a business man Major Coker again turned his 
attention to education and was instrumental 
in establishing the Welsh Neck High School 
at Hartsville in 1894. Later, after a public 
high school was built in the town, he was 
active in the establishment of a college at 
Hartsville that, against his will, was given his 
name. This was in 1908, and today Coker Col- 
lege is an honored unit in South Carolina’s 
fine educational system. It has an endowment 
of $700,000, more than $650,000 of which has 
been contributed by the Coker family. 
David R. Coker—‘“‘Mr. D. R.” 
JAMES WAS THE FATHER of four sons, 
each of whom was to distinguish himself in 
his particular field of work, but it was David 
R. Coker, the beloved “Mr. D. R.” to thousands 
who came to know him intimately, who was 
destined to influence the lives of so many peo- 
ple through his great contributions to the 
agriculture of the South. 
David R. Coker’s interest turned early to 
agriculture, and thousands of Southern farm- 
ers and their families who then toiled to pro- 
duce good crops with poor knowledge later on 
were to find in him their greatest benefactor. 
At first he worked in his father’s store, but 
there kept running through his mind the con- 
viction that the South’s farmers needed, more 
than anything else, better seed that would pro- 
duce better yields of higher quality products. 
e Breeding Work Began in 1902 
It so happened that W. C. Coker, a botanist 
at the University of North Carolina, Chapel 
Hill, brother of “Mr. D. R.,” had made 30 
plant selections out of a field of Jones Im- 
proved cotton grown on the Coker farm at 
Hartsville in 1902. In 1908 the selections were 
planted on the Coker plantation and super- 
vised by D. N. Shoemaker, teacher of botany 
in the local school. In 1904 this breeding work 
was taken over by “Mr. D. R.,”’ who continued 
to select the breeding lines until one of them 
was isolated as the most outstanding. This 
strain was called Hartsville. This breeding 
work continued until 1914 when the Pedigreed 
Seed Company was organized and operated as 
the Farm Division of J. L. Coker and Com- 
pany, of which Mr. Coker was president from 
1918 until his death in 1938, when he was 
succeeded by Robert R. Coker, his oldest son, 
who is still president of the store and vice- 
president of the seed company. 
When the plant breeding experiments began 
at Hartsville in 1902, American upland cotton 
was short staple and mills were clamoring for 
a higher quality product. In South Carolina, 
for example, only 20 percent of the cotton 
produced in 1926 stapled 15/16 inch or longer: 
farmers were struggling to exist against all 
the heavy odds that went hand in hand with 
ignorance of scientific farming methods; and 
the South, generally, was poor because its 
DAVID R. COKER, above, began his cotton breeding work at Harts- 
ville nearly a half century ago. When he died in 1938 his son, ROBERT 
R. COKER, below, was made vice-president of the seed company. 
