Washington-Benton County ArArchives Biographies.....Knapp, Bradford 
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Author: S. J. Clarke (Publisher, 1922)

BRADFORD KNAPP.
    Bradford Knapp, dean of the College of Agriculture of the State University,
is a man who combines high ideals with practical methods. He has accomplished
great good in the educational field, especially in connection with the
enlightenment of the farmer as to more progressive and adaptable methods of crop
production and the care of stock. The value of his service in Arkansas is almost
inestimable. Mr. Knapp was born at Vinton, Benton county, Iowa, December 24,
1870, his parents being Seaman A. and Maria E. (Hotchkiss) Knapp and he is a
grandson of Bradford Knapp. Seaman A. Knapp became a man of national reputation
in connection with agricultural development. He was born in Essex county, New
York, December 14, 1833, and after pursuing his early education in private
schools he attended the Troy Conference Seminary at Fort Edwards, New York. He
also became a student in Union College at Schenectady, New York, and later was
professor and associate president of the Troy Conference Seminary. Subsequently
he was associated with the management of the Ripley Female College at Pulteney,
New York, and in 1866 he removed to the west, settling on a farm at Big Grove,
Benton county, Iowa, becoming a prominent factor in the agricultural development
of that state. He published the Cedar Rapids farm paper at one time and his
influence became a most potent force in agricultural progress. He removed to the
west on account of his health and after living on his farm for a time he
established his home in Vinton, Iowa, although retaining the ownership and
operation of his farm property. In 1869 he was elected superintendent of the
College for the Blind, located at Vinton, and remained at the head of the
institution until 1874, when he resigned and again engaged in farming. He was
one of the early breeders of Berkshire hogs and shorthorn cattle and was a
member of the First Iowa Live Stock Breeders' Association. In the latter part of
the '70s he began the publication of the Western Stock Journal and Farmer and
his continued labors for agricultural progress and improvement brought him more
and more constantly into public notice. In 1879 he was elected professor of
agriculture in the Iowa State Agricultural College at Ames, and president of the
same institution in 1883, and there continued until 1886, when he removed with
his family to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and accepted a position with a large
corporation engaged in the development of the southwestern section of that
state. He devoted twelve years to that work and in 1898 and again in 1901 he was
chosen by Hon. James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, during his
administration, to go to China, Japan and the Philippine Islands as an
agricultural explorer to secure available information regarding rice varieties,
rice production and rice milling. When the United States acquired Porto Rico,
following the Spanish-American war, Secretary of Agriculture Wilson sent Dr.
Knapp to the island to make a special report with regard to agricultural
resources there. A notable thing concerning Dr. Knapp's important work is that
he did not enter upon that line of activity in which he became famous until he
was past seventy years of age. His own experimentation and successful operations
in rice cultivation in Louisiana, combined with the knowledge that he had gained
of the production of the crop in the Orient, afterward made him known as the
father of the rice industry in this country. In 1904 he originated the
cooperative demonstration work under the United States department of
agriculture, which was a plan for practical demonstrations on farms where the
farmer received his instruction and applied it on his own farm. This was the
origin of the county agent work. He also conceived the idea of forming boys' and
girls' clubs in order to stimulate the interest of the young in agricultural
development. He began home demonstration for farm women and girls in 1910, along
the same practical lines. He had charge of the demonstration work in the south
at the time of his death, which occurred in 1911, when he was seventy-seven
years of age. To him belongs the credit for having added a new branch of our
educational system. for his work resulted in the cooperative extension work
under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 and the employment of county agents, county
home demonstration agents and boys' and girls' clubs throughout the whole
country. Even foreign countries have adopted the same system of practical teaching.

    His son, Bradford Knapp, was educated in the country schools of Iowa and in
the Iowa Agricultural College at Ames, in which he remained a student for three
years, after which he entered the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee,
and was there graduated with the class of 1892. When he had completed his course
he began farming in Louisiana and cultivated a sugar and cotton plantation for
two years. He afterward devoted three years to raising rice and in 1892 he and
his father sustained heavy losses in the widespread financial panic of that
year. Afterward Mr. Knapp entered upon the study of law in the State University
of Michigan at Ann Arbor and was there graduated in 1896. Later he practiced law
in Iowa for a few years and also engaged in farming in that state. In the
meantime he was keeping in close touch with demonstration work as carried on by
his father and in 1909 he was made assistant under his father in the
agricultural department at Washington, D. C. After his father's death he was
appointed his successor and thus upon Mr. Knapp devolved the task of formulating
practical plans for continuing the development of the demonstration work. In
1913 Mr. Knapp was sent to Europe to study farm conditions and in his travels
covered Belgium, Germany, Denmark, England and Ireland. During the war period he
prepared programs on farm production for the Southern States, which were adopted
and universally followed. During this period he created the phrase "Safe
Farming" to describe such a degree of diversification as will permit the
production of food and feed for home needs and the maintenance of soil
fertility. While in the department he wrote several pamphlets on safe farming,
publishing one such pamphlet each year and his writings on this subject have
been widely used and quoted. He also prepared a pamphlet on the agricultural
interests of Arkansas in 1920. His labors have been extremely helpful in the
various sections of the country where he has been heard on questions relative to
agricultural development, or where his writings are known. He remained in active
connection with the agricultural department at Washington until 1920, when he
came to Fayetteville to accept the position of dean of the College of
Agriculture and director of experiment stations of the State University.

    In the year 1904 Dr. Bradford Knapp was married to Miss Stella White, a
daughter of L. A. White, a farmer of Iowa, and they have become the parents of
five children: Bradford, Jr., who at the age of sixteen years is a high school
pupil; Marion, fifteen years of age; DeWitt, twelve; and Roger, ten, all in
school; and Virginia, who is two years of age.

    Mr. and Mrs. Knapp belong to the Methodist Episcopal church and he is a
Scottish Rite Mason. He also belongs to the Kappa Alpha, a college fraternity,
and the Alpha Zeta, an honorary fraternity. He has membership in the Rotary Club
and is interested in all those forces which make for progress and improvement
along every line of uplift and general development. His duties at the present
time are many. He has charge of the state experimental stations and under his
supervision a thousand acres of land are being cultivated. One of the
experimental stations is located at Fayetteville and the other at Scotts,
Arkansas. He has taken much interest in the new method of cooperative marketing
the cotton crops. He has devoted his chief study and effort along three lines,
the development of extension work, safe farming, and agricultural economics,
especially marketing of farm products. Perhaps no better indication of Dr. Knapp
and his ideals can be given than by quoting from an article that appeared in the
Christian Century of June 23, 1921, as follows: "Dean Bradford Knapp of the
Arkansas State College of Agriculture would be named by all informed southerners
as the greatest agricultural leader in America. All will admit that he is
foremost in the southland. His distinguishing characteristic is what might be
called his evangelistic spirit. He is an apostle and prophet of the better rural
life. He possesses all the cool acumen of the scientist, all the practical
administrative ability of the detached executive, and adds an enthusiasm for his
task and a fervency of interest in human life that would honor a social
reformer. In fact Dean Knapp is a social reformer; he is not primarily
interested in the material factors he so ably promotes—he is interested in them
as means to the making of better farm homes, less provincial rural communities,
a larger outlook for the farmer and a wider chance for his children to share the
good things of life.

    "The last thing Bradford Knapp would do would be to give his time merely to
help a farmer 'grow more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land to grow more
corn' and so on round and round that vicious circle of materialism. He helps
make two blades of grass and two strands of wool grow where one grew before as a
means to less drudgery, more culture, better schools and churches and a better
citizenship. It is a striking fact in American university life that the
agrcultural college faculties take an interest in the church to a greater degree
than any other faculty in the university circle. And there is no other single
profession, not even excepting the teachers and Red Cross nurses, that shows
more interest in rural churches than do the county farm-agents. Dean Knapp says
'Emancipate the farmer's wife and you will emancipate the farmer; solve her
problems and you will have solved the rural problem.'"


Additional Comments:
Citation:
Centennial History of Arkansas
Volume II
Chicago-Little Rock: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company
1922


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