a partner bought the Pine Grove Iron Works on South Mountain near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. In 1840, at Creekside, and with the help of Cyrus McCormick, he demonstrated the operation of McCormick’s reaper for the first time in Pennsylvania. On the day appointed for the test, between 500 and 1,000 people showed up at Watts' farm to observe the "new-fangled" machine. When the farmhand sent to collect the cut grain was having difficulty managing his task, a stranger stepped out of the crowd to demonstrate the proper technique; it was Cyrus McCormick himself. His reaper proved to be one of the most important labor-saving agricultural devices of the nineteenth century. In 1851 Watts was elected the first President of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Society. He lobbied for the passage of the Morrill Act, which became law in 1862 and founded land-grant universities. In 1871, "At the request of President Ulysses S. Grant [. . . ] he joined his cabinet as United States Agricultural Commissioner and began an official investigation of the condition of the nation's forests. This inquiry led to the creation of the forestry division of the United States Department of Agriculture, which was established a few years later." References External links Obituary - New York Times, August 18, 1889 1801 births 1889 deaths American manufacturing businesspeople People from Carlisle, Pennsylvania 19th-century American businesspeople