Hall of Famer Kelley Was A Thinker and A Doer

Oliver Hudson Kelley will be inducted into the Agricultural Hall of Fame on October 27, 2006 in Bonner Springs, Kansas. He joins such greats as Eli Whitney, John Deere, Luther Burbank, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington Carver, all extraordinary individuals. Kelley too was an extraordinary individual.

Born in Boston in 1826, Kelley was well connected to prominent New England families but chose to follow the beat of his own drummer. He worked as an itinerant reporter for a time and then became an accomplished telegrapher, traveling far and wide to practice his skills. Some called him nothing but a rover and “rolling stone.” He constantly had one project or another going, many of them impractical and not very profitable but invigorating to Kelley’s imaginative mind.

In 1850 Kelley settled in Minnesota on a farmstead bordering the Mississippi River. His first wife, Lucy Earl died shortly after giving birth to a daughter, and more tragedy struck just six months later when their infant daughter passed away as well. Happiness came later when Kelley married Temperance Baldwin Lane. Over the next decade as Kelley continued to farm, he and his wife had four daughters.

Life as a farmer was not easy for Kelley. He learned first hand the impact that debt, insects and crop failure could have on a farmer, his family and their livelihood. Yet he persisted and became a “book farmer,” reading agricultural journals and learning from other “scientific oriented” farmers. In fact, Kelley himself became a prolific writer of articles for farm magazines. His crisp style and interesting ideas soon attracted the attention of the Federal Department of Agriculture and he became a regular contributor to the Department’s publications and actually spent the winter of 1864 working for the Department of Agriculture in Washington.

In October 1865, Kelley was called back to Washington on a special assignment to help the Reconstruction process of Southern agriculture, which had been devastated by the Civil War. His assignment was to tour the South and assess the condition of Southern agriculture, no easy assignment for a Northern Yankee in a bitter and hostile environment.

It did not take Kelley long to realize that he had to find some common ground with the Southern farmers and plantation owners in order to have their cooperation, let alone not get run out of the South on a rail. Kelley’s association with the Masonic Order became that common ground. Soon he was introducing himself to Southern farmers and plantation owners as a fellow Mason, not a surveyor sent by a distant Yankee government. As such, he was welcomed and treated as a peer to help out his fellow Masons and farmers.

Kelley’s trip convinced him that “politicians would never restore peace in the country.” What was needed he said was that, “The people North and South must know each other as members of the same great family, and all sectionalism be abolished.” His dream was a secret society of farmers much like the Masonic Order, which would educate farmers and raise them to a better level of being. Working together harmoniously would enable farmers to take advantage of their numbers and level the playing field with buyers, suppliers, transporters and others profiting from the farm community’s weakened state.

Kelley’s dream was not to become reality right away. After submitting his report to President Andrew Johnson, Kelley returned to Minnesota and resumed farming without much enthusiasm. He was consumed with the idea of starting a fraternity of farmers. This distraction led to a disastrous season on the farm and Kelley found himself hard pressed to make ends meet.

Just as things were looking bleak, Kelley was offered an attractive position with the Post Office Department and returned to Washington in January 1867. In addition to fulfilling his duties to the Post Office Department, Kelley promoted his idea for a fraternal order of farmers patterned after the Masonic Order. Many rejected his idea, but he gradually began to cultivate support for his idea among a core of persons who would become the founders of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry. Among them was William Saunders, Superintendent of the propagating gardens of the Department of Agriculture.

At first Saunders was also a skeptic. Then he took a trip to the Mid West and discussed Kelley’s idea with farmers from that region. Their enthusiastic responses to the idea of a national farmers fraternity swayed Saunders to support Kelley’s efforts and it was not long before the National Grange was founded in Saunders’ Department of Agriculture office on December 4, 1867. Seven men were present that day and are considered the founders of the National Grange. Though not credited as founders, Kelley’s wife Temperance and his niece, Caroline Hall, played important roles in forming the Grange and giving women equal standing with men in the Grange from its very beginning.

The founders then created Potomac Grange #1 as an example of what local Granges would look like and operate across the country. From there, the founders mailed promotional materials to farmers across the country in an attempt to get grass roots, local Granges started. This was expensive and not at all successful. At this point, it looked like Kelley’s grand idea was not going much further than Washington, D.C.

That is when Kelley shocked the other founders by announcing he had resigned his position with the Post Office Department and was prepared to go into the country, recruit farmers and set up local Granges. After their initial shock, the founders voiced their support and even voted Kelley a $2,000 annual salary to be paid from dues and charter fees collected from new Granges.

With very little money in hand, Kelley set out for Minnesota with the idea of organizing Granges along the way to his farm. Once the seed money was gone, the plan called for dues and fees from new Granges to keep the train rolling. By the time he reached the farm on money borrowed from Masons in Madison, Wisconsin, Kelley had signed up just one new Grange in Fredonia, New York. Farmers were just not ready to hand over their hard earned cash for an idea that sounded good but did not promise immediate results.

Kelley arrived home weary, hungry and very discouraged. He was sorely disappointed that American farmers could not grasp the value of banding together to improve their livelihoods and that of their families. He was almost ready to give up the fight, but his wife, Temperance, encouraged him to go on and even presented him with $500.00 that she had inherited from a distant relative.

Rejuvenated, Kelley set out once again. This time, however, he concentrated on his home state, Minnesota. Before long, there were a dozen Subordinate Granges in Minnesota and the first ever State Grange was formed there in 1869. Meanwhile, Granges started organizing in other Mid Western states such as Iowa, Indiana and Illinois. Farmers had reached the point where they could no longer tolerate the heavy handedness of the railroads, the suppliers and others who left them with little profit for the labors. They had seen the light of Kelley’s idea and the Grange movement was well under way in this country.

While the confluence of circumstances in rural America in the late 1860s certainly created the tinder for the Grange movement, without the grit and tenacity of Oliver Hudson Kelley there would have been no spark to ignite the movement. Kelley deserves to be the one going into the Agriculture Hall of Fame, because he was the doer who made it all happen. As Grangers we should all feel proud for and of him. We should also adopt his spirit and enthusiasm to get the Grange growing again. In his book The Grange, Friend of the Farmer 1867-1947, Charles M. Gardner states that if Grangers would look back on those early days just once a year, “Perhaps it would inspire Patrons of the present time with a deeper sense of loyalty to the Order, an appreciation of its benefits and a determination to work for its extension with equally unselfish zeal.”