n the year 1876, as the great Philadelphia Centennial Exposition opened, the United States was still recovering from the cataclysmic upheaval of the Civil War, the agonies of Reconstruction, and a severe economic depression. Yet the mood of Americans, inspired largely by the industrial revolution and westward expansion, was one of almost unrestrained optimism-- faith in scientific, social, and cultural progress resulting from self-reliant, individual achievement.

When the Exposition opened on May 10, sensations such as electric arc lights and a great many of the mechanical and industrial exhibits were genuinely revolutionary, but the displays of agricultural advances must have been even more fascinating to one young Philadelphian in attendance, a self-reliant 18-year-old named W. Atlee Burpee. Young Burpee was about to demolish his father's plans for his future by establishing his own poultry and livestock mail order company.

The Burpees were a well-established Philadelphia family descended from French Canadian Huguenots whose original family name, Beaupe, had in the course of several generations assumed an Americanized spelling and pronunciation. W. Atlee Burpee, born in 1858, was expected to become a physician like his father and grandfather, but even in his early youth he seemed determined to pursue a different career. His boyhood hobby was poultry breeding-- an interest that soon expanded to include the breeding of livestock, dogs, and plants. The infant science of genetics fascinated him.

Selective breeding for the improvement of animals and plants was hardly new, but it remained somewhat haphazard, relying on experience, trial and error, and casual observation rather than on controlled experiments leading to scientifically proven principles. By the 1860s and 70s, publications containing the crucial genetic experiments of Gregor Johann Mendel, the father of modern genetics, were available at major libraries in Philadelphia and elsewhere, as were Charles Darwin's observations of selective breeding. However, few people even in the scientific community put much stock in Mendel's principles of heredity, which were not confirmed until 1900, 16 years after his death.

In all probability, young Burpee (who had a lifelong thirst for research) was familiar with Mendel's famous 1866 report entitled "Experiments with Plant Hybrids." It's also probable that he read reports by the very active British breeders of livestock, poultry, grains, and vegetables.

However, there is evidence that he concocted his own experimental breeding programs and did so with great success. By the time he was in his mid-teens, he was corresponding with English breeders, providing as well as receiving information, and gained quick recognition when his papers on his experiments were published in England. The English breeders must have been impressed. On one occasion, in fact, several of these eminent breeders came to the Burpee home, expecting to exchange information with a gentleman of some maturity-- and therefore mistaking Dr. Burpee for his son. They were astonished to learn that the breeding expert they sought was 16 years old!

Soon afterward, yielding to his father's wishes, he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, but he disliked it and simply could not visualize himself as a surgeon. When he dropped out, his father was predictably angry, but his mother was more tolerant of her son's unconventional interest and ambition. She loaned him $1,000 so that he could set himself up in the business of breeding poultry.

He kept in touch with the foreign visitors to his home (and to the Centennial Exposition), exchanging mail-order catalogues with them, and for about two years the W. Atlee Burpee Company was moderately successful. However, he soon needed to diversify in order to solve two growing problems: the need for repeat business every year and the need for a product that survived shipping well. He therefore began to breed dogs (particularly an excellent strain of border collies), as well as hogs, sheep, goats, and even calves.

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