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American Agriculturist, July 21,1923 
a 
Wisest 
7/7 Commemoration of Isaac Phillips Roberts’ Ninetieth Birthday 
Editors Note. —Probably no farm paper has ever 
carried in one issue the writings of so many great 
men as are found on these pages. The idea of a 
memorial number to Professor Roberts should be 
Credited to Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., who was one 
of his students. 
By MEN WHO KNEW HIM 
“One of Roberts’ Boys” 
Ey Jared Van Wagenen, Jr. 
Farmer, Lecturer, Writer 
TSAAC PHILLIPS ROBERTS—Farm Boy 
X —District School Teacher—Country Car¬ 
penter—Farmer—Teacher of Agriculture— 
Director of the Agricultural Ex¬ 
periment Station at Cornell— m 
Dean of the New York State Col¬ 
lege of Agriculture—Representa¬ 
tive Extraordinary of the Ameri¬ 
can Farmer. 
The simple, inspiring story of 
Professor Roberts’ life has al¬ 
ready been put into permanent 
form. After he became what men 
call old, he wrote his own life 
“The Autobiography of a Farm 
Boy.” It is a book of singular in¬ 
timacy and charm. In it he 
traces in outline his own career 
from his birth in that pioneer 
home in the Finger Lake Coun¬ 
try—through the struggles and 
vicissitudes of his early life, on 
through the years of recognition 
and triumph, not forgetting his 
serene sunset as the evening 
draws on and he peacefully 
awaits the close of “a long day 
and a good day” in his California 
home. 
I have no wish to quote at 
length from this story as he has 
written it. It is not only a record 
of what he did—it is also an illu¬ 
minating treatise on what were 
men. Such was the good seed from which 
he sprang. His forebears were at least rich 
in health and character and ideals, and they 
were fortunate in pitching their tent in a 
fat land. 
His story is full of illustrations of the 
rudeness, the simplicity of the life and yet 
of the almost prodigal abundance of simple 
foodstuffs in that time, for the rich earth 
fairly teemed with abundance when once the 
He Prepared For Change 
things,” said the Buddhist philosopher, “which exist in time 
must perish. Even unto a grain of sesamun seed, there is no 
such thing as a compound which is permanent. All are transient, 
for in nature there is no uniform and constant principle.” 
Most men living entirely for the present fail to realize that there 
is nothing permanent but change, and that the present all too soon 
will become a part of the past. The world, therefore, always owes 
a debt to that small number of men in every generation who make 
possible future progress by looking beyond the present to prepare 
their fellows to meet the needs and the demands of that New Day 
that time and change will surely bring. 
Such a man was Isaac Phillips Roberts, whose ninetieth birthday 
it is cur pleasure to commemorate with this issue of American Agri¬ 
culturist. Frofessor Roberts was one of the few men of his day v/ho 
realized that great and important changes were bound to come in 
American Agriculture. He knew that the rich soils of America 
would not last; he knew that time would bring new weeds, new 
insects, new plant and animal diseases, and new economic problems 
with which the future farmer would have to contend. He knew, in 
short, that changing conditions would surely change the status of 
agriculture requiring training, skill and education in the sen which 
the earlier times had not demanded in the father. So, knowing these 
things, this great man, after farming it for many years, took his 
practical knowledge and his wonderful personality into the early 
struggling Agricultural College, and against tremendous odds of 
small equipment and large prejudices, he began to prepare men to meet 
successfully that New Day in farming which he knew was coming. 
How well Isaac Roberts succeeded in the task he set himself is 
better told than we can tell it by the great and famous men who 
honor him by their words on these pages.—The Editors. 
the pioneer conditions in Western New York 
almost a century ago. It is filled also with 
that rare whimsical humor and that matured 
wisdom and that genial philosophy which 
made him beloved of all that great company 
of “boys” who came under his influence. As 
I bead it to-night, a generation is rolled back 
dnd again I am a happy student boy and I 
s6e him come into the little, old, primitive 
lecture room on the south side of the north 
corridor of Morrill Hall, and once more I 
listen to his musings and his teachings for 
an hour as of old, for he writes even as he 
talked. 
Then just the briefest outline of his career. 
He begins his autobiography with one of his 
own characteristic sen¬ 
tences. He was born 
on July 24, 1833 “at 
daybreak of a fine har¬ 
vest morning,” with 
other light touches in 
similar vein. The place 
was East Varick, in the 
County of Seneca, on 
the west shore of 
Cayuga Lake. 
He came of good 
stock. His grandfather 
hid migrated hither 
from New Jersey some 
t >v e n t y-one years ' 
earlier. He describes ■ 
this worthy man as 
combining the three¬ 
fold dignities of “a 
■poet, a speaker and a 
farmer,” a man prom¬ 
inent in the church, the 
school and the counsels 
of the pioneer neigh¬ 
borhood, a godly man 
withal, >and a leader of 
ax of the pioneer had let the sunlight in on 
the ancient forest floor. 
In his boyhood he wrought at the Her- 
culian labors of the pioneers varied by the 
teaching of school in winter. When he was 
twenty-one—a man grown—the spirit of his 
adventurous, westward-looking grandfather 
stirred within him and he went West to La 
Porte, Indiana. There he was by turns 
school-teacher, carpenter and farmer. Also 
lie found opportunity to marry a daughter 
of the land—a union that was greatly blessed 
through many years, for children were born 
unto them and they two were lovers always. 
When he was about twenty-nine, again the 
Western lure—the urge of the pioneer— 
came to him, and in a prairie schooner to¬ 
gether with his young wife and a sixteen- 
month old baby he made the long trek to 
Mount Pleasant, Iowa, crossing the Missis¬ 
sippi River on the ice. It was a journey of 
several weeks and it is characteristic of the 
habit of thought of the man, that while most 
of the emigrants pressed forward seven days 
a week, he rested his folk and horses on the 
Sabbath, and that very soon after arrival at 
Mount Pleasant he found himself Superin¬ 
tendent of the first Sunday School. Here in 
his new home, according to what 
had become almost his custom, 
he carpentered and taught school 
and farmed, but always the call 
of the farm was loudest. Un¬ 
consciously he was fitting him¬ 
self for greater things. 
He was thirty-six years old be¬ 
fore the call came. He tells how 
one day in 1869 he was giving the 
finishing touches to the cupola 
of his fine “New Barn,” which 
was “so important to him that 
he felt it ought to be spelled with 
capital letters” when a red¬ 
headed man appeared at the top 
of the ladder and a voice said: 
“Young Man—Come down—I 
have better work for you.” It 
was an invitation from one of 
the trustees to become Farm 
Superintendent of the Iowa Agri¬ 
cultural College. At first he an¬ 
swered after the fashion of 
Nehemiah on the walls of Jerusa¬ 
lem “I am doing a great work and 
I cannot come down.” With re¬ 
luctance he allowed his name to 
be presented, but declined to fur¬ 
nish any letter of reference. He 
was first made Farm 
but less than a year late, 
Superin- 
fus 
se n 
The New York State College of Agriculture, sTowing the building named, in honor of 
fessor Roberts. It is in the center of the group on the right 
tendent, out less tnan a year 
elected Professor of Agriculture 
taught farm boy. 
Three years later the newly esta W^he d 
and almost still-born College of Agriculture 
at Cornell came to a crisis. Professor 
McCandlass—a young Irishman, especially 
imported to fill that position, had proved a 
most dismal failure, and some one suggested 
the name of the rising young teacher of 
Iowa. In answer to an invitation he nry-fi 
to come back to New York and on f 
Day of 1873 he began a return j( t 
brought him back to the beauti 
the side of which he was born an 
many wanderings, and within thir 
_ his birthplace^he did 
his great monumental 
enduring work—a work 
that filled thirty full, 
fruitful years. 
Others better quali¬ 
fied than I have writ¬ 
ten of this man and of 
the way in wfyich he 
has set his mark on our 
agricultural life. \ I 
count myself fcrtunatjte 
in that I may toast oS 
having been one 
“Roberts’ Boys,” J 
knew him not as x col¬ 
league as did Profe:Oi\s 
Wing and Stone, I 
knew him as a disde 
—a very reverent a 
devout disciple-—knox 
a Master. I came u 
der him when he waJ 
in the full mat' irity o' 
his rich prime. College 
years are golde 
—there are non e 
J ro- 
n yens \ 
XI 
