Charles L. Flint

Charles Louis Flint, born May 8, 1824, in Middleton, Massachusetts, and died February 26, 1889, in Hillman, Georgia, was a lawyer, cofounder and first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, a lecturer in cattle and dairy farming, and the first secretary and later fourth president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College Board of Trustees. After graduating from Harvard in 1849, he accepted the secretarial position with the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture in 1853, a post he initially declined, and held it for twenty seven years, elevating agricultural literacy through annual reports and educational publications on dairy farming, grasses and forage plants. He later served as president of the debt-troubled Massachusetts Agricultural College from 1879 to 1880 without salary, reorganizing its finances before resigning, and beyond agriculture he contributed to founding the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and served on Boston's School Committee.