Henry F. (Henry Flagg) French

Born in New Hampshire in 1813, Henry Flagg French built an unusually varied career as a lawyer, judge, public servant, writer, and farmer. He graduated from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, and alongside his legal work he ran a farm and carried out soil-improvement experiments. Contemporary accounts describe him as a strong advocate for applying scientific methods to agriculture.

French served as the first president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, now the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in the mid-1860s. His time there was brief, but the role placed him at the center of one of the country’s early efforts to create a public college devoted to agriculture and practical education.

Later, he practiced before the U.S. Supreme Court and served in Washington as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. He also wrote on farming and drainage, and his name became permanently attached to the "French drain," a system for improving wet land that helped spread his influence well beyond the institutions where he worked. He died in 1885.