Charles Louis Flint

Charles Louis Flint (May 8, 1824 – February 26, 1889) was a lawyer, cofounder and first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, a lecturer in cattle and dairy farming, the first secretary of the Massachusetts Agricultural College Board of Trustees (now known as the University of Massachusetts Amherst) and the college's fourth president. Flint was born in Middleton, Massachusetts, on May 8, 1824. He graduated from Harvard University in 1849 and entered the Law School in 1850. In 1853, he became secretary of the newly formed Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, remaining in that position for 27 years. He was a member of the Boston School Committee and was involved in founding of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Flint was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, where he lectured on dairy farming for four years. He served as elected secretary of the Board of Trustees for 22 years. On the resignation of President Clark during a budgetary crisis in 1879, Flint was elected president and served without a salary. After reorganizing the debt-ridden college with some success, he placed his resignation in the spring of 1880, and eventually left his post as secretary of the college board in 1885. In the later years of his life, Flint worked as president of the New England Mortgage Security Company, and remained an active member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and the Boston Society of Natural History. After a period of declining health he died during a trip to the South, on February 26, 1889, at a hotel in Hillman, Georgia.