Artist: Robert Wadsworth Grafton (1876–1936)
Justin Smith Morrill
MORRILL, JUSTIN SMITH (1810–1898), inducted by 1920
Justin Smith Morrill was a farmer and a US Representative from Vermont during the Civil War period. He sponsored the Morrill Land-Grant College Act, signed into law by President Lincoln in 1862. This legislation granted federal lands to the states, and the states sold the land and invested the proceeds in bonds to support the building of new colleges to "benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts." These land-grant colleges greatly expanded educational opportunities and supported agricultural research, at a time when most American universities were private institutions. This “Father of Agricultural Colleges” was then elected to the Senate in 1867, where he served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, defining citizenship and expanding the protection of civil rights. Justin Morrill was one of the first inductees in the National Agricultural Hall of Fame.
This portrait is framed as a triptych, with two other agricultural policy leaders, Henry Adams and William Hatch.
Source: Saddle & Sirloin Guidebook 2026, p. 143