Edwin Potter Smith - Chenango Co. NY Farm Bureau Manager, 1916

Edwin Potter Smith

Has Rendered Great Service to Chenango County Farm Bureau

Utica Saturday Globe

 

Edwin Potter Smith

1887 - 1967

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Some Changes in Office of Farm Bureau

Norwich Sun, January 18, 1919

 

There will be a radical change in the personnel of the management of the farm bureau office during the month of February.  At the meeting of the executive committee of the Chenango County Farm Bureau association to be announced soon.  Edwin P. Smith manager, and Fred D. Palmer, assistant, will each tender their resignations.  Mr. Palmer's is to be effective on or about February 1, while Mr. Smith will remain until March 1, or until his successor is secured.  Both these young men will actively engage in farming.

 

Edwin P. Smith came to Norwich as the first manager of the farm bureau and under his guidance and through his undivided efforts the work of the bureau has become of inestimable value to the farmers and the citizens of Chenango county, the membership has grown to exceed one thousand men and women interested in the agricultural pursuits of the county.  The farm bureau was organized just four years ago.

 

It is very pleasing to note that Mr. Smith is so well pleased with Chenango county that he has decided to make his permanent home here.  In company with his father-in-law, John M. Howard of Sherburne, he has purchased the 230 acre Rowland farm just south of Sherburne village and will occupy and operate it beginning March 1.  The farm will be stocked with grade and pure-bred Holstein Friesians and eventually Mr. Smith hopes to become a pure-bred breeder.  For several years past the Rowland farm has been depreciating in Productive value and Mr. Smith will now have opportunity to work out in practical demonstration the theories which he ahs propounded and aided other Chenango county men in establishing to the betterment of farm conditions.

 

Fred D. Palmer, the assistant manager, who has been here during the past nine months, will return to Lisle, Broome county, his home, and there will operate a dairy and general farm.

 

Both men have been deservedly popular with all those connected with farm bureau work and it is regretted that they are leaving it.

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Obituary

Binghamton Press, February 25, 1966

 

Edwin P. Smith, a retired Sherburne farmer who was the first Chenango County agricultural agent, died last night in Binghamton.  He was 78 years old.  Mr. Smith, a native of Newark Valley, was the first agricultural agent of the Chenango County Farm Bureau from 1914 to 1919.  A graduate of Cornell University and the University of Rochester, he was a member and former president of the Sherburne Board of Education on which he served from 1935 to 1958.  For 40 years from 1918 until he retired in 1958 he ran a large dairy and produce farm at Sherburne.  He was a warden and vestryman of Christ Episcopal Church in Sherburne, and a former president of the New York State Holstein-Friesian Association.  Funeral services will be conducted by the Rev. Willard Cook at 2:30 p.m. Monday in Christ Church, Sherburne.  Mr. Smith is survived by his wife, Gertrude; a brother, Paul, and a sister, Mrs. William Stimmer, both of Newark Valley; four daughters, Mrs. Henry P. Drexler of Smyrna, Mrs. William K. Browne, of Kansas City, Kans., Mrs. Edward T. Moore of 41 Kendall Avenue, Binghamton, and Mrs. Booth Alden of Cincinnati, Ohio; a son, Howard E. Smith of Washington, D.C. and 13 grandchildren.  [Buried Sherburne West Hill Cemetery, Chenango Co., NY]