If there were such a thing as a gene for historic destiny, Jim Jeffers would have it.
As Plainsboro kicked off its celebration of its 100th birthday with the Jan. 17 Centennial Gala at Plainsboro’s Crowne Plaza, Jeffers, a member of the Plainsboro Centennial Planning Committee, acknowledged that Plainsboro is in his DNA.
He is celebrating not only Plainsboro’s history, but also the Jeffers’ family dominating role in that history. The Jeffers family history seems to be a metaphor for Plainsboro’s history – the juxtaposition of land and intellect.
Jeffers’ great grandfather Henry Jeffers Sr., Plainsboro’s first mayor, was a landowner and dairy farmer, becoming president and owner of Plainsboro’s Walker-Gordon Farm in 1918, just one year before Plainsboro became a municipality. In keeping with the town’s farming and academic character, inadequate school facilities became the catalyst for the town’s leaders to petition the New Jersey Legislature to form a new town to benefit the families of the farm owners and farm workers.
Plainsboro’s connection to its farmland, thanks to Henry Jeffers Sr. was intellectual and innovative. And following the legacy of Henry Jeffers, Plainsboro today is known for its land (over 1,000 acres of preserved open space), but also for the fact that many pharmaceutical and research giants have chosen Plainsboro for their international corporate headquarters. Plainsboro is also home to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (a US Department of Entergy facility managed by Princeton University), one of the few nuclear fusion reactors in the world.
Graduating from the Cornell University’s first agricultural class in 1898, Henry Jeffers Sr. came to work for the one year old Walker-Gordon Laboratory Company in Plainsboro as the farm’s manager. Subsequently, he became one of the nation’s greatest innovators in dairy farming.
Mr. Jeffers, Sr., invented a number of technological innovations streamlining dairy production, including the Jeffers Bacteria Counter (used to count bacterial colonies in a petri dish), the Jeffers Feed Calculator (a method for measuring a cow’s nutritional feeding requirements) and the Rotolactor (a type of merry-go-round for cows that allowed for assembly line milking).
Mr. Jeffers, who served on the New Jersey Board of Agriculture from 1916 to 1927, was also a member of the advisory boards for the United States Department of Agriculture and the American Food Administration under President Herbert Hoover.
“My great grandfather never just identified a problem or challenge, he would go forward and find solutions,” said Jim Jeffers.
A big concern at Walker-Gordon was high infant mortality from undulant fever linked to contaminated milk. Henry not only figured out how to measure bacteria, but also focused on delivery systems to get the milk to New York and Philadelphia markets in a way that avoided spoiled milk. He took advantage of the newly invented refrigerated rail cars and Plainsboro’s perfect location, serviced by a now-defunct rail stop, halfway between the two population centers. The Walker-Gordon Dairy became the town’s largest employer and purchaser of farm crops.
Henry, Sr., also came up with an idea how to reduce the 24/7 unrelenting drudgery of milking (2,000) cows – thus the Rotolactor, which became an international sensation attracting a wide array of dignitaries, including the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev.
Henry’s son, Henry W. Jeffers, Jr., a Princeton University graduate and star athlete in football and lacrosse, succeeded his father as president of the company (1942-1974). He became mayor of Plainsboro in 1948 and served in that post for 26 years.
But then came the transition for both the Jeffers’ family and Plainsboro. Henry, Jr., was “facing headwinds and saw things falling apart; the dairy closed in 1971. The farm business model was dependent on door-to-door delivery, and then supermarkets came along with a brand new distribution system that cut out the direct home delivery. Consumers became tolerant of less quality in favor of lower cost. Our business model was inflexible, very centralized, and we could not compete,” said Jim Jeffers.
Simultaneously, Plainsboro was going through major land-use changes as the town’s potato farms (because of a shrinking potato market) were being sold to developers, such as Lincoln Properties.
Houses, apartments, condominiums replaced the potatoes, corn and alfalfa. The changes were the impetus for the present mayor, Pete Cantu, to become involved in local politics and put into place a planning and zoning infrastructure that would serve the best interests of its citizens.
“Henry Jeffers, Jr., after a life filled with enormous personal and professional success, died in 1974 after losing his wife, losing his farm, and losing most of his workforce. My father, Henry Jeffers III, grew up in this very stressful situation with enormous debts and decided to sell his land to Princeton University for its Princeton Forrestal development,” a sale that proved transformational for Plainsboro, said Jim.
When Jim left home to go to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, “I never thought I would return to Plainsboro. As an art history major, I anticipated a life in Manhattan or another urban center.”
But family history, rather an art history, pulled him back to the land in Plainsboro. In the municipality, he owns 400 acres, a portion of which is farmed for hay and soybeans and another portion of the land serves as the headquarters for the Walker-Gordon Lab Company, providing laboratory and research facilities for the healthcare or pharmaceutical industry.
“Serving on the Centennial Committee as the chief historical researcher, I owe a huge debt to Bill Hart, a member of the Plainsboro Historical Society, who wrote a history of Plainsboro, part of the series of books Images of America. I am developing a detailed history timeline, but could not have done it without Bill Hart’s work. The project has drawn me even closer to the community and the Jeffers’ legacy and has been extremely gratifying,” he said.
Here’s one further note of historic Princeton/Plainsboro connection: Henry Jeffers Sr. died in 1953 in Princeton Hospital, located at the time in Princeton Borough; the hospital also was the birthplace of Jeffers’ family members. Princeton Hospital is now located in Plainsboro and, like its new host community, is celebrating its 100 birthday.
For information on Plainsboro’s year long Centennial Celebration, please go to http://www.centennial2019.com.
