THE STORY 
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Aunt Mary’s Sweet Corn 
-*e>9<=£- 
The Highest Priced 85-Year-Old Corn 
in the World 
This pile of Corn Sold for $142.50—$17.50 per Pound. 
Cephas Atkinson, one of my daughter’s great, great grand¬ 
fathers, came to Ohio in 1812, while some of the Indians were 
still in the land. He settled in the Darby Plains near the 
center of the state, and in the 1880’s, 40’s and 50’s before the 
railroads were built, he became a cattle buyer and drover, 
driving his cattle over the mountains to Philadelphia and 
other eastern markets. 
At some time in his long life (none of his descendents know 
when or where), he came into possession of a sweet corn 
which I believe to be the very best in the world. There is no 
record whatever of its name, and not even a description of 
any corn with its outstanding characteristic, combined with 
its extremely high qualities, is found in any of the several 
recent histories of the development of corn as a food crop. It 
seems probable that Professor Essig of the California De¬ 
partment of Agriculture is correct, in his suggestion that 
this pioneer obtained the sweet corn from an Indian, or from 
some other pioneer who had thus obtained it. 
I first became acquainted with the corn in 1900, when with 
Mrs. Bonnewitz I made a trip to the ancestral home of the 
Atkinsons in the Darby Plains. Here I met my wife’s grand¬ 
mother, the widow of John Atkinson who was the son of 
the 1812 pioneer. 
