Henry W. Jeffers
American dairyman and politician (1871–1953)
Henry Williams Jeffers (January 4, 1871 – July 17, 1953) was an American dairyman and Republican Party politician who served as chairman of the New Jersey Republican State Committee.
Biography
Jeffers was born in Hartford, Pennsylvania, to Watson and Betsey Milburn (Oakley) Jeffers. He attended Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, Pennsylvania, before going on to Cornell University, where he received a B.S. degree in 1899. He married Anna C. Adams on July 14, 1898.
Starting in his senior year at Cornell in 1898, Jeffers worked for the Walker-Gordon Dairy Farm, eventually becoming president in 1918. At Walker-Gordon, based in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey, Jeffers invented a number of technological innovations streamlining dairy production, including the Jeffers bacteriology counter, the Jeffers feed calculator, and the Rotolactor (a rotary milking parlor, a sort of "carousel" for cows, invented in 1930).
Jeffers served on the New Jersey Board of Agriculture from 1916 to 1927. During World War I he served on advisory boards for the United States Department of Agriculture and the American Food Administration under Herbert Hoover.
Jeffers was among the founders of Plainsboro Township, having petitioned the New Jersey Legislature to form a new municipality out of sections of Cranbury and South Brunswick townships. After the township was officially founded on May 6, 1919, Jeffers was elected the first mayor.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5729676. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1871, 1953, 1899 and 1898.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry W. Jeffers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.