John Seabrook, 91, farm-family philanthropist

John Martin Seabrook, 91, scion of the behemoth Cumberland County farm bearing his family's name and a successful international businessman and philanthropist who donated the largest farmland preserve in New Jersey's history, died of heart failure Wednesday at home in Aiken, S.C.

Mr. Seabrook's interest in New Jersey agriculture started at age 9 when he worked in the vegetable fields on the farm started by his father, C.F., and his grandfather.

The youngest of four children, he developed an interest in chemistry as he sorted bulbs and studied the soil. Seabrook Farms would become one of the largest industrialized farms in the United States, growing a variety of vegetables and fruits for canning or freezing.

After graduating from high school, Mr. Seabrook earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1939 from Princeton University. He then immediately went to work on the family farm.

During World War II, it became obvious that the frozen-food industry was headed for boom years, but Seabrook Farms was plagued by a labor shortage. Mr. Seabrook, who was in charge of labor and sales, saw an opportunity to hire thousands of Japanese Americans living in relocation centers in the Western United States. He recruited them to move to Salem with the promise of a fresh start, offering them steady jobs as farmhands and free housing and utilities.

In Salem, Japanese Americans built a Buddhist temple, a chapter of the Japanese Citizens League, and an American Legion post. And, for a while, they made their employer one of the most prosperous frozen-food companies in the world.

By 1954, Mr. Seabrook was president of Seabrook Farms. He was dubbed the "Spinach King" by the company, which ran advertising pictures of his face.

Mr. Seabrook's first marriage, to Anne Schlaudecker, ended in divorce in 1951. In the mid-1950s, he dated actress Eva Gabor, who used some of what she had learned about farm life during visits to Seabrook Farms in her role on the 1960s television series Green Acres.

In 1956, Mr. Seabrook married Elizabeth Ann Toomey, a United Press International reporter he had met en route to Grace Kelly's wedding in Monaco.

By 1959, Seabrook Farms employed 5,000 people on nearly 25,000 acres. That year, Mr. Seabrook had a dispute with his father, who owned controlling stock in the farm. His father sold the company to spite his son, and Mr. Seabrook quit.

"When you ask my father about his stormy relationship with his father, he often said, 'Well, it goes to show that you can't keep the old bulls and the young bulls in the same pasture,' and that, usually, is the end of the conversation," son John Jr. wrote in a New Yorker article in 1995.

"A few months after Seabrook Farms was sold, my mother answered the door one morning to find a man, sent by C.F., holding an eviction notice. C.F. had refused to let my parents buy their house, although they had offered to repeatedly, and now he was kicking them out," John Jr. wrote. "Exiled from Seabrook, Mom and Dad moved to a house outside Salem, about 20 miles away. My father was 42, was out of a job, and owed money."

In 1960, Mr. Seabrook joined IU International Corp., a utilities company in Wilmington. By the time he retired as president in 1981, Mr. Seabrook had built IU into international conglomerates in energy, transportation, mining, and food. He remained active in many businesses, including as director of Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), before retiring in 1989.

Mr. Seabrook's style was defined by his beautifully tailored Savile Row suits. To accommodate his wardrobe, he installed a carousel like a dry cleaner's in the attic of his 18th-century farmhouse in Salem, and in the early 1960s, Esquire magazine first named him to its Best Dressed Men in America list.

"You could stand in the doorway, press a button, and watch as the history of my father, in the form of suits from all the different eras of his life, moved slowly past," John  Jr. wrote in 1998. "My father's closet was his inheritance from his father. Not the clothes themselves, but the belief that a custom-made English suit, worn properly, was a powerful engine of advancement within the establishment."

Mr. Seabrook collected and drove l9th-century carriages and was a devotee of the sport of "coaching." He helped found the Carriage Association of America and was a member of the British Coaching Club. He drove his horses and carriages in Newport, R.I., with the American Coaching Club.

In 2000, Mr. Seabrook and his wife moved to Aiken, where he devoted much of his time to preserving a 2,000-acre park.

Mr. Seabrook's interest in New Jersey's agricultural heritage never waned, and he ensured that the farmland he still owned in Salem County would be preserved in perpetuity. In November, state Agriculture Secretary Charles Kuperus announced the purchase of the nearly 2,000 acres - the largest preservation deal in New Jersey history - saying, "This truly is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to preserve such a sizable portion of South Jersey's agricultural land base."

Mr. Seabrook was a member of the New Jersey Migrant Labor Board, with which he worked to improve conditions for seasonal agricultural workers.

In addition to his son John, Mr. Seabrook is survived by another son, Bruce; daughters Carol Boulanger and Lizanne Brooke; and five grandchildren. His wife died in 2005.

Friends may call after 10 a.m. today at Deerfield Presbyterian Church, 530 Old Deerfield Pike, Upper Deerfield Township, N.J., where a funeral service will begin at 11. Burial will be in the church cemetery.

Memorial donations may be made to the Brandywine Conservancy, Box 141, Chadds Ford, Pa. 19317.