Two years later he started Rochester Advertiser, a daily newspaper serving the farmers of western New York, particularly the valley of the Genesee River.
The Cultivator is remembered for carrying articles by Yale University professor Samuel William Johnson, an analytical chemist involved in soil testing, measuring for deficiency in ammonia, lime or phosphorus.
In the opening pages he gives a mission statement for the journal: "The present may be appropriately termed the age of experiment – bold [and] persevering ... No course of proceeding, whatever may be its sanctions, is allowed to escape without investigation – no error, whatever may be its antiquity, can hope for impunity – no dogma, however venerable, but must submit to a thorough re-examination.
The disposition to follow where ever truth leads, in defiance of preconceived opinions or prejudices, is becoming general, and, if tempered by caution and directed by knowledge, cannot fail to be productive of the happiest of results.
The beneficial influence of this state of things is most apparent in the pursuits of Education and Agriculture....As the farming body ... has been intellectual and intelligent ... in exact proportion ... has been the march of national wealth and civilized society.
"Gypsum, or Plaster of Paris, has become so essential an item in the successful cultivation of the soil, and is so intimately blended with Clover in all our Wheat districts, that the theory of its operation, and its practical utility, will be explained and enforced.
"[2] Students Eben Horsford in Germany and John Pitkin Norton in Scotland acted as correspondents for The Cultivator, contributing monthly letters in 1844 and 5 describing their observations and scientific studies.