New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Stations in New Brunswick Records

With the passage of the Morrill Act in 1864, Rutgers College was designated the Land-Grant college for New Jersey. As a land-grant college, it developed the State College for Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts for a scientific program of study, as well as an experimental farm known as the College Farm. This act provided federal aid to colleges through land grants. The college developed courses in civil engineering and mechanics, as well as chemistry and agriculture. George H. Cook, a Rutgers professor, was named Professor of Chemistry and of Theory and Practice of Agriculture in 1862. Much of the early experimentation at the College Farm was in chemical fertilizers for crops of corn, potatoes, wheat, and other crops.

As the decade passed, more experiments were conducted on the College Farm for the benefit of state farmers. Additional aid was sought for these experiments from the State government. In 1880, Cook, with the support of the State Board of Agriculture, succeeded in securing State funds for agriculture experimentation with the passage of legislature establishing the New Jersey Agriculture Experiment Stations.

These New Jersey Stations were governed by a Board of Directors, which consisted of the Governor, the Board of Visitors of the State Agricultural College that was appointed by the Governor, the President, and a Professor of Agriculture. The Board was to appoint a director for the Station, as well as select a primary location and any branch Experiment Stations in the State. The main location for the State Experiment Station was quickly decided upon, and it was the College Farm in New Brunswick. Dr. Cook was selected to be the first director of the College Farm.

The Trustees of Rutgers College offered two rooms in Van Nest Hall to be used for the Experiment Station office and laboratory. In 1887, New Jersey Hall was constructed for the laboratory and offices for the State Experiment Station on Hamilton Street, across from Rutgers Queens Campus. After the turn of the century, many buildings were constructed on the College Farm for use by the Experiment Stations.

In 1887, again with the influence of Dr. Cook, federal legislation was passed for the establishment and support of experiment stations at each State agricultural college. The Hatch Act, as it was called, was accepted by the New Jersey legislature and in March 1887, the Agricultural College Experiment Station at Rutgers Scientific School was established. The act appropriated $15,000 annually to the College Experiment Station for original research on plants and animals, including research on diseases and remedies that affected both; it also included soil analysis, chemicals to aid growth, and, basically, everything of interest to agriculture.

An Experiment Station was also established at New Brunswick, but it was under the supervision of the Board of Trustees of Rutgers and the State Board of Visitors. At its establishment, Dr. Cook was appointed director to enable coordination between the two stations. The work of one station was to supplement the other's work.

With the death of Dr. Cook in September 1889, the directorship of both Experiment Stations and the Chair of Agriculture all needed to be filled. For over a three-year period, the Stations had a series of acting directors until Edward B. Voorhees' appointment in April 1893. Voorhees was the Director of the State Experiment Station, while the Presidents of Rutgers College became the Directors of the College Experiment Station (Merrill D. Gates from 1889, and Austin Scott from 1891.) It was not until 1896 that Voorhees was appointed as the Director of the College Experiment Station, as well. It was at that time that he also took over the directorship of the College Farm.

To aid the farmers of the whole State of New Jersey, it was decided early in the 1890s to direct Experiment Stations' investigations to those that benefited the most farmers in the State. With Federal funds providing for endowment and maintenance from the Adams Act in 1906, scientific investigation and research into plant breeding, soil chemistry, and bacteriology were furthered at the College Experiment Station. The Station also gave instruction to farmers directly through the Short Courses it offered every year. A weather station was also established at the College Farm.

Jacob G. Lipman succeeded Voorhees as Director of both Experiment Stations in 1911, as he had been working in the Department of Soil Chemistry and Bacteriology at the Station since 1901. Lipman built several new departments at the Stations, including the Extension Program in 1912.

In an effort to reduce excess and redundancy in State funding, the College Agricultural Experiment Station was merged with the State Agricultural Experiment Station in 1945. For years, the Experiment Station and the State Agricultural Experiment Station had been working alongside one another, cooperating on many experiments and agricultural research projects.