84 RURAL NEW YORK 



permanent start. There was in that first faculty Wil- 

 liam H. Brewer, a native of Ithaca, who for forty 

 years, from 1864 to 1904, was professor of agricul- 

 ture in the Sheffield Scientific School associated with 

 Yale University. Another man who took an impor- 

 tant part in the launching of agricultural colleges 

 appears in the records at this time. This was the 

 Eev. Amos Brown who had been principal of the Ovid 

 Academy and the School of Agriculture and was 

 transferred to the presidency of the People's College at 

 Montour Falls, in Schuyler County. This institution 

 was started in that year as an outgrowth of a demand 

 among mechanics for vocational education in the me- 

 chanical trades, and agriculture was included among 

 its interests. The significant fact is that Amos Brown 

 was persona] advisor of Senator Justin Morrill, 

 who was instrumental in securing the passage of the 

 Morrill Act of 1862, by which public lands were 

 given to each of the states of the Union, from the 

 proceeds of the sale of which colleges of agriculture 

 and mechanic arts were to be established. That act 

 is the basis of such institutions in all the states, a 

 number of which have grown into universities of first 

 rank. The first assignment of the funds accruing 

 from the land scrip credited to New York was to 

 the institution at Montour Falls, of which Brown was 

 president. Owing to failure of that institution to 

 comply with the conditions of the assignment, the 

 outgro\\i:h was the transfer of this grant and the 

 founding of Cornell University at Ithaca. From its 

 opening in 1868, instruction in agriculture and the 



