John Dana Archbold was born on July 10, 1910 at Bar Harbor, Maine. His maternal grandfather, John Dustin Archbold, was the first president of Standard Oil of New Jersey. Raised on a dairy farm in England, Archbold acquired a lifelong love of agriculture and rural life. As a young man Archbold developed a love of sailing and adventure that included a 1935 treasure hunt in the Caribbean that visited Dominica. Archbold came to love the island and bought a plantation, Springfield in 1935. He began as a producer of citrus crops but over the next fifty years grew a variety of other crops including bananas and cocoa as well as swine and poultry. After a lifetime of supporting a variety of agricultural enterprises on Dominica including a juice cannery, a banana fiber plant, and cocoa production, Archbold recognized that the island lacked the economics of scale necessary to successfully compete in the commercial production of almost all tropical products. This convinced him of the value of Dominica as a center for tourism and the preservation of its unique topical ecological features. In 1989, Archbold donated his beloved Springfield Plantation and adjacent estates to Clemson University to create the Archbold Tropical Research Center and received an honorary doctorate from Clemson the following year. John Dana Archbold died on November 29, 1993 at his farm in Virginia.
From the description of John Archbold papers, 1934-1994, (bulk 1947-1991) (Clemson University Libraries). WorldCat record id: 183891489
