Early American Soil Conservationists, 1941

Early American Soil Conservationists by Angus McDonald of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, was published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1941. When Americans had more land than labor, soil conservation was not a priority and erosion became a serious problem. This book features men who promoted farming methods that preserved the soil, including:

--Jared Elliot (1685-1763of Killingsworth, Connecticut, a minister, doctor, and part-time farmer who noted the problems of erosion and resulting loss of fertility in hilly New England and sought answers.

--Samuel Deane (1733-1814), a minister and farmer, who turned to fulltime farming at Gorham, Maine, during the Revolution. He advocated experimental agriculture and addressed wind erosion. He wrote a text on American agriculture, The New England Farmer or Georgical Dictionary, which was published in 1790. (Deane would have said he was a resident of Massachusetts because Maine was a part of Massachusetts until 1820. His farm was located near what is now Portland, Maine.)

--Solomon Drown (1753-1834) of Providence, Rhode Island, a farmer and a scientist, wrote The Compendium of Agriculture, or the Farmer’s Guide with his son, William. Drown wrote frequently, and fellow farmers listened to him. His work was continued by his son.

--John Taylor (1753-1824), a wealthy gentleman farmer, who, in his time, was the most influential agricultural reformer in the South. He lived on the Rappahannock River near Port Royal, Virginia, and had two large farms and wrote Arator, published in 1813.

--John Lorain (1764-1819), who farmed near Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, wrote 13 essays for the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. His book, Nature and Reason Harmonized in the Practice of Agriculture, was published in 1925, after his death.

--Isaac Hill (1789-1851), an agricultural reformer and champion of erosion control as editor of the New Hampshire Patriot newspaper. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1930 and as governor of New Hampshire in 1836. He became editor of the Farmer’s Monthly Visitor farm journal in 1839.

--Nicholas T. Sorsby (1818-1868), a native of North Carolina and a physician, farmed in Alabama and Mississippi. He wrote Horizontal Plowing and Hillside Ditching, the only book devoted to erosion control published before the Civil War, for the North Carolina State Agricultural Society. It was reprinted by The Southern Planter of Virginia, and in the American Cotton Planter and Soil of the South in 1859.

--Edmund Ruffin (1794-1865) began farming on his father’s farm at Coggin’s Point on the James River in Prince George County, Virginia. He became concerned about loss of fertility and studied stream flow and erosion. He also recognized sheet wash, a type of erosion which had removed all the topsoil from fields in areas of the Tidewater, and promoted green cover crops.

To read Early American Soil Conservationists, go to http://www.caf.wvu.edu/~forage/library/forglvst/bulletins/s449.pdf.

Nicholas Sorsby’s essay is also online at http://books.google.com/books?id=FI9NAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=Nicholas+T.+Sorsby&source=bl&ots=10h4F0pkAZ&sig=XOiTkglQTVayP3IGz9JL2V-gzRI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HhIpUPrlPMLb0QHQroCQBA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Nicholas%20T.%20Sorsby&f=false.