Liberty Hyde Bailey

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Liberty Hyde Bailey.

Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954) was an American horticulturist, botanist and co-founder of the American Society for Horticultural Science. Born in South Haven, Michigan, he was educated and taught at the Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) before moving to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he became dean of the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He edited The Cyclopedia of American Agriculture (1907-09), the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture (1900-02), and the Rural Science, Rural Textbook, Gardencraft, and Young Folks Library series of manuals. He wrote scores of books, including scientific works, efforts to explain botany to laypeople, a collection of poetry, and coined the word cultivar. Cornell University memorialized Bailey in 1912 when Bailey Hall the largest building on campus was dedicated in his honor.

Bailey is credited with being instrumental in starting agricultural extension services, the 4-H movement, the nature study movement, parcel post and rural electrification. He was considered the father of rural sociology and rural journalism.

About 140 years after his birth, the Liberty Hyde Bailey Scholars Program was created at Michigan State University, the institute of higher learning where Bailey began his career. The Bailey Scholars Program incorporates L.H. Bailey's love of learning and countless expressive learning styles to provide a safe, nurturing space for students to become educated in fields that interest them. The credo of the group is: "The Bailey Scholars Program seeks to be a community of scholars dedicated to lifelong learning. All members of the community work toward providing a respectful trusting environment where we acknowledge our interdependence and encourage personal growth."[1]

Biography

Early Life

Bailey's father, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Sr. moved to southern Michigan in 1842, and married Sarah Harrison in 1845. Liberty Hyde, Jr., was their third son and youngest son. Typical of pioneer families on the frontier, the Bailey family made their living from the land. They cleared woods, built a farm and planted an orchard, and produced much of their own food and clothing. Dairy products and eggs, maple sugar and wood provided for much of the their income. Bailey's father worked off the farm to earned additional money to improvement the farm. In 1854, the Baileys moved to South Haven at the mouth of the Black River, settling on an 80 acre plot of land where Bailey was born in 1858. When he was three years old, along with his two older brothers, Bailey contracted Scarlet fever. His eldest brother, Dana, died from the fever. Also stricken with scarlet fever and bereft over the loss of her oldest son, his mother, Sarah, died the following year, 1862. The following year, Bailey's father married a young woman from a neighboring farm, Maria Bridges.

The Bailey and his sons Marcus and Liberty were skilled and innovating farmers and their farm was known for its prize-winning apples. Bailey and his father were charter members of the newly organized South Haven Pomological Society. One of their orchards won a first premium as a model orchard, perfect in "culture, pruning, and fruitfulness." Eventually the orchards included over 300 cultivars. Even as a youth, Bailey became an expert on grafting. His skills were in great demand among his neighbors. The word cultivar was coined by Bailey from "cultivated" and "variety" but is not interchangeable with the botanical rank of variety, nor with the legal term "plant variety".[2]

When he 15 years old, Bailey presented a paper Birds to the South Haven Pomological Society and later to the Michigan Pomological Society. It was his first public speech. He was subsequently elected lead Ornithologist of the South Haven Pomological Society.

Liberty Hyde Bailey was educated in the local school, where his teacher, Julia Fields, taught him grammar, geometry, and Latin, and encouraged his interest in nature. He was also influenced by the books his father bought and read, including the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, John Milton’s poems, and especially, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Asa Gray’s Field, Forest, and Garden Botany.

Education and professional beginnings

Bailey attended Michigan Agricultural College in Lansing, Michigan from 1878 until 1882. His studies included Botany under the Dr. William Beal. While at college he met his future wife Annette Smith and they became engaged. On August 15, 1882 he graduated from Michigan Agricultural College with a Bachelor of Science degree. Following graduation he moved to Springfield, Illinois and took up work as a reporter for the daily newspaper Morning Monitor. While there His former college professor William Beal recommended him to Harvard botanist Asa Gray who took a liking to Bailey and invited him to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Bailey moved to Cambridge to work as Gray's assistant in February, 1883. On June 6, Bailey married Annette Smith in Michigan.

Bailey's work with Asa Gray was successful and his reputation as a botanist grew so that he accepted a position in 1885 as Professor of Horticulture and Landscape Gardening at Michigan Agricultural College. He published his first book, Talks Afield: About Plants and the Science of Plants, written to help people identify common plants which was put out by Houghton Mifflin. In 1886 Bailey received a Master of Science degree from Michigan Agricultural College. That year he went to work for a federal government geological survey of Minnesota.

The next year his first child, a daughter, Sara May Bailey was born on June 29, 1887. That winter Bailey was invited to give a series of lectures at Cornell University. The next year, from August 1888 until early 1889 Cornell sent Bailey and his family to Europe on a horticulture research trip. When he returned he began work as a Professor of Practical and Experimental Horticulture at Cornell University. His second daughter Ethel Zoe Bailey was born on November 17, 1889.

In 1893 Bailey delivered his Agricultural Education and Its Place in the University Curriculum address. In it he decalred, "The State must foster it." As a result the New York State Legislature appropriated $50,000 for the construction of a Dairy Husbandry building at Cornell University. From there until 1890, Bailey developed Cornell's Extension work. His impressive efforts caused New York State to grant Cornell University Experiment Station money for research. Bailey's l;ong time mentor, Asa Gray, published a new edition of Field, Forest, and Garden Botany in 1895 and offered it to Bailey. He offered Gray his revisions which Gray accepted.

From the late 1890s into the early 1900s Bailey began Nature Study and Rural School courses with John Spencer and Anna Botsford Comstock and in the summer of 1899 he appointed Anna Botsford Comstock as Cornell's first female professor. In 1900 until 1902 Bailey undertook editing Cyclopedia of American Horticulture becoming its main contributor.

Quotes

Nature cannot be antagonistic to man, seeing that man is a product of nature.

Some selected works

  • The Principles of Fruit-Growing (1897)
  • The Nursery Book (1897)
  • Plant-Breeding (1897)
  • The Pruning Manual (1898)
  • Sketch of the Evolution of our Native Fruits (1898)
  • Principles of Agriculture (1898)
  • The Principles of Vegetable Gardening (1901)
  • The State and the Farmer (1908)
  • The Nature Study Idea (1909)
  • The Training of Farmers (1909)
  • Manual of Gardening (1910)
  • The Outlook to Nature (1911)
  • The Country Life Movement (1911)
  • The Practical Garden Book (1913)


Notes

  1. The Bailey Scholars Program Retrieved November 17, 2007.
  2. Plant Nomenclature, Purdue University. Retrieved November 18, 2007.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Dorf, Philip. Liberty Hyde Bailey; An Informal Biography. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1956. OCLC 814238
  • Fairchild, David. Liberty Hyde Bailey. 1941 OCLC 6832997
  • Rodgers, Andrew Denny. Liberty Hyde Bailey; A Story of American Plant Sciences. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1949. OCLC 630334

External links

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