THE AUNT MARY’S SWEET CORN STORY 
I married into the Atkinson family in 1900, and on my first visit 
to the ancestral home (located between London and Plain City, 
Ohio), I found the most delicious sweet corn I had ever eaten. I 
asked its name, and the grandmother of the family, locally known as 
Aunt Nancy, told me that the corn had no name , but that it had 
always been in the Atkinson family. She, herself, had married into 
the family in 1850, and during the first corn season she had been 
told that in this family the women gathered the sweet corn seed 
from the stalks while the corn was still in the dough stage. For 35 
years, until, and including, 1884, she had gathered the green ears 
and ripened them, sometimes in an upper room, and often in the 
kitchen, because in rainy seasons the corn was most diff icult to 
ripen and often needed the heat of the kitchen fire. 
Her son’s wife, Aunt Mary, the hostess, told me that she also, on 
marrying into the family, had begun bringing the green ears into 
the house, and that all the seed during her occupancy had been gath¬ 
ered green and ripened with artificial heat when necessary. 
On my return home a planting of it was given me, in fact, during 
the following years several plantings were given me, because I never 
remembered to save the seed. Every person who ate in our home 
during the years my daughter was growing into womanhood spoke 
of the wonderful quality of our sweet corn. 
In 1934 I suddenly realized that the “best sweet corn in the world” 
would appeal to more people than the best peonies which I had been 
growing. 
As I had entirely lost my seed, I drove 120 miles to the home of 
Aunt Mary who had artificially ripened this corn for 50 years and 
found her sick unto death. She told me that she needed immediately 
$142.50, and in exchange she willingly gave me her little stock of 
seed of this wonderful corn. When shelled I found that it weighed 
eight pounds two ounces. 
The intense heat of the summer of 1934 had killed all the pollen on 
her early planting of sweet corn, but fortunately there was a very 
late planting of it. Just before the frost arrived, and while the ears 
on this late planting were still very green, I drove again to her home 
and paid her $147.50 for them. These green ears I carefully gath¬ 
ered and brought to my own home. 
I engaged an unemployed carpenter to help me. He placed about 
40 studs in my basement near the furnace, and into each of 
3 
