THE BONNEWITZ GARDENS, VAN WERT, OHIO 
on the Lincoln highway, U. S. Route 30, and also upon North and 
South route 127, and nearly everybody can find some friend who 
will be passing through Van Wert in August or September. 
Every hotel and restaurant, and we have great reason to be 
proud of our hotels and restaurants, will have an opportunity to 
serve Aunt Mary’s corn fresh every day, and every one of them 
will have had the same instructions for cooking it which you will 
find in this booklet. I am even hoping that some of you will tell 
your traveling friends that they should stop in Van Wert for the 
express purpose of trying the sweet corn which two widows kept 
alive for 85 years. 
But there is a more convenient method still, and here it is. You 
have no doubt noticed the picture of the very old colonial home on 
the inside front page of this booklet. This house was built by John 
Atkinson, (son of the great, great grandfather who first procured 
the corn), about 1850, as a home for his bride, Nancy Phillips, and 
here for thirty-five years she artificially ripened the corn. To this 
same home came Mary Stevens the bride of William Atkinson in 
1884 and in it for nearly fifty years (until she lost the farm), she 
ripened this same corn. This home is located near Plain City, Ohio, 
and one of the Atkinson cousins whose friendship I very much ap¬ 
preciate, has sent me the names of ten of its citizens who have 
been purchasers of this corn for use in their families. I have met 
only one of them and I presume none of the others have ever even 
heard of me. If you are enough interested in this corn to think of 
buying some seed of it, I suggest that you write one or more of 
these persons asking their opinion of the Atkinson corn. 
Of course you will include in your letter either a self-addressed 
envelope with the necessary three-cent stamp upon it, or a self- 
addressed post card. Here are the names, the address of each one 
of them being Plain City, Ohio. Mrs. F. B. McCullough, Mrs. J. W. 
Price, Mrs. Lura Kahler, Mrs. P. 0. Robinson, Mrs. T. B. McKirgan, 
Mr. A. W. Cary, Mr. D. E. Currier, Mr. J. R. Woods, Mr. L. W. Cary, 
and Mr. W. F. Justice. 
City dwellers will of course not be at all interested, unless they 
have nephews or nieces living in the country, or in a small village, 
who can grow this corn for sale to their neighbors, or to the vil¬ 
lage stores. I am growing golden bantam sweet corn on my farm, 
five miles out in the country, and last week, I sold over $42.00 
worth of it to the local grocers. Next week when Aunt Mary’s sweet 
corn is ready for sale I expect to more than double my weekly sales. 
Energetic boys and girls of fifteen years or over can probably 
do even better than I with my sixty-eight years. The green corn 
season is usually from six to ten weeks, and a local seed corn busi¬ 
ness on the best sweet corn in the world should add something 
additional to the money which many college students earn in vaca¬ 
tion months. 
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