Biographical Note
Alumnus Merle T. Jenkins earned a BS in agronomy from Oregon
Agricultural College in 1916. During his student years, he was a military
cadet and member of the Osolito Club. Jenkins attended for three academic
years from the fall of 1913 until June 1916, when he graduated. He served
in the military during World War I and completed his MS and Ph.D. degrees
at Iowa State University. As an agronomist with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) , he was internationally recognized for his development
of hybrid corn. He assisted many countries with development of their own
hybrid corn programs.
Jenkins retired from the USDA in 1958 as Head of the Corn and Sorghum
Section in Beltsville, Maryland; and worked in his retirement for the
Farmers Forage Research Cooperative, a seed foundation associated with
Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana, until 1974.
Merle Truman Jenkins was born in Brookings, South Dakota, in 1895 and
graduated from Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon. He died in
Medford, Oregon, in 1986.
Content Description
The Merle T. Jenkins Papers document the student years of Jenkins at
Oregon Agricultural College and his career as an agronomist and developer
of corn hybrids. The collection includes a photograph album and
photographs; correspondence; certificates and diplomas; publications;
ephemera; and artifacts.
The photograph album covers the period 1913-1918. It consists
predominantly of images taken or assembled by Jenkins of his student years
at Oregon Agricultural College; it also includes some images of his high
school classmates in Portland, Oregon and his military service. The album
includes images of an outing to Willamette Falls in Oregon City; several
farms and farming families including the William Vaughn Ranch in Dayton,
Harold Davis, and Mr. and Mrs. Sandstrom; and children, families, and
dogs. Images of the Oregon Agricultural College campus, including the
agricultural fields west of campus; the Willamette River at Corvallis; and
the Osolito Club house are included in the album. Various student
activities are depicted including an outing to Marys Peak, a baseball
game, the women's field hockey team, cadets and military activities, and a
May Day pageant. Candid snapshots with the captions "strip poker" and
"before the nightshirt parade" are included. The album includes
photographs of women students, as well as men, including a woman on hike
in the woods. Numerous images of the Oregon coast and several photographs
of Multnomah Falls are included. The album also includes a few newspaper
clippings, Osolito Club dance cards and ephemeral items, and cadet uniform
patches.
Other photographs in the collection include photographic prints of
Jenkins at agricultural research conferences and international events,
primarily during the 1940s and 1950s. Some of these images include his
wife Ruth. The collection includes three panoramic prints; two are of his
military unit during World War I. The third is of a 1932 Genetics Congress
in Ithaca, New York.
The bulk of the paper records in the collection are two volumes of
letters to Jenkins from colleagues in the United States and around the
world on the occasions of his retirement from the U.S. Department of
Agriculture in 1958 and the Farmers Forage Research Cooperative in 1974.
These letters describe his many accomplishments and the international
impact of his career.
The collection also includes certificates and diplomas; a list of
hybrid corn varieties; the book
Corn for the Northwest, by George F. Will
(1930); and ephemera and artifacts.