Farris, Oscar L.

Oscar Little Farris entered UT in 1911 and graduated in agriculture. He served as manager of the Scrub Baseball Club and athletic editor of the student newspaper, Orange and White. In 1920 Farris became Davidson County’s Agricultural Agent, a position he would hold for 21 of the almost 40 years he was employed by the university’s Agricultural Extension Service. While serving as extension agent in Maury County, Farris was responsible for the first “test and slaughter” attempt to control brucellosis in Tennessee, four years before the US Department of Agriculture instituted a similar program. A collector of farm tools and furnishings, he sought a state agricultural museum. In 1957 the legislature created such a museum, and in 1972 state agricultural officials dedicated the museum at the Ellington Agricultural Center in Nashville in Farris’s honor and named it the Oscar L. Farris Agricultural Museum.