Bakers Corner, Indiana

A post office was established at Bakers Corner in 1873, and remained in operation until it was discontinued in 1900.[3] Members of the Baker family served as early postmasters.[4] Bakers Corner - From Englewood to Autumn Gold By Paula Dunn, From Time to Thyme Thursday, July 16, 2015 9:11 PM If you've ever driven from Cicero to Sheridan, chances are you've gone through the small Hamilton County community of Bakers Corner. It's on 236th Street (which many of us still think of as State Road 47,) a half mile west of U.S. 31, in the southeast corner of Adams Township.

Bakers Corner may be tiny, but it's old. The area was settled sometime between 1831 and 1837. According to a 1986 Indianapolis News article, the first people to call Bakers Corner home were three sisters from Virginia, Elvira, Elmira and Nora Englewood. It's said they cleared the land and built a log cabin all by themselves, without any male help. Naturally, the settlement that grew up around them became known as "Englewood." That lasted until 1873 when a post office was established there. Since there was already an Englewood in Indiana, the name had to be changed. As the story goes, Bakers owned the land on three of the four corners of Englewood's crossroads (the intersection of 236th Street and Dunbar Road,) so "Baker's Corner" seemed a logical choice for the new name. And yes, it was "Baker's Corner" to begin with. Mary Elizabeth Wilson writes in "Growing Up With Bakers Corner" that the apostrophe disappeared about 20 years later when the postal department got tired of dealing with it. It's been "Bakers Corner" ever since. Bakers Corner's post office, i.e. a small cabinet with pigeon holes behind glass, was located in the store run first by C.B. Jones and later by his cousin, Wayvern "Casey" Jones. The store sold all kinds of goods and was the center of the community for many years. That same building also housed a telephone exchange upstairs, reached by an outside stairway. The post office closed in 1900 when mail begin being delivered from Sheridan and the telephone exchange ended in 1955 when dial service came in. The store itself lasted until 1978. Although most of the first settlers were Quaker, when a church was finally built in Bakers Corner it was a Wesleyan Methodist. Known as "Liberty" in the conference, it was founded in 1870. In 1917 the old frame church was replaced by a new brick building. Now called the Bakers Corner Wesleyan Church, it's still active today. Bakers Corner also once had a two-room brick school house in which grades one through eight were taught. Of course, I couldn't write about Bakers Corner without mentioning Pickett's Autumn Gold Sorghum, the community's claim to fame for almost 100 years.

In 1913 local blacksmith R. Warren Pickett tried his hand at raising some sorghum cane. Using his experience with a cider press, he built a press to squeeze juice from the cane, then cooked the juice up to make his first batch of sweet syrup. (If you aren't familiar with sorghum, it's similar to molasses, but has a distinctive taste.) Numerous improvements were made over the years and eventually, Pickett's Autumn Gold Sorghum became so popular and well known, not only could you find jars and cans in grocery stores and farm markets all over central Indiana, it was being shipped around the country. This was truly a family affair. After Warren died in an automobile accident, his son, Hollas "Hod" Pickett took over. Then, after Hod's death, Hod's sons, Joe and Ronnie, ran the business until Joe died, leaving Ronnie and his family in charge. Unfortunately, fire destroyed the factory in 2009 and it was never rebuilt. I still miss Pickett's Sorghum. My mother had a favorite cookie recipe that just isn't the same without it. (Paula Dunn's From Time to Thyme column appears each Friday in The Times.) (Posted by WMS, Jr., 1-18-2021) [5]

Bakers Corner is located at 40°07′50″N 86°08′15″W.