Orange Judd - Education and Early Career

Education and Early Career

In 1847 Judd graduated from Wesleyan University. After graduating he would take on several teaching positions, first at a high school in Portland, Connecticut in 1847, then at Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts from 1848 to 1849, then as a principal of a high school in Middletown, Connecticut in 1850. In 1850 he began studying analytical and agricultural chemistry at Yale for the next three years with John Pitkin Norton. In 1852 he took a job lecturing on agriculture in Windham County, Connecticut until 1853. Judd recalled that his chemistry research at Yale lowered much of his hope for the science, deeming that "much of the so-called agricultural science is yet unreliable." Judd still sought a way to bring the latest research to farmers, but was nevertheless skeptical of much of it.

In 1853 he was made editor of the American Agriculturist (sometimes referred to as the American Agriculturalist), then run by its founders, Anthony B. Allen and his brother Richard L. Allen. He became owner and publisher in 1856. In 1856 Judd moved to Flushing, New York where he lived until 1871. Judd championed the idea of clear and concise writing in journals, and was able to turn a paper of scientific jargon into something any literate farmer was able to understand. Editors would obtain scientific material from colleges and would evaluate it and make it accessible for their readers. He was also one of the first people to practically apply opinion polls—sending out questionnaires on crop reports to his subscribers between May and September and publishing the results in the American Agriculturist. His success helped make American Agriculturist into one of the leading agricultural journals in the nation, going from a circulation 1,000 in 1856, to over 100,000 in 1864. However the paper was hard hit by the depression of 1873, and was failing by 1879. He would stay there until 1881, alongside being the agricultural editor of the New York Times from 1855 to 1863. He became the principal member of the firm Orange Judd and Company, located in Chicago, which focused on publishing agricultural and scientific books, as well as The Hearth and Home from 1870 to 1873.