The farming at Fort Atkinson was the first agricultural experiment station in the Louisiana Purchase. New varieties of grain and vegetables were tested, and a seed garden was established in 1822 for the purpose of growing and testing seeds for future years. General Henry Atkinson was the first Nebraska member of an Agricultural Society in the Missouri Valley to promote scientific agriculture.
The First Nebraska Member of an Agricultural Society
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General Henry Atkinson at the Council Bluffs
By Addison E. Sheldon, Read at Meeting of
Nebraska Hall of Agricultural Achievement
January 3, 1923
On December 17, 1823, the columns of the St. Louis Missouri Republican contained the following important notice:
General Atkinson, Practical Agriculturist
Dec. 17. At a meeting of the “Agricultural Society of the County of St. Louis” on the 15th inst. “Col. O’Fallon proposed Gen. Henry Atkinson of the United States Army, as an honorary member of the society. In making the proposition, Col. O’Fallon adverted to the flourishing state of the agriculture at Council Bluffs, which had received the particular attention of General Atkinson, in its arrangement and in the method of cultivation. He was accepted unanimously.”
“The Agricultural Society of the County of St. Louis” – when and how did it originate and what is its history?
Correspondence with Miss Stella M. Drumm, librarian of the Missouri Historical Society at Jefferson Memorial Building, St. Louis and search of early records discloses the following interesting statement in a volume printed more than sixty years ago.
“Col. O’Fallon as far back as 1822, in conjunction with Mssrs. William C. Carr, Richard Graham, Sr. Robert Simpson, Jos. C. Brown, Henry Watson, and others assisted in establishing an Agricultural Society. This was done to draw the attention of the people to agriculture, who were for the most part at that period intent upon the prosecution of the fur trade, which was a precarious pursuit, tending to a vagabond life, and totally antagonistiscal with that morality and quiet prosperity incident to agricultural life. The establishment of the Society at that early time was attended with the happiest results” (Edwards’ Illustrated Report of the Fourth Annual Fair of the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Association. 1859).
We have here two important events not hitherto known in our history:
(1) Organized agriculture in the Louisiana Purchase began over a hundred years ago.
(2) The first Nebraska member of organized agricultural Society was General Henry Atkinson, founder of Fort Atkinson and manager of the white agriculture in Nebraska.
First class in its significance is the statement that Col. Benjamin O’Fallon and his colleagues of a hundred years ago founded the first agricultural society for the region to “draw the attentions of the people to agriculture” and get their minds away from the fur trade and the vagabond hunter and trapper life.
The typical frontiersman of a century ago built his cabin close to a spring, hunted and trapped for a living letting the women folks put in and care for a small patch of corn and garden vegetables. It was a far off dream a hundred years ago – that of the rich Missouri valley filled with farms and producing crops and livestock. All honor to the men who dreamed that dream, chief among them Benjamin O’Fallon, himself a fur trader and Henry Atkinson, commandant of the sixth infantry.
What were the credentials of General Henry Atkinson for admission into the first Agricultural Society in the Louisiana Purchase? In September 1819, a military expedition of over seven hundred men carried by keel boats in part and in part by the first steamboats to navigate Nebraska waters, made landing in Washington county and established the farthest western military post in the United States.
The next year began the first extensive white faring in the Missouri Valley. It began upon Nebraska soil and was continued for a period of seven years, until the abandonment of Fort Atkinson in 1827 and transfer of its garrison to Fort Leavenworth Kansas.
The record of this first farming in Nebraska is given in full in the Regimental Documents which have been copied in typewriting and are here in the shape of six volumes of typewritten pages. This first farming in the Missouri valley was reported to the War Department at Washington and celebrated in scientific circles as the first great experimental agriculture in the far west.
From the records before me I will give the crop report for a single year only – the year 1822. The crop grown upon Nebraska soil under the direction of General Atkinson that year and the yield was as follows:
Crop/Acreage/Yield
Corn/410/20,500
Potatoes/49/6,000
Turnips/7/1,050
Carden/40/Enough for 1,200 men for one year
Besides this 250-tons of hay were put up on the natural Nebraska meadows.
A large and varied herd of livestock was established at Fort Atkinson including about 600 head of cattle, 100 horses, several hundred swine and large flocks of poultry.
In the year 1823 seed was brought up the Missouri river and such a large crop of wheat was raised that the commanding officer says, under date July 29, 1824: “The harvest of wheat and oats is so great that we have not enough cradles to handle it and part of the crop must be cut by hand sickles.” A Barn 30x120 feet for livestock was constructed in 1822. A large field was fenced with posts and rails to protect it from livestock and game. So a great a quantity of food and meat was raised on Nebraska soil at Fort Atkinson that the great military expedition against the Arikara Indian tribe in what is now South Dakota was provisioned from the stores at Fort Atkinson. The price of Nebraska grown pork at the Fort was fixed in 1823 at 4¢ per pound and the price of cornmeal at ½¢ per pound. There was a large dairy. Butter and cheese was made. The dairy farm was some distance from the fort and the soldiers engaged in dairy work were excused from coming to the fort to drill but were drilled at the dairy farm by a special detailed officer as the record shows.
The farming at Fort Atkinson was not bread and butter farming. It was the first agricultural experiment station in the Louisiana Purchase. New varieties of grain and vegetables were tested. A great seed garden was established in 1822 for the purpose of growing and testing seeds for future years.
So I bring before the Hall of Agricultural Achievement of Nebraska today the name of General Henry Atkinson, first Nebraska member of an Agricultural Society and that society the first one in the Missouri Valley for the promotion of scientific agriculture.
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