This website presents the digitized collection of correspondence and other ephemera of William Penn Brooks, of the Massachusetts Agricultural College. From 1877 to 1888, Brooks helped organize and run the Sapporo Agricultural College in Japan, which had been established by the Massachusetts Agricultural College, faculty and students, in Hokkaido, Japan. Most of the correspondence is between Brooks and his sister, while he was in Japan. Each letter is in offered as a pdf file, and Brooks faithfully wrote to his sister about every month. The letters are well-preserved, making them easy to read, and they catalog the daily goings on of the newfound agricultural college. There are also photographs and biographical works about Brooks' influence on agriculture. Visitors to the site should not miss the Japanese paper from 1915 titled "A Historical Sketch of the College of Agriculture, Tohoku Imperial University: What America Has Done for a Japanese Government College". In it, the authors describe Sapporo as becoming an "experiment station for American civilization" due to the Agricultural College's strong influence.
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