Bradshaw

Instead of dying, he changed face of farming

When the railroad crossed the Louisiana prairies in 1880, land thought only suitable for wild cattle became accessible to farmers from the Midwest who flocked here to firmly establish Louisiana’s rice industry.

One of those emigres was Seaman A. Knapp, a farmer and educator who was a well-known advocate of progressive farming by the time he came to Louisiana in 1885 – most of his acclaim coming in the decades after doctors gave him only a year to live.