Collections: Horticulture

George W. Barton was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts in 1896. After attending Concord High School in Concord, Barton began his studies in horticulture and agriculture at Massachusetts Agricultural College.

The Barton collection includes diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, newspaper clippings, programs, announcements, and his herbarium, and relates primarily to his career at the Massachusetts Agricultural College where he studied horticulture and agriculture from 1914-1918.

Marshall O. Lanphear spent forty-five years at Massachusetts Agricultural College, earning his B.A in 1918 and a Master’s in 1926, after which he taught agronomy and served as college registrar. After service as an infantryman at the end of the first World War, Lanphear worked briefly as an instructor at the Mount Hermon School before returning to MAC for graduate study. Known to his colleagues as “Whitey,” he taught courses on farm management, dairying, and pomology and on his retirement, Lanphear was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters. He died on April 24, 1993 at the age of 98.

The Marshall O. Lanphear Papers include a number of his published articles, correspondence regarding his honorary degree, speeches, lecture notes and personal items including illustrated Christmas cards from 1915, his 1917 driver’s license, and correspondence related to his retirement. There is also a folder of business records from the college farm.

For nearly 30 years, Fred C. Sears served as Professor of Pomology at the Massachusetts Agricultural College. Born in Lexington, Mass., in 1866, Sears was raised on the Kansas prairies and educated at Kansas State College. After graduating in 1892, he taught horticulture in Kansas, Utah, and Nova Scotia before returning to Massachusetts and to MAC in 1907. The author of three textbooks and numerous articles on fruit culture and orcharding, he also developed the successful Bay Road Fruit Farm with his colleagues Frank A. Waugh and E.R. Critchett. Sears died at his home in Amherst in October 1949.

In addition to several offprints, the collection contains a set of articles written by Sears for the Country Gentleman bound with editorial correspondence; the well-edited original manuscripts of Sears’ textbooks Productive Orcharding (1914) and Productive Small Fruit Culture (1920), including correspondence, reviews, and photographs; Reports of the Massachusetts Fruit Growers Association (1911-1912, 1914-1916), and editions of Productive Orcharding (1927) and Fruit Growing Projects (1912) bound with Japanese titles.

A 1932 graduate of Massachusetts State College (later University of Massachusetts Amherst), Oswald Tippo earned his doctorate in botany from Harvard in 1937. A respected plant anatomist, Tippo’s career was divided relatively evenly between the laboratory and higher administrative offices. Joining the faculty at the University of Illinois in 1937, he was eventually tabbed to become Dean of the Graduate School. After moving to Yale as Eaton Professor of Botany (1955-1960), he served as Provost at the University of Colorado and Executive Dean of Arts and Sciences at New York University (1963), before returning to UMass Amherst in 1964. As Provost under President John W. Lederle, Tippo oversaw a period of rapid expansion at the University, and in 1970, he was appointed as the first Chancellor of the Amherst campus. One year later, he was named Commonwealth Professor of Botany, remaining in that position until his retirement in June 1982. After his retirement, Tippo was often seen “holding court” at his regular table at the University Club. He remained in Amherst with his wife Emmie until his death in 1999.

The Tippo Papers are a robust collection of professional and administrative correspondence, speeches, research notes, notes from Tippo’s student years, photographs, and several of his publications. The collection documents Tippo’s unique relationship with UMass as both Provost and Chancellor as well as his tenure as a Professor of Botany.

Born in Wisconsin but raised and educated in Kansas, Frank Waugh got his first teaching job at Oklahoma State University. He went on to teach at the University of Vermont and finally settled down in Amherst, as a professor at Massachusetts Agricultural College. While at Mass Aggie, he became well know for establishing the second landscape gardening department in the country, later the department of landscape architecture. At a time when the field of landscape architecture was still taking root, Waugh’s influence was significant in shaping the profession. His contributions include numerous articles and books, the designs he planned and implemented, and the many students he taught and mentored. A natural offshoot of his work as a landscape architect, Waugh pursued other artistic avenues as well, most notably photography and etching. He served at MAC, later Massachusetts State College, for nearly forty years before retiring in 1939.

The collection includes an extensive representation of Waugh’s published articles along with biographical materials. The centerpiece, however, is the large number of photographs, lantern slides, and etchings. While his publications reveal the mind of a pioneer in his field, together these images portray the heart and soul of Waugh as an artist.