8 THE HISTORY OF THE 



1802, was elected a Senator of the United States in 1803, 

 and re-elected in 1805, and served as a member of the 

 House of Representatives from 1813 to 1817. His public 

 political life was now ended, and having purchased a 

 small farm in Wenham, he devoted himself to agricul- 

 ture with the same intensity which had characterized 

 his political career. He had been the Secretary of the 

 Philadelphia Agricultural Society and had been an influ- 

 ential factor, it is said, in the organization of the Mas- 

 sachusetts Society of Agriculture. 



The Vice-Presidents were exceptionally fit men to give 

 prestige to the new Society. William Bartlett, a wealthy 

 Newburyport merchant, owned a great farm in Methuen ; 

 John Heard, the Ipswich merchant, was an enterprising 

 farmer as well ; Dr. Kittredge of North Andover and 

 Ichabod Tucker of Salem joined agriculture to their usual 

 vocations. 



Leverett Saltonstall, the Secretary, was a commanding 

 figure in the legal and political world. Gorham Parsons 

 Esq., the wealthy proprietor of the great Fatherland 

 farm in Byfield, was an enthusiastic lover of the soil. 



The year 1818 was a fitting time for the birth of the 

 Essex Society. It was an era of bewilderment and dis- 

 couragement. The Indian corn crop had suffered great 

 damage from frost in the autumn of 1812, and almost 

 total destruction in the fall of 1816. Confidence in the 

 reliability of the great staple was shaken, and there was 

 an idea more or less current that it was injurious to the 

 soil. 



The American consul at Lisbon, seeing the value of 

 the Merino sheep had sent home to Vermont large flocks 

 of this breed in 1809-1811. The Salem Gazette of Sept. 

 18, 1810, noted the arrival of imported sheep at Newbury- 

 port for the Northern States, 150 Merinos with a shep- 

 herd and his dog. A vessel had sailed from Marblehead 

 for Spain to secure a cargo of sheep. A brig had arrived 

 at New York from Cadiz with 180 sheep and a ship 



