Leon Moyer Estabrook Manuscript

Collection

Identifier: MS0057

Staff Only

Content Description

The Leon Moyer Estabrook Manuscript is an unbound, 5,000 page typescript titled "Life of One American: Memoirs of Leon M. Estabrook," written between 1930 and 1936. Starting with his birth in 1869, Estabrook chronicled his life and work as a statistician and employee in U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Bureau of Statistics and Crop Estimation. The typescript includes descriptions of the early years of the Bureau of Plant Industry and interactions with prominent USDA scientists, including B. T. Galloway and Walter Swingle. There is further information relating to crop reporting and some observations on agricultural conditions during Estabrook's travels abroad to South America, Europe, and Africa. In addition to musings on his personal life, Estabrook wrote of daily operations in USDA buildings and candidates for departmental leadership.

Dates

Creation: 1930-1965

Conditions Governing Access

Contact Special Collections for access.

Biographical Sketch

In 1905, Leon Moyer Estabrook (1869-1937) organized and became the first Chief of the Office of Records, which centralized the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Bureau of Plant Industry's accounting systems. He became the Chief of the Office of Seed Distribution in 1909, then Chief Clerk of USDA. In 1913, Estabrook became Chief of the Bureau of Statistics (changed to Bureau of Crop Estimates in 1914). He represented USDA at the General Assembly meeting of the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome in 1920. Estabrook became associate chief of the new Bureau of Agricultural Economics in 1921.

Over 1923 and 1924, Estabrook took leave from USDA to establish Argentina's Bureau of Agricultural Economics and Statistics. From 1925 to 1929, he traveled the world to collect data and write reports for the first World Census of Agriculture (1930), for which he was highly commended. In 1930, he organized the first Inter-American Conference of Agriculture. Estabrook retired to his nursery in Maryland, Sunny Hill Farm, in 1931. He was later temporarily appointed consulting specialist in the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture, for which he travelled again to Argentina in 1934.