Biography
Liberty Hyde Bailey, Sr. moved to southern Michigan in 1842, and married Sarah Harrison in 1845. Liberty Hyde, Jr., was their third son, born in 1858. The pioneer family worked hard clearing woods, building a farm and planting an orchard, and produced much of their own food and clothing. They earned income primarily from butter, eggs, maple sugar, and wood, and Bailey Sr. worked off the farm to earn additional money for farm improvements. In 1854, they moved to South Haven at the mouth of the Black River, settling on a plot of land with good fruit growing potential. Sarah never recovered from the death of her eldest son in 1861; she died of scarlet fever in 1862. Bailey Sr. then married a young farm woman, Maria Bridges.
The Baileys were skillful and innovative farmers, and their farm became known for its prize-winning apple orchards. Father and son belonged to the newly organized South Haven Pomological Society. One of their orchards won a “first premium” as a model orchard, perfect in “culture, pruning, and fruitfulness.” Eventually the orchards included over 300 cultivars. Young Liberty became an expert on grafting; his skills were in great demand among his neighbors.
Liberty Hyde Bailey was educated in the local school, where his teacher, Julia Fields, taught him grammar, geometry, and Latin, and encouraged his interest in nature. He was also influenced by the books his father bought, including the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, Milton’s poems, and especially, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and Asa Gray’s Field, Forest, and Garden Botany.
Letter from Liberty Hyde Bailey, Sr.
Letter from Liberty Hyde Bailey, Sr. to his parents, March 22, 1858.
we have another son a full Blooded Yankee boy... Mother said to Sarah if she ever had another one she wanted to name it... we sent to her for a name... we think it will be L.H. Jun... the boy smart and bright as a dollar...born the 15 of March and weighed 7 1/2 lbs.
Birds
L. H. Bailey. “Birds” Speech delivered to the Michigan State Pomological Society, September 4, 1873.
Young Liberty Hyde Bailey became the ornithologist and entomologist for the South Haven Pomological Society. His first public presentation was an essay on birds, published in the Michigan Pomological Society’s Annual Report for 1873.
Michigan Agricultural College
![Liberty Hyde Bailey [back left] and friends at the Michigan Agricultural College](https://exhibits.library.cornell.edu/images/10402-8a1a60ae078aa5cd00c3cb6c6b723da7/full/!400,400/0/default.jpg)
Bailey entered the Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) in 1878 at age twenty. He flourished under the tutelage of Dr. William James Beal, who used a new experimental approach to teach botany, using living plants and laboratory work rather than only lectures and textbooks. He helped organize and edit The College Speculum, a quarterly paper providing both scientific and general reading. Graduating in August 1882, Bailey secured a post as a reporter on the Springfield, Illinois Morning Monitor.
Harvard University
Asa Gray, then America’s leading botanist, needed an assistant, and Beal recommended Bailey. By February 1883 Bailey was working at Harvard, arranging and classifying a large collection of pressed plants from Kew Gardens in London. He continued to learn from discussions with Gray about systematic and structural botany. Also significant to Bailey’s training were the vast collections at the Arnold Arboretum, the Cambridge Botanical Garden, the greenhouses and scientific agricultural work of the Bussey Institution, and the noted market gardens in nearby Arlington.
The Bailey Family
In 1883, Liberty Hyde Bailey 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.
Ethel Zoe Bailey and Liberty Hyde Bailey
Ethel accompanied her father on collecting trips until 1938. She helped collect specimens, pressing them under hundreds of damp blotters on lawns, hotel roofs or verandas, scrambling for them when the usual quick tropical showers came, and wrapping parcels to ship home.