Penn State University Archives

Penn State was chartered in 1855 as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania and renamed the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania in 1862. Its first president, Dr. Evan Pugh, firmly believed that as Pennsylvania's land grant institution, the college must perform scientific investigations in agriculture and communicate this knowledge to the state's farmers. It first distributed research publications and invited farmers to campus to see new innovations in the 1870s. In 1892, it launched the nation's first correspondence courses in agriculture. Between 1900 and 1911 it provided lectures and demonstrations at farmers' institutes in most counties, at Farmers' Week on campus, and through agricultural trains which traveled throughout the Commonwealth.

In 1911 Pennsylvania State College president Edwin E. Sparks requested money from the state legislature to begin a system of county agricultural agents to act as conduits of information between the School of Agriculture and practicing farmers. In 1912, the College funded its own agents in Blair, Butler, Mercer, Montgomery and Washington counties. The following year the legislature provided $18,000 to fund these agents. Only with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act by Congress, which provided $10,000 annually for agricultural and home economics extension in each state and even more funds if states added matching money, did the Pennsylvania General Assembly begin regular appropriations for extension agents.

By 1921 sixty-two of the sixty-seven counties had full-time agents. Pennsylvania was one of only six states that had a centralized extension organization independent of local control. The agents provided technical information from the USDA and the experiment station, supervised experimental plantings, judged at local fairs, organized 4-H youth clubs, publicized their activities in newspapers, and recruited students for Penn State.

The extension service employed specialists in economics, forestry, pesticides, soils, agronomy, family life, and other subjects. They were headquartered on campus and held academic rank as "Extension Professors." They periodically travelled to the counties at the invitation of agents to provide new information or solutions to specific problems. Agents and extension faculty distributed reams of publications from the USDA, and Penn State's agricultural experiment station, extension service, and individual departments in the College of Agriculture.

The bulk of this collection contains the county extension agents' narrative and statistical annual reports of their activities, 1912-1988. Also included in the collection, but available only in the repository, are financial records, 1917-1950; plans of work for the extension service; USDA publications; correspondence; photographs; Neighborhood Youth Corps records, 1965-1970; Extension bulletins; and compiled historical information about the program.

The reports are arranged alphabetically by county, thereunder chronologically.

The actual records are housed and available in the Penn State University Archives, Paterno Library, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa. 16802.

Contact :

Jackie Esposito or Robyn Dyke

(814/865-7931) for additional information.