Collections: Cranberry Station

Carl R. Fellers, trained as a chemist and an expert in the nutritional value of cranberry juice, was a professor and head of the Food Technology department, now Food Science, at the University. Fellers was born in Hastings, New York in 1893, earned his B.A. from Cornell in 1915, his M.S. and Ph.D from Rutgers in 1918, and earned a Medal of Merit for fighting the influenza outbreak during World War I. Fellers began work at the University in 1925 and while a professor, conducted research in bacteriology and food preservation, research which he would eventually apply to the food preservation and distribution practices of the United States Army during World War II. Fellers also worked closely with the cranberry growers and producers organization The Cranberry Exchange to help preserve and determine the nutritional value of their products. Fellers retired from the University in 1957.

The Carl R. Fellers Papers document his research on cranberry preservation, nutrition, and his work with the cranberry growers and producers association through published articles on cranberry and general food preservation, correspondence with The Cranberry Exchange on matters of cranberry nutrition and product marketing, and a collection of pamphlets, reports, and clippings on cranberry production. A typescript, unpublished history of cranberries by Fellers is also included in the collection.

H.J. Franklin was an expert cranberry grower and a trained entomologist, whose research centered on the bumble bee. Franklin would wed these two interests in his career at the University, where he studied the cranberry pollination habits of the bumble bee and oversaw the cultivation of cranberries at the University’s Cranberry Experiment Station at Wareham, which Franklin founded and directed from 1909 until he retired in 1953. Born in Guildford, Vermont in 1883, Franklin moved to Bernardston, Mass. when he was eleven, eventually attending the University of Massachusetts, where he earned his B.S in 1903, and Ph.D in 1912. Franklin spent his career and life with cranberries, owning and managing his own bogs in three eastern Massachusetts counties and working with cranberry producers to develop the industry. Franklin died in 1958 in Wareham, Mass.

The H.J. Franklin Papers document his research on the bumble bee as well as his work with cranberry producers. In the collection are reports from the cranberry grower’s association, published articles by Franklin on cranberries and the Bombidae, and reports from the State Agricultural Board on cranberry production.