Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs
Making a Difference in Rural Illinois
A Foundation for Sustainable Rural Community Development
Liberty Hyde Bailey, Jr.
Chairman of the Country Life Commission
Liberty Hyde Bailey, Jr., was born in South Haven, MI, in 1858, earned a bachelor’s degree at Michigan Agricultural College (MAC) in 1882, and was named chair of the college’s new Department of Horticulture and Landscape Gardening in 1885 after working with Harvard botanist Asa Gray. While at MAC, he designed the first building dedicated to horticulture teaching and research in America (Eustace-Cole Hall). Before it was completed, he became professor of General and Experimental Horticulture at Cornell University, where he spent the rest of his career.
Bailey was named dean of Cornell’s College of Agriculture in 1903. He was largely responsible for legislation to establish the State College of Agriculture at Ithaca in 1904. He retired in 1913 at age 55, keeping his goal of spending 25 years gaining an education, 25 years working in his profession, and 25 years just doing what he wanted to do. Although most of his career was spent at Cornell, Michigan claims him as its native son. His childhood home in South Haven is now a National and Michigan Historic Site.
Bailey became known as the “Dean of American Horticulture.” He was president of the American Society for Horticultural Science, the American Pomological Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He contributed more than 1200 papers and wrote or edited almost 200 books, including practical guides on pruning, nursery management, and fruit culture, and the massive Cyclopedia of Horticulture. Another work, Hortus, was co-edited with daughter Ethel Zoe Bailey.
His donation of about 125,000 plant specimens and 3000 books to Cornell launched the Bailey Hortorium. His book, The Holy Earth, contributed to the relatively new Conservation Movement and helped set the stage for the successor Environmental Movement in the 1960s. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him chair of the Country Life Commission in 1908; the commission’s report (text) led to many improvements in rural life, including the Cooperative Extension Service and the 4-H Youth Program, and other aspects of rural community development
Bailey’s contributions earned him many honors, both before and after his death on Christmas Day, 1954, at age 97. In addition to numerous medals, honorary degrees and memberships in both U.S. and foreign scientific societies, a postage stamp was issued honoring gardening and horticulture on the 100th anniversary of his birth. A number of buildings, both at Michigan State and Cornell, have been named for him, as well as Bailey School and Bailey Street in East Lansing, MI. The Bailey Scholars Program, initiated in 1998 at Michigan State University, emphasizes trans-disciplinary, self-directed, and active learning for undergraduates that is designed to, in the tradition of educator John Dewey, develop “the whole person” (Michigan State University).
Works by Liberty Hyde Bailey
- 1903. The Nature-Study Idea. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.
- 1905. The Outlook to Nature. New York: Macmillan Co.
- 1907-1909. Cyclopedia of American Agriculture: A Popular Survey of Agricultural Conditions, Practices and Ideals in the United States and Canada. New York: Macmillan Co.
- 1915. The Holy Earth. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons.
- 1933. Hortus: A Concise Dictionary of Gardening, General Horticulture and Cultivated Plants in North America. New York: Macmillan, c. 1930.
- 1908. The State and the Farmer. New York: Macmillan Co.
Recommended Resources
- “Liberty Hyde Bailey: A Man of All Seasons” http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/bailey/index.html (Accessed: July 17, 2008).
- Michigan State University Department of Horticulture, “Liberty Hyde Bailey,” http://www.hrt.msu.edu/bailey.htm (Accessed: May 21, 2008).
- Rodgers, Andrew Denny, III. 1949. Liberty Hyde Bailey: A story of American Plant Sciences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
