 Norton's protege Samuel William Johnson would become a leading expert in agricultural education, organizing a national conference that contributed to the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act of 1862 that awarded states 30,000 acres of federal land to help fund the creation of agricultural and mechanical colleges.Johnson has been dubbed "the father of the agricultural experiment station" in the United States,
Theodore Gold helped spearhead the 1853 formation of the Connecticut Agricultural Society, as well as the Connecticut Board of Agriculture that would follow in 1866.Created by the Connecticut General Assembly, the Board of Agriculture included the governor and a representative appointed by each county's agricultural society, giving the board wide latitude to pursue an agenda to benefit farming.