Biography
Born in South Haven, Michigan, as the third son of farmers Liberty Hyde Bailey Sr. and Sarah Harrison Bailey, Bailey entered the Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) in 1878 and graduated in 1882. The next year, he became assistant to the renowned botanist Asa Gray. The same year, he married Annette Smith, the daughter of a Michigan cattle breeder, whom he met at the Michigan Agricultural College. They had two daughters, Sara May, born in 1887, and Ethel Zoe, born in 1889.
In 1885, he moved to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he in 1888 assumed the chair of Practical and Experimental Horticulture. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1900. He founded the College of Agriculture, and in 1904 he was able to secure public funding. He was dean of what was then known as New York State College of Agriculture from 1903-1913. In 1908, he was appointed Chairman of The National Commission on Country Life by president Theodore Roosevelt. Its 1909 Report called for rebuilding a great agricultural civilization in America. In 1913, he retired to become a private scholar and devote more time to social and political issues.
He edited The Cyclopedia of American Agriculture (1907–09), the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture (1900–02), and the Rural Science, Rural Textbook, Gardencraft, and Young Folks Library series of manuals. He was the founding editor of the journals Country Life in America and the Cornell Countryman. He dominated the field of horticultural literature, writing some sixty-five books, which together sold more than a million copies, including scientific works, efforts to explain botany to laypeople, a collection of poetry; edited more than a hundred books by other authors and published at least 1,300 articles and over 100 papers in pure taxonomy. He also coined the words "cultivar", "cultigen", and "indigen". His most significant and lasting contributions were in the botanical study of cultivated plants.
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“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)