THE BONNEWITZ GARDENS, VAN WERT, OHIO 
in which she was mistress of the Atkinson home, she gathered 
enough of this corn for seed, while it was still in the milk or dough 
stage, and that she ripened it artificially. In 1884, her son, William, 
married Mary Stevens of the Lancaster family of Lancaster, Penn¬ 
sylvania, and during the entire fifty years in which she has been 
mistress of the home, she also gathered this corn and ripened it 
indoors, sometimes bringing it to the warmth of the kitchen fire. 
They gave freely of the seed to neighbors and friends, and during 
the 85 years in which these two women gathered this corn, it is 
probable that a hundred or more families had it growing in their 
kitchen gardens. 
When I married into the family in 1900, seed was given to me, 
but like everybody else except Aunt Nancy and Aunt Mary, I lost it, 
but a fresh supply was always available at Aunt Mary’s. My own 
farmer did not succeed in saving a single ear of it in 1988. 
Artificially ripening Aunt Mary’s Sweet Corn, in an attic room in her home. 
Last summer I heard that Aunt Mary was on her death bed, and 
I traveled across the state to pay her a visit. I found her not only 
sick physically, but also greatly depressed mentally. Eventually I 
discovered that there was a $1,400 mortgage on the small farm, 
which she had succeeded in saving out of the 1928 farm collapse 
in Ohio, and that she could see no way of paying her mortgage, her 
interest, and insurance. I believe this white sweet corn is the best 
in the world, and finding that everyone to whom she and Aunt 
Nancy had given it, had lost their entire seed crop just as I had 
