 commenced in Derby (Conn.) in 1824, and continued to the fall of 1825, 

 under the direction of your father and myself; and, as far as I know, was 



the first educational movement of the kind in all that region We 



did what we could to train the students in the analysis of soils and in the 

 application of the mechanical powers to all farming operations, and took 

 out our young men often into the field and country for practical survey- 

 ing, geological excursions, road making, and the labors of the farm; but 

 not being able at that time to place the school on an eligible foundation, it 

 was abandoned (89). 



Josiah Holbrook after giving up his school turned his atten- 

 tion to adult instruction which was somewhat like our present 

 agricultural extension among farmers. 



Our present organization of agricultural colleges is very 

 similar to a plan for such schools proposed in Barnard's Journal 

 of Education in 1856 by Professor John A. Porter of Yale. 



