Washington-Benton County ArArchives Biographies.....Knapp, Bradford ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ar/arfiles.html ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Robert Sanchez http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00027.html#0006574 June 19, 2009, 10:36 am Author: S. J. Clarke (Publisher, 1922) BRADFORD KNAPP. Bradford Knapp, dean of the College of Agriculture of the State University, is a man who combines high ideals with practical methods. He has accomplished great good in the educational field, especially in connection with the enlightenment of the farmer as to more progressive and adaptable methods of crop production and the care of stock. The value of his service in Arkansas is almost inestimable. Mr. Knapp was born at Vinton, Benton county, Iowa, December 24, 1870, his parents being Seaman A. and Maria E. (Hotchkiss) Knapp and he is a grandson of Bradford Knapp. Seaman A. Knapp became a man of national reputation in connection with agricultural development. He was born in Essex county, New York, December 14, 1833, and after pursuing his early education in private schools he attended the Troy Conference Seminary at Fort Edwards, New York. He also became a student in Union College at Schenectady, New York, and later was professor and associate president of the Troy Conference Seminary. Subsequently he was associated with the management of the Ripley Female College at Pulteney, New York, and in 1866 he removed to the west, settling on a farm at Big Grove, Benton county, Iowa, becoming a prominent factor in the agricultural development of that state. He published the Cedar Rapids farm paper at one time and his influence became a most potent force in agricultural progress. He removed to the west on account of his health and after living on his farm for a time he established his home in Vinton, Iowa, although retaining the ownership and operation of his farm property. In 1869 he was elected superintendent of the College for the Blind, located at Vinton, and remained at the head of the institution until 1874, when he resigned and again engaged in farming. He was one of the early breeders of Berkshire hogs and shorthorn cattle and was a member of the First Iowa Live Stock Breeders' Association. In the latter part of the '70s he began the publication of the Western Stock Journal and Farmer and his continued labors for agricultural progress and improvement brought him more and more constantly into public notice. In 1879 he was elected professor of agriculture in the Iowa State Agricultural College at Ames, and president of the same institution in 1883, and there continued until 1886, when he removed with his family to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and accepted a position with a large corporation engaged in the development of the southwestern section of that state. He devoted twelve years to that work and in 1898 and again in 1901 he was chosen by Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, during his administration, to go to China, Japan and the Philippine Islands as an agricultural explorer to secure available information regarding rice varieties, rice production and rice milling. When the United States acquired Porto Rico, following the Spanish-American war, Secretary of Agriculture Wilson sent Dr. Knapp to the island to make a special report with regard to agricultural resources there. A notable thing concerning Dr. Knapp's important work is that he did not enter upon that line of activity in which he became famous until he was past seventy years of age. His own experimentation and successful operations in rice cultivation in Louisiana, combined with the knowledge that he had gained of the production of the crop in the Orient, afterward made him known as the father of the rice industry in this country. In 1904 he originated the cooperative demonstration work under the United States department of agriculture, which was a plan for practical demonstrations on farms where the farmer received his instruction and applied it on his own farm. This was the origin of the county agent work. He also conceived the idea of forming boys' and girls' clubs in order to stimulate the interest of the young in agricultural development. He began home demonstration for farm women and girls in 1910, along the same practical lines. He had charge of the demonstration work in the south at the time of his death, which occurred in 1911, when he was seventy-seven years of age. To him belongs the credit for having added a new branch of our educational system. for his work resulted in the cooperative extension work under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 and the employment of county agents, county home demonstration agents and boys' and girls' clubs throughout the whole country. Even foreign countries have adopted the same system of practical teaching. His son, Bradford Knapp, was educated in the country schools of Iowa and in the Iowa Agricultural College at Ames, in which he remained a student for three years, after which he entered the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee, and was there graduated with the class of 1892. When he had completed his course he began farming in Louisiana and cultivated a sugar and cotton plantation for two years. He afterward devoted three years to raising rice and in 1892 he and his father sustained heavy losses in the widespread financial panic of that year. Afterward Mr. Knapp entered upon the study of law in the State University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and was there graduated in 1896. Later he practiced law in Iowa for a few years and also engaged in farming in that state. In the meantime he was keeping in close touch with demonstration work as carried on by his father and in 1909 he was made assistant under his father in the agricultural department at Washington, D. C. After his father's death he was appointed his successor and thus upon Mr. Knapp devolved the task of formulating practical plans for continuing the development of the demonstration work. In 1913 Mr. Knapp was sent to Europe to study farm conditions and in his travels covered Belgium, Germany, Denmark, England and Ireland. During the war period he prepared programs on farm production for the Southern States, which were adopted and universally followed. During this period he created the phrase "Safe Farming" to describe such a degree of diversification as will permit the production of food and feed for home needs and the maintenance of soil fertility. While in the department he wrote several pamphlets on safe farming, publishing one such pamphlet each year and his writings on this subject have been widely used and quoted. He also prepared a pamphlet on the agricultural interests of Arkansas in 1920. His labors have been extremely helpful in the various sections of the country where he has been heard on questions relative to agricultural development, or where his writings are known. He remained in active connection with the agricultural department at Washington until 1920, when he came to Fayetteville to accept the position of dean of the College of Agriculture and director of experiment stations of the State University. In the year 1904 Dr. Bradford Knapp was married to Miss Stella White, a daughter of L. A. White, a farmer of Iowa, and they have become the parents of five children: Bradford, Jr., who at the age of sixteen years is a high school pupil; Marion, fifteen years of age; DeWitt, twelve; and Roger, ten, all in school; and Virginia, who is two years of age. Mr. and Mrs. Knapp belong to the Methodist Episcopal church and he is a Scottish Rite Mason. He also belongs to the Kappa Alpha, a college fraternity, and the Alpha Zeta, an honorary fraternity. He has membership in the Rotary Club and is interested in all those forces which make for progress and improvement along every line of uplift and general development. His duties at the present time are many. He has charge of the state experimental stations and under his supervision a thousand acres of land are being cultivated. One of the experimental stations is located at Fayetteville and the other at Scotts, Arkansas. He has taken much interest in the new method of cooperative marketing the cotton crops. He has devoted his chief study and effort along three lines, the development of extension work, safe farming, and agricultural economics, especially marketing of farm products. Perhaps no better indication of Dr. Knapp and his ideals can be given than by quoting from an article that appeared in the Christian Century of June 23, 1921, as follows: "Dean Bradford Knapp of the Arkansas State College of Agriculture would be named by all informed southerners as the greatest agricultural leader in America. All will admit that he is foremost in the southland. His distinguishing characteristic is what might be called his evangelistic spirit. He is an apostle and prophet of the better rural life. He possesses all the cool acumen of the scientist, all the practical administrative ability of the detached executive, and adds an enthusiasm for his task and a fervency of interest in human life that would honor a social reformer. In fact Dean Knapp is a social reformer; he is not primarily interested in the material factors he so ably promotes—he is interested in them as means to the making of better farm homes, less provincial rural communities, a larger outlook for the farmer and a wider chance for his children to share the good things of life. "The last thing Bradford Knapp would do would be to give his time merely to help a farmer 'grow more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land to grow more corn' and so on round and round that vicious circle of materialism. He helps make two blades of grass and two strands of wool grow where one grew before as a means to less drudgery, more culture, better schools and churches and a better citizenship. It is a striking fact in American university life that the agrcultural college faculties take an interest in the church to a greater degree than any other faculty in the university circle. And there is no other single profession, not even excepting the teachers and Red Cross nurses, that shows more interest in rural churches than do the county farm-agents. Dean Knapp says 'Emancipate the farmer's wife and you will emancipate the farmer; solve her problems and you will have solved the rural problem.'" Additional Comments: Citation: Centennial History of Arkansas Volume II Chicago-Little Rock: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company 1922 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ar/washington/bios/knapp115bs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/arfiles/ File size: 10.7 Kb