Background
Elbridge Gale was born on December 25, 1824, in Bennington, Vermont. He was the son of Isaac and Lydia (Gardner) Gale. He grew up on a farm near North Bennington and as a boy was studious and thoughtful.
Elbridge Gale was born on December 25, 1824, in Bennington, Vermont. He was the son of Isaac and Lydia (Gardner) Gale. He grew up on a farm near North Bennington and as a boy was studious and thoughtful.
Gale's love of nature was doubtless stimulated by his close association with his grandfather, Solomon Gale, who was greatly interested in geology and for whom he collected much geological material.
After graduating from the New Hampton Literary and Theological Institution, a Baptist school in New Hampshire, he attended Brown University, but serious illness terminated his course.
Gale began his ministerial career which lasted until 1870. He held Baptist pastorates successively at Johnson, Vermont; at Pavilion, Illinois; and finally at Manhattan, Kansas, whither he moved in 1864.
From 1868 to 1871, he was superintendent of schools for Riley County. Throughout these years in the Middle West, he must have been profoundly interested in horticulture, for in 1870, he became “professor of horticulture and superintendent of the nursery” at the Kansas State Agricultural College at Manhattan.
Later his title became “professor of botany and practical horticulture. ” This marked the end of his pastoral work and the beginning of his horticultural career, the first eight years of which he spent in the college.
In 1875, he was elected to the presidency of the Kansas State Horticultural Society, continuing in that capacity until 1886, when he resigned, having in 1884 gone to southern Florida on account of his health.
In 1889, the United States Department of Agriculture imported from India a few trees each of several mango varieties, some of which were sent to Gale.
Since Gale alone succeeded in saving a single tree of the Mulgoba variety, it was through him that the choicest of all mango varieties came to be known in southern Florida. His study of the cultural requirements and methods of propagation of the fruit advanced the efforts of the United States Department of Agriculture by many years. His devotion to horticultural interests and his faith in the possibilities of the West and South are exhibited in his presidential addresses before the state horticultural society of Kansas and in his extended correspondence with horticulturists of the federal government.
In Florida, Gale turned his attention to subtropical fruits and plants and concerned himself particularly with less well-developed varieties such as the mango, guava, avocado, and others. He considered the mango the most deserving of attention of the newer fruits, and it is with it, especially with the Mulgoba variety, that his name is the most intimately associated.
In 1853, Gale married Elizabeth Carpenter.
