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| Affiliation | Whig |
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| Name | Jesse Buel |
| Address |
Albany, New York , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
January 04, 1778
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| Died | October 06, 1839
(61 years)
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| Contributor | nystate63 |
| Last Modifed | nystate63
Jul 06, 2004 04:58pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | Jesse Buel, agriculturist, was born in Coventry, Connecticut, the son of Elias Buel and Sarah (maiden name unknown), farmers. In 1790 the family moved to Rutland, Vermont. The youngest of fourteen children, Jesse Buel had little formal education. In 1792 he was apprenticed to a local printer and learned his trade quickly; by the age of eighteen he had finished his apprenticeship and moved to New York City as a journeyman printer. During the next few years he worked there and in the Albany-Troy region, first as a journeyman and later as a master printer. After marrying Susan Pierce of Troy in 1801, he moved to Poughkeepsie where an attempt to establish a weekly paper ended in bankruptcy. The couple would have four children.
Between 1803 and 1813 Buel's fortunes changed as he moved to Kingston and became the editor and owner of an Antifederalist paper, the Ulster Plebeian. He also began aggressively buying up land that was sold for taxes and in this way accumulated a substantial personal fortune. Buel secured an appointment as judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Ulster County. In 1813 he moved again, this time to Albany, where he founded the Argus, which became a partisan organ of the Democrats; two years later he secured the lucrative post of printer to the state. His career as a newspaper editor continued until 1821, when he relinquished the state printership, probably under political pressure. He continued to be a leading Albany citizen, helping to organize the Albany Savings Bank and serving as a regent of the state university.
Except for a brief interlude as Whig candidate for governor--he ran as a loyal party member in a futile campaign against William Marcy in 1836--Buel gave up his publishing interests in the early 1820s and acquired a farm outside of Albany, where he embarked on the work for which he is best remembered. Even as a newspaper editor Buel had evinced an interest in agricultural issues; now he acted upon those interests and in the process became a key figure in the mid-century agricultural reform movement. His work in agriculture can be divided roughly into two categories. During the twenties, Buel developed his farm, which was located in an area called the "Sandy Barrens." He was an agricultural experimenter, undertaking to drain some of the land, to rotate crops, to apply manure, and to prepare the soil thoroughly by careful harrowing and planting. He advocated a "scientific" approach to farming, and he was remarkably successful in revitalizing a previously unproductive farm. He gained a wide reputation for his accomplishments.
Buel's practical experience lent him credibility as he pursued the second phase of his agricultural reform work--his efforts to establish agricultural societies, agricultural education, and journals to disseminate new knowledge about farming. He became a founder and active member of various agricultural societies, such as the New York State Board of Agriculture and the New York State Agricultural Society. Buel also worked, though less successfully in the short run, to get the state to sponsor agricultural schools; eventually his efforts would influence the shape of the land-grant system set up during the Civil War. But perhaps his most important accomplishment was to establish a career as an influential agricultural writer. He set the Albany Cultivator on a firm footing as one of the leading journals of its day. After the journal barely survived its first year (1834) under the sponsorship of the state agricultural society, Buel took it over and, through his able editorship, soon increased its circulation substantially. He included many original contributions in its pages, enlisting the knowledge of hundreds of agents and correspondents for the magazine. He himself wrote extensively for the Cultivator and for other agricultural journals. He was also in popular demand as a lecturer. His ideas were compiled in The Farmer's Companion, first published in 1839 and appearing thereafter in ten or more additional editions. For his accomplishments, Buel was made an honorary member of many agricultural and scientific societies, including the Massachusetts Agricultural Society and the Charleston (S.C.) Horticultural Society, and a corresponding member of the London Horticultural Society.
Buel's ideas and career illustrate well the strengths and weaknesses of nineteenth-century agricultural reform. He successfully pointed to the shortcomings of American agriculture--wastefulness, declining soil fertility, erosion--and demonstrated ways of remedying those problems. However, his faith in science was somewhat premature and occasionally misplaced, since agricultural science was as yet unable to make direct contributions to everyday farming, and some "scientific" procedures turned out to be inappropriate or even destructive. Buel represented the course that American agriculture was to take, however, in the years to come. Moreover, the fact that he commanded wide respect--his modesty, piety, and hard-working nature were well known--aided the cause of reform in agriculture. He died in Danbury, Connecticut.
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