From “Carolina Farm Notes” by F.H. Jeter, Extension Editor, N.C. State
College, as published in the Southern Planter, February 1944
North Carolina’s great agricultural leader, Dr. Benjamin
Wesley Kilgore, former Dean of Agriculture and director of the Agricultural
Experiment Station and Extension Service at State College, died in Raleigh on
Monday evening, December 27 at 7:15 o’clock. His end came without suffering,
surrounded by member of his family, and it closed the career of one of the most
useful men that agricultural education in the State has ever known. At the time
of his death, Dr. Kilgore was serving as State Chemist, largely in an advisory
capacity.
He was a native of Lafayette County, Mississippi, and a
graduate of the A. & M. College of that State. He came first to North
Carolina in 1889 as assistant chemist for the North Carolina Agricultural
Experiment Station. He returned to his native state in 1897 to become professor
of chemistry and State Chemist but after two years in his old home, was called
back to North Carolina where he remained until his death.
He served as director of the North Carolina Experiment
Station from 1901 until 1907 and again from 1912 to 1925 when the Station was
operated by a joint committee for agricultural work representing the State
College and the State Department of Agriculture. He conceived the idea for the
establishment of branch station farms during his first directorship and
selected the locations for these useful research units. In 1914, when the
Smith-Lever Act was passed, he was appointed the first director of Extension
and served until 1925. In 1921 he added to his duties by accepting appointment
as Dean of Agriculture at State College, holding this position until he retired
from college work in 1926.
Dr. Kilgore was honored by both Davidson and State College
with honorary doctor’s degrees; he was awarded a certificate of meritorious
service in agriculture by the N.C. State Grange; another certificate by the
National Farm Bureau Federation, and, in many other ways, he became the
recipient of the gratitude and understanding of rural people. Dr. Kilgore was
father of the Association of Southern Agricultural workers, serving as
secretary of the Association from 1899 to 1911. This Association presented him
with a plaque for distinguished service to Southern agriculture because of his
efforts to coordinate agricultural research throughout the South.
He was one of the pioneers in the cooperative movement in
North Carolina, a promoter of the livestock industry and a successful business
man.
Throughout his entire career as an educational leader, Dr.
Kilgore’s remarkable facility to see ahead made him an outstanding person.
Plans were made in research and extension from year to year to fit into a
long-time program which would have for its ultimate purpose the building of a
more permanent type of agriculture. Men who worked under him were allowed a
remarkable degree of independence to
develop their own ideas. Largely because of his wise leadership, North Carolina
has become the great agricultural state that it is today.
No comments:
Post a Comment