Oliver Hudson Kelley

Oliver Hudson Kelley was one of the key founders of the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, a fraternal organization built to unite American farmers. Born in Boston in 1826, he moved to the Minnesota frontier in 1849 and became a farmer before taking a clerk's job with the United States Bureau of Agriculture in 1864, which sent him traveling through the war damaged Eastern and Southern United States during Reconstruction. Believing farmers and their families needed a fraternal organization to rebuild rural life, Kelley built the partnerships that became the Grange's seven original founders, and on November 15, 1867 he laid the groundwork for the new organization, serving as its first secretary until he resigned in 1878.