Oren Cornelius Gregg

Oren Cornelius Gregg (November 2, 1845 – February 2, 1926) was a farmer and educator from Minnesota. In the 1880s, agricultural education in Minnesota was in trouble: farmers would not travel to the Twin Cities for classes, and university students did not want to study farming. Gregg, a successful dairy farmer from Lyon County, saved the day by bringing lectures directly to farmers. Beginning in 1885, he led the Minnesota Farmers' Institute, a public lecture series that became the agricultural extension service at the University of Minnesota. Through the institutes that he held across the state, Gregg encouraged farmers to diversify their crops and taught them how to make dairy farming more efficient.

Early life Gregg was born in Enosburgh, Vermont in 1845. His father was a traveling minister, and his grandfather ran a highly regarded dairy farm. Gregg worked as a clerk, a schoolteacher, and a lay minister as a young man, before he settled on a homestead in Lyon County, Minnesota, in 1870. He and his wife, Charlotte, named the homestead Coteau Farm. They went into dairy farming, hoping to avoid problems such as soil depletion that can come with growing a single cash crop.