Sheridan, Indiana - News and Local Information - Growing Up With Bakers Corner: Mary Elizabeth Wilson a Hamilton County Indiana Life

The new book, "Growing Up With Bakers Corner: Mary Elizabeth Wilson a Hamilton County Indiana Life," provides a glimpse of nearly 100 years of history from one rural-Sheridan woman's life.

In 1907, a baby girl was born near the bustling little crossroads called Bakers Corner in central Indiana. Mary Elizabeth Wilson Stewart Robbins (1907-2003) grew up, was educated, married and raised her children in and near that town as the town lived on.

One must use imagination to see what Bakers Corner was like in the early years of the century: a busy world in itself. The two-story C.B. Jones store which also housed the telephone exchange, the tall brick school which had two well-filled rooms, a gas pump outside the store busy servicing Model Ts and one of the best sorghum mills in the Midwest--all thriving.

Mary Elizabeth's memoirs re-create this world with tales of scores of individuals from families still in the area. Her sketches cover farm, church, two-room school, and customs of everyday life in real detail.

Two of her relatives, great-niece Ellen Swain, now an archivist at the University of Illinois and granddaughter Carol Longenecker, the minister of the Bakers Corner Wesleyan Church who lives in a hundred-year-old family home, took over 1,200 pages of her memories and edited them into this lively, enjoyable and educational memoir.

The 240-page book, which has over 60 photos of early days in western Hamilton County, can be ordered from Hawthorne Publishing or from Rev. Carol Longenecker at 317-758-6213.