Jeremiah M. Rusk

Union Army general, three-term governor of Wisconsin, and the first US Secretary of Agriculture (1889–93), appointed when Agriculture was elevated to a Cabinet-level department. Matters to this vault as the civilian-side driver of the 1890–91 transfer of the US weather service from the Army Signal Corps to a new Weather Bureau housed in his department: per Bob Glahn's NOAA-published institutional history, Rusk, "head of the very new Department of Agriculture, wanted the weather responsibility" (claim-1880s-agricultural-lobby-pressure-drove-weather-bureau-transfer), the executive-branch counterpart to Chief Signal Officer Adolphus Greely's non-opposition to losing it (claim-1890-organic-act-split-civilian-weather-duties-from-army-signal-corps).

References

• claim-1880s-agricultural-lobby-pressure-drove-weather-bureau-transfer
• claim-1890-organic-act-split-civilian-weather-duties-from-army-signal-corps