Corn-Makers 223 



female symbol which proclaimed the maternal nature of the 

 corn. 



Dent corn forms the bulk of the American corn crop. Its 

 aristocracy are Reid's Yellow, Boone County White, Learning, 

 Clarage and Silvermine. Each of these F.F.C.'s has a score 

 of descendants, some of which are in the social-register class 

 while others are regarded as family disgraces. Dent corn his- 

 tory really begins in Brown County, Ohio, where a pioneer 

 farmer, Gordon Hopkins, by name, developed a breed of 

 reddish-colored corn which gave such good yield that his 

 neighbors began coming to him for seed. Gordon Hopkins' 

 corn was famous in the Scioto and Paint River Valleys when 

 these were the greatest corn-growing sections in the land, 

 a full century ago. It was a farmer from Brown County, mov- 

 ing westward to Illinois a few years after the Lincolns took 

 the trail to Sangamon, who took with him a sack of Gordon 

 Hopkins' red corn. 



That farmer Robert Reid was his name planted his 

 Gordon Hopkins on his corn title in Illinois. He was late get- 

 ting that first crop into the ground it takes time to clear 

 land to plant and the first year's yield was small. The Reids 

 tightened their belts against hunger and saved corn for 

 seed the next spring. When it was planted, young Reid was 

 stationed with his rifle on watch for the first marauding crow. 

 Anxiously, the Reids watched for the appearance of the green 

 shoots which would mean their life. When these began to 

 break the soil they counted the hills. And anxiety deepened 

 to actual fear. A great many of the hills never sprouted at all. 

 It looked as though Gordon Hopkins' corn wouldn't stand 

 the Illinois climate or the soil. 



Robert Reid's lips tightened grimly. He harnessed the horse 

 and rode round to the neighbors to beg for seed for those 

 empty hills. Any seed so long as it would sprout and make 

 returns in yellow bread. What he brought home in the saddle- 

 bag was "little yellow corn," all that any of the settlers had to 

 spare at that after-planting time. He set the kernels carefully 



