Isaac Newton (agriculturalist)
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Isaac Newton (March 31, 1800 – June 19, 1867) was an agriculturalist who became the first
United States Commissioner of Agriculture The United States secretary of agriculture is the head of the United States Department of Agriculture. The position carries similar responsibilities to those of agriculture ministers in other governments. The department includes several organi ...
.


Life and career

Newton was born in
Burlington County, New Jersey Burlington County is a county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The county is the largest by area in New Jersey. Its county seat is Mount Holly.
, on March 31, 1800, to Isaac and Mary Newton, a
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family of English descent. His father died when he was still a baby, and Newton grew up on his paternal grandfather's farm. He attended local schools but did not go to college. At the age of 21, he married Dorothy Birdsall and became the manager of a pair of adjacent farms in
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. His entrepreneurial spirit led him to also open an ice cream and confectionery store in Philadelphia as a source of extra income. Around 1854, Newton bought 1000 acres of farmland in Virginia, which he hired overseers to run when his wife refused to live there. A series of disasters (among them the outbreak of the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
) sent Newton to Washington, D.C., in search of a government job. At some earlier point, he had begun selling farm products to the
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, and he had recently made the acquaintance of President
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
, so he was well-positioned to seek a job at a time when the war had filled Washington with place-seekers. In 1861, he became superintendent of the Agricultural Division of the
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. The following year, when
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established the
United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, ...
(USDA), Newton was appointed the USDA's first commissioner. The appointment was controversial; at least one agricultural publication wrote a sarcastic and almost certainly unfair editorial headlined "Who is Isaac Newton?" alleging that he was illiterate. The more modern view is that he was "energetic and basically sound" in his ideas for the development of the brand-new department. Among other things, he was responsible for inaugurating the USDA's statistical services to collect and analyze agricultural data. He also championed a nationwide system of daily weather reports for farmers, which eventually led to establishment of the U.S. Weather Service under USDA. He even set up an experimental farm on what is now the
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quite near the Capitol—in fact, right where today's USDA headquarters stand. Newton arranged for the USDA to issue monthly and annual agricultural reports. These were very popular with farmers and circulated widely. However, they also represented a potential threat to established agricultural journals, so it is not surprising that many of the editors of these journals repeatedly called for Newton to step down. Newton did not help his own cause by vigorously abusing his most vocal critics and by indulging in nepotism. For example, he appointed a son to take charge of his experimental farm, and he twice appointed a nephew to be chief clerk of the USDA. (His paternal granddaughter, Amanda Newton, also worked for the USDA, but she was hired many years after his death.) Despite everything, he retained President Lincoln's support up to the president's death. In July 1866, Newton suffered a heat stroke while visiting his experimental farm, and he never fully recovered. He died a little less than a year later, on June 19, 1867.


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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Newton, Isaac 1800 births 1867 deaths American agriculturalists United States Department of Agriculture officials People from Burlington County, New Jersey American civil servants Deaths from hyperthermia