 In the early 1850s, Horace Greeley, editor of the "New York Tribune" and a former congressman, bought a house in Chappaqua near the New York and Harlem Railroad station.In addition to giving his family a quiet and cool place to escape the city during hot summers, he also bought some land in the vicinity to use as a small farm, where he tested experimental agricultural techniques he had become aware of.His weekly column in the paper on the results of these tests made the "Tribune" one of the most widely read papers in rural America at that time.