Edward Lewis Sturtevant (1842-1898) and Waushakum Farm – Framingham farmer, botanist, physician and author, was one of the giants of his time in the science of agriculture. In 1867, E. Lewis Sturtevant together with his brothers, Joseph N. and Thomas L. Sturtevant purchased 200 acres at Waushakum Pond in South Framingham, Massachusetts. The farm soon became famous, under the name “Waushakum Farm,” for a series of brilliant experiments in agriculture.
The immediate concern of the Sturtevant brothers, however, was the development of a model dairy farm of Ayrshire cattle. Waushakum Farm soon became the home of this breed. Several scientific aspects of this work with Ayrshires are worth noting. Milk records of the herd and of individual animals, covering many milking periods, were kept and still constitute, according to dairymen of our day, a most valuable contribution to dairying.
But even in these first days on Waushakum Farm, the Ayrshires did not occupy all of his time. Indian corn attracted Sturtevant from the first. No sooner had he settled on Waushakum Farm than he began a botanical and
cultural study of maize which he continued to the time of his death. The first fruits of his work with corn was the introduction of an improved variety of Yellow Flint, the new sort being called “Waushakum.” Breeding this new variety was a piece of practical work that brought Waushakum Farm more prominence in agriculture than any of his scientific work, “scientific farming” at that time not being in high repute with tillers of the soil.
To Sturtevant is given the credit of having built the first
lysimeter in America. This instrument, to measure the percolation of water through a certain depth of soil, was put in on the Waushakum Farm in
1875.
As the years advanced, he put more and more energy in the rapidly growing field of agricultural research until finally experimentation came to claim most of his attention. His eminence in research on Waushakum Farm brought him many opportunities to speak and write on agricultural affairs, in which work his facile pen and ready speech greatly enhanced his reputation as an experimenter.