5 U.S. presidents with deep agricultural roots

Throughout history, American presidents who have an understanding of rural America and the farmers and ranchers living there have prospered more often than not.

The roots of Americana indeed run into the fertile soils spread across the country. Given the role agriculture played in the establishment of not just the United States, but the colonies from whence it originated, it’s no surprise the number of U.S. Presidents with solid backgrounds in agriculture. In fact, the idea of a farmer- or rancher-in-chief is no more distant than the many photographs of President Ronald Reagan riding horseback.

Whether it was ancient Siberians crossing the Bering Land Bridge tens of thousands of years ago, or the Norsemen of Denmark sailing across the Atlantic around the 10th century, these continents North and South America have always served as a beacon for all things agriculture and trade. The same was true when the European kingdoms of Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands, began sending colonists to various parts of this expansive tract now known as the United States.

From cotton and tobacco in the southern areas to timber and furs in the north, the U.S. has served as a fertile crescent in its own right for centuries, and there’s little wonder that so many of its presidents celebrate a rural heritage.

Here’s an opportunity to consider the farming tradition of just a few of our most celebrated commanders-in-chief and the backgrounds they represent. This list is in no way exhaustive.

1. George Washington — Lived: February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799

The nation’s first president served as such from April 30, 1789, to March 4, 1797. The world is well acquainted with his military background — from his time as a colonial officer of the Virginia militia under British command to his service as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War — leading to his unchallenged election to the presidency.

Washington’s father, Augustine, was the owner of plantations and slaves, and it was on the farms of Little Hunting Creek and Ferry Farm in Virginia that he was raised. His father died young, at the age of 48, and left to George his Ferry Farm and 10 slaves, while George’s half-brother, Lawrence, inherited Little Hunting Creek and renamed it Mount Vernon. George inherited an interest in Mount Vernon upon his brother’s death in 1752, and then the rest when his widow died in 1761. Ferry Farm served as a home for Washington’s own mother until 1772 when it was sold to a family friend and fellow Revolutionary War Gen. Hugh Mercer.

Trained as a surveyor, George was appointed surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia, at 17 years of age, and accumulated an additional 3,800 acres. At 26, he married the 27-year-old widow Martha Dandridge Custis, and along with that came an interest in the 18,000 acre Custis estate he helped her manage on behalf of her children. After retiring from the presidency, Washington returned to Mount Vernon and resumed farming there until he died.

2. Thomas Jefferson — Lived: April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826

America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, served in office between March 4, 1801, and March 4, 1809. Jefferson was born on his father’s Shadwell Plantation into the planter class of the Virginia colony of Great Britain. Jefferson’s mother, Jane Randolph, was of a similar background and her cousin, William Randolph, left their family in care of his own estate upon his death.

Upon the death of his own father, the 21-year-old Thomas Jefferson inherited approximately 5,000 acres, which included the home, Monticello, along with its slaves. One of Jefferson’s big achievements as president was the acquisition known today as the Louisiana Purchase, which brought into the young nation most of the Midwest and with it, most of what we call the agricultural heartland.

Jefferson also famously owned the Poplar Forest plantation near Lynchburg, Virginia, which he used as a summer retreat. Jefferson came into ownership of the 4,810-acre farm around 1773 when his wife inherited it upon the death of her father, John Wayles. The farm served as a hideout for Jefferson’s family while evading British capture during the Revolutionary War. The plantation was run by numerous enslaved families and the income it produced helped support Jefferson’s writing.

After his retirement, Jefferson not only founded the University of Virginia and what is now the Library of Congress, but continued his lifelong obsession with new crops, soil conditions, and agricultural techniques based on science. His primary cash crop was tobacco, and he experimented with wheat, flax, corn, hogs, and vineyards. One of the philosophical contributions made by Jefferson to the American Experiment was the ideal of the yeoman farmer, which is an integral component to what we now call “Jeffersonian Democracy.”

3. Abraham Lincoln — Lived: February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865

America’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, served from March 4, 1861, to April 15, 1865. He was famously born in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky, before his family moved to other farms in Indiana and Illinois. Unlike so many of his predecessors, Lincoln was born into a much poorer farming family, and one which neither owned slaves nor wanted them.

Lincoln’s childhood was spent working on his father’s farm and those of neighboring landowners, earning pay to help with family expenses. Hired out by his father to neighbors, he recalled in his later years his time spent grubbing, hoeing, building fence, and plowing, building up the athletic strength, which would later win him a county wrestling championship at the age of 21.

Witnessing slavery while transporting hogs by flatboat to New Orleans, Lincoln became affirmed in his own opposition to the agrarian slavery as practiced in the southern states, and it was this opposition to the slavery’s spread that would later define his presidency and the U.S. Civil War that followed. The effects of his Emancipation Proclamation upon the agricultural industry of his time have spawned not just books and movies but have shaped the modern farm even to this day — his legacy is not just preserving the union amid attempts at secession by slave states but ending the slave system that had defined southern agriculture to that point.

4. Jimmy Carter — Lived: October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024

America’s 39th president served from January 20, 1977, through January 20, 1981, and has the distinction of living to be the first reach the age of 100. Carter also had the distinction of serving as perhaps the quintessential “Farmer President,” not only having been raised on a peanut farm in Georgia, but running the operation after his father died.

Carter was an FFA member and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a submarine officer. The transition from sailor to farmer was rough, and Carter undertook academic coursework in the science of farming to make the operation successful. Carter had served as governor of the famously agrarian state of Georgia and represented a partisan philosophy that gave rise to the term “Carter Country,” as being a place of progressive rural Democrats.

Carter’s legacy as a president also includes his devotion to green energy systems and environmentalism that still inspires many progressive agricultural producers yet today.

5. Ronald Reagan — Lived: February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004

America’s 40th president, Ronald Reagan, served from January 20, 1981, through January 20, 1989, and carried with him from his screen actor days the persona of a cowboy. In real life, Reagan and his wife, Nancy, did in fact own the historic 688-acre Rancho del Cielo, which he purchased in 1974 while governor of California.

Located in Santa Barbara County, California, Reagan maintained horses at the ranch and had a staff keep it up while he served in the White House, using it as a “White House of the West” during his tenure. After leaving office Reagan developed Alzheimer’s disease and eventually Nancy decided to sell the property in 1998 to the Young America Foundation.

The ranch has great history dating back to the 1800s when it was built by descendants of Santiago de la Cruz Pico, who had arrived in California with the Anza Expedition in 1776.

Throughout the nation’s history, political candidates who claim an understanding of rural America have prospered more than not. To dismiss the economic and cultural significance of agriculture in the U.S. is to do so at one’s own political peril.

In no way is this list complete or exhaustive, as the biographies of our presidents demonstrate. But when it comes to former presidents with a connection to agriculture, there is reason for farmers to cheer.

Brian Boyce is an award-winning writer living on a farm in west-central Indiana.