1. Frederick Watts, was an agricultural reformer, lawyer and businessman.
15 Facts About Frederick Watts
1. 2.
Frederick Watts headed the US Department of Agriculture as commissioner of agriculture from 1871 to 1877 under President Ulysses S Grant.
3.
Frederick Watts served as President of the Board of Trustees of Pennsylvania State University from its founding in 1855 through 1874 and helped to organize many elements of the Land Grant University movement in America.
4.
Frederick Watts was President of the Cumberland Valley Railroad from 1840 to 1873.
5.
Frederick Watts was the son of lawyer David Watts, and the grandson of a Brigadier General in the American Revolution, named Frederick Watts.
6.
In 1827 Frederick Watts married Eliza Cranston, who bore three daughters before her death in 1832.
7.
Frederick Watts was a Whig and a member of St John's Episcopal Church in Carlisle.
8.
Frederick Watts practiced law and held positions in local courts starting in the 1820s.
9.
Frederick Watts had a law office and residence at 20 East High Street, later part of the Fraternal Order of Eagles in Carlisle.
10.
Frederick Watts lived with his family at "Creekside" on the Conodoguinet.
11.
The covered wooden Frederick Watts Bridge spanned the Creek near there, until it was destroyed by storm and vandals in the 1980s; it was then replaced by a concrete structure.
12.
Frederick Watts organized the Carlisle Gas and Water Company in 1854, and served as a member of the Dickinson College Board of Trustees.
13.
Frederick Watts's reaper proved to be one of the most important labor-saving agricultural devices of the nineteenth century.
14.
In 1851 Frederick Watts was elected the first President of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Society.
15.
Frederick Watts lobbied for the passage of the Morrill Act, which became law in 1862 and founded land-grant universities.