Lowry Nelson papers

Collection

Identifier: uarc 651

Staff Only

Scope and Content

The Lowry Nelson papers primarily show his relationship with administrators of the University of Minnesota Department of Agriculture now the College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Sciences and the Agricultural Experiment Station. The papers also point up Nelson's long struggle to increase the allotment of research funds for rural sociology which was administered and budgeted jointly by the College of Liberal Arts, Department of Sociology, and the Agricultural Experiment Station within the Department of Agriculture.

The collection also contains a folder of correspondence and papers relating to President Franklin Roosevelt's Special Committee on Farm Tenancy on which Nelson served during 1936-1937. The committee worked with the Resettlement Administration and correspondence includes letters with Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior; Henry A. Wallace. Secretary of Agriculture; Brooks Hays, Democratic National Committeeman from Arkansas and later Congressman; and L. C. Gray. Executive Secretary of the committee.

While at Minnesota Professor Nelson wrote numerous books and articles and served on many national and international committees. Material on this phase of his career is noticeably absent from the collection

Dates

Creation: 1934-1965

Creator

Nelson, Lowry, 1893-1986 (Person)

Language of Materials

English

Use of Materials

Items in this collection do not circulate and may be used in-house only.

Copyright

Requests for permission to quote the Lowry Nelson papers should be arranged with the University of Minnesota Archives.

Biographical Sketch of Lowry Nelson 1893-1986

Lowry Nelson was born in 1893 at Ferron, Utah. He graduated from Utah State Agricultural college in 1916, and later attended the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his M.S. in 1924 and his Ph.D. in 1929. He was secretary to the president at Utah State in 1916-1917 and was assistant state county agent leader there from 1917-1918. He then was agricultural agent in Utah's Sanpete county until 1921, was editor of theUtah Farmerfrom 1921-1923, was director of the extension division at Brigham Young University from 1923-1934, and dean of the College of Applied Sciences at Brigham Young from 1929-1934

In 1934 Nelson organized the social welfare division of the Utah Emergency Relief administration. During the next year, he was regional advisor for the rural rehabilitation division of the Federal Emergency Relief administration in Utah, Nevada, California and Arizona. He was assistant director of the Rural Rehabilitation division in Washington D.C. in 1935-1936, then returned to Utah State college where he was director of the Agricultural Experiment station before coming to the University of Minnesota in 1937

He was a member of President Roosevelt's Farm Tenancy committee in 1936, which drafted the recommendation that Congress create the Farm Security administration. Nelson has had many overseas assignments. He was U.S. representative to the first meeting in Geneva, Switzerland of the Permanent Agricultural committee of the International Labor Organization and attended conferences of this committee again in 1947 and 1949. As a rural scientologist for the U.S. State Department, Nelson in 1946 made a study of Caribbean rural life. In 1954 and 1955, he studied Italian rural life under a Fulbright Research award. In 1952 he was a consultant for the Ford Foundation, to study the problem of evaluating technical assistance in Latin America.

Nelson authored many books includingRural Sociologyin 1948Rural Cubain 1950 and American Farm Lifein 1954.

Lowry Nelson retired from the University of Minnesota in 1958 after heading its rural sociology program for 21 years. He passed away on November 21, 1986 at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, Utah