Bluford Library Archives: The Beginnings of the A&T Farm – Part I
Unless it is your discipline, you may overlook that the “A” in A&T stands for “Agricultural.” The study of agriculture is core to our foundation as a land-grant doctoral research university, and a farm is essential for practice.
Today, the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Farm stands on 455 acres of land off McConnell Road about three miles from campus. It has hosted international scholars in all fields of agriculture. As some generations of A&T alumni can recall, the farm was smaller and closer to campus. For our very first generations of Aggies, it was even smaller, and even on the campus.
The “Agricultural and Technical College For the Colored Race” (now North Carolina A&T) was established in 1891. Our first students studied at an annex school out of Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. By some accounts, the most that was offered in agriculture were lectures and a few shrubs for planting. The new college was finally settled in Greensboro, and students began to occupy the first building, the Old Dudley Hall in November 1893.
The Rev. Dr. John O. Crosby, A&T’s first president, laid out the first agricultural curriculum, and progress increased under Prof. Alva Thomas Stevens, the first head of the agriculture department. However, there was still a lack of proper farmland and equipment to teach agricultural course work.
Accounts differ about when, but the first 25 acres of farmland were purchased between 1894 and 1899, but most likely under President James B. Dudley after 1896. In 1899, the first seven graduates had walked, and the old A&M college was promoting its farmlands with up-to-date machinery contributed by national manufacturers. There was also a greenhouse, and dairy barns where Harrison Auditorium stands today. Much of this growth happened under the leadership of agricultural department heads, John Thompson and John H. Bluford.
One alumnus, who was there for that growth on the historic campus district was Austin W. Curtis Sr. ‘1899 (Curtis Hall at A&T) the longtime head of agriculture at West Virginia State University. One of A&T’s first prized agricultural graduates, (Dudley did not want him to leave NC) Curtis would tell future Aggies of how the first dairy barn only had two cows and a spoon in 1897.
Curtis used that spoon to make butter for college dining, serving some to President Dudley. When the president asked Curtis how he could have possibly made the butter without the proper equipment, he began making special provisions to obtain dairying machines, and the college dairy was born. According to Curtis, by 1900 the “demand for the A. and M. College butter [was] entirely beyond the supply.”
The earliest college farm was used by students of all majors and disciplines. In a “Surveying and Leveling” course from the department of “Power and Applied Mathematics” in 1902, A&M students were expected to create scaled maps of the College Farm. Students were required to spend at least 10 hours a week on manual training. Options for female students included the dairy barn and the gardens, while males could work on the farm. More opportunities traditionally held for males only began to open to women during World War II.
By 1904, the college had purchased a 100-acre farm, four times the size of the regular campus. This farm was located one mile from campus, where the Lorillard Tobacco Company stands today off of East Market Street and included a two-story brick dormitory. Most of the land was used for the crop production of wheat, oats, cow peas, sugar beets, sorghum, millet, mangelwurzel, potatoes, alfalfa, tobacco, and other crops. With this growing farmland, the old A&M college earned a reputation as one of the best schools for Negroes in agriculture in the nation. Among the many donors to the A&M College were C. C. Spaulding, the future president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, who supplied a $25.00 scholarship for A&T Agricultural students in 1910.
In President Dudley’s 29 years of service, none of the graduating classes were larger than 15 students, yet each was historically remarkable. For farming, the class of 1909 is outstanding in our agricultural legacy. Graduates included Harold Eugene Webb who served as the agricultural agent for Guilford County for African Americans. One of his sons was Burleigh Carlyle Webb, a future dean of agricultural at A&T, and the namesake of Webb Hall. Mr. John D. Wray ‘1909 was a giant in A&T’s agricultural legacy, and N.C.’s first Black club agent (now 4-H), and alumni association president in the 1920s.
The earliest known supervisor of the A&T Farm was Junious Rooks, who was credited in 1896 as the “Steward And Foreman of the Farm.” He lived just two houses down from President and Mrs. Dudley on the newly named “Dudley Street.” His earliest successors included W. F. Debnam an instructor of industries around 1909, John D. Wray, a John McRae ‘1914, and a “C. S. Ross” c. 1925. Martin F. Holt, (namesake of the former Holt Hall dorm) famously served 28 of his 41 years at A&T as the farm supervisor and retired in 1960 at the age of 70.
By 1930, Aggies were practicing on two farms, one off of McConnell Road and the old East Market Street farm, totaling a little over 250 acres, 115 of which was used for crop production. Now within the administration of President F. D. Bluford, our farming facilities were in places for farming and dairying. Around 1933, the campus dairy began what was new science at the time: creating milk from soy beans.
By 1943, the old piggery and poultry plants were moved off of East Market Street. These farm purchases were critical in supporting the War Food Administration’s goal to increase farm production. War time production led to a surplus of milk and dairy, which resulted in A&T ‘s first Ice Cream plant in October of 1942. When some of these farmlands located off Bessemer Road were purchased to an Army Camp, the college bought new acreage near the McConnell Road farm boosting its holdings to 455 acres.
The F. D. Bluford Library Archives and Special Collections is home to a massive Agricultural History Collections that were preserved for decades by faculty and staff of the Department of Agriculture and the Cooperative Extension Offices. For more information about this story and other histories of A&T, please contact the archives at libraryarchives@ncat.edu.
