Former NMSU President Luther Foster and his grandson, Luther Foster Fleming.

When 86-year-old Luther Foster Fleming, the grandson of New Mexico State University’s fifth president, Luther Foster, handed over an assortment of Fleming family documents to the Hobson-Huntsinger University Archives in May, he was furnishing the archives with more than a family’s memories. Fleming’s gift will allow university archivists to add important information about Foster and the early history of NMSU. The documents are a welcome addition to their already extensive collection of NMSU presidential papers.

The gift includes notes and letters Luther Foster wrote during his tenure as president of the college, as director of the Agricultural Experiment Station and as professor and head of the Animal Husbandry Department. Also included in the documents were family bibles and family letters and photographs.

One photograph shows 14-year-old Luther Foster in the uniform of the Union Army taken in 1864, not long after, claiming to be 18, he had joined the army as a member of the Iowa cavalry.

Fleming recently donated his family’s papers to the NMSU archives. Documents such as the one at right provide valuable insight into the university’s early days.

Another document is Foster’s discharge paper showing the youthful soldier being released from the army near Atlanta in 1865. Another photograph shows Foster with his grandson, the young Rip Fleming, sitting next to him on a front porch swing.

Family of Educators

Luther Foster “Rip” Fleming moved to Las Cruces in 1928. His father, Burton Fleming, was dean of engineering. His mother, Luther Foster’s eldest daughter Florence Foster Fleming, also taught at the college. His aunt likewise was a teacher, as was his stepmother, Ethel. He remembers the original Hadley Hall as being the center of campus, and of course he attended the dedication of Foster Hall in 1930.

“The college campus ended just a very short distance east of Foster Hall where the swimming pool was,” Fleming recalls. “There was absolutely nothing between the east end of campus and the Organ Mountains.” Fleming recalls riding his bike or driving the three or four miles to campus to go swimming in that pool. “You know, it was hot. We paid a fee to the college to use the pool. It was an outdoor pool; there was a lifeguard and a couple of dressing rooms at one end.”

Agricultural Leader

Luther Foster’s Civil War discharge paper is among the papers recently donated to the university.

Luther Foster was first and foremost an agriculturalist – and somewhat of a tale-spinner, it would appear – but also quite a talented handyman when it came to leading agriculture programs out of their infancy at various colleges around the western United States. The president of New Mexico College of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts from 1901 to 1908, Foster had been hired away from the state agricultural experiment station in Laramie, Wyo. Before that, he had been the director of the state agricultural experiment station in Logan, Utah. Foster had arrived in Logan after helping establish the agricultural program at Montana State College in Bozeman, Mont.

Foster grew up on a farm in Iowa and was in the first class to graduate from the Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in Ames, Iowa. Thus, from the beginning he was involved with the agricultural and educational mission of land-grant colleges. After serving as a high school teacher and administrator in Iowa, he began teaching agricultural education in 1885 at the state college in Brookings, S.D., where he taught until his move to Montana.

Foster presided over a period of rapid growth in the number of students, faculty and staff at New Mexico A&M, and it was during his tenure that the college began to enroll many more students from across New Mexico, in addition to the traditional number of Dona Ana County students.

Luther Foster Fleming and his wife, Barbara.

Foster’s association with New Mexico A&M continued until his retirement in 1921. He helped establish the departments of horticulture, irrigation, soils, dairying and animal husbandry, and he participated in early planning for the creation of what is now known as the Jornada Experimental Range.

The Luther Foster family papers will reside in the New Mexico State University Archives, which are housed in Branson Library. The archives include the Rio Grande Historical Collections and the Hobson-Huntsinger University Archives.

“We decided that the best place for Luther Foster’s papers was here at the archives. It means a lot to me,” Fleming says.