Neal’s Paymaster Corn

 

By Zoë Haggard 

 

Tuckers Crossroads near Lebanon lies just north of the busy hum of I-40. Single family houses dot each side of Big Springs Road beneath the power lines cutting across the open sky. At the crossroad’s center on Trousdale Ferry Pike is a school that has nearly doubled in size and attendance, a testament to the growing population.  

 

To the east on the pike, the white-frame building of the Bethlehem Church of Christ sits among the rolling hills and wide fields that remind you of early Tennessee photographs now hung in history museums and old cafes.

 

But the 100 or so century farms still of Wilson County are scattered with bales of hay and grazing Black Angus Cattle. The muddy irrigation ponds and skeletal barns still remind passers-by that the land has character that transcends time.

 

It’s that same resilient character that led an ordinary corn farmer named William Haskell Neal at the turn of the 20th century to accomplish what generations of farmers before him could not yet do: grow two-eared corn.

 

Such a feat would grant unheard of revenue compared to the one-eared corn stalks most common in the era.

 

Over the course of 13 years, between 1898 and 1911, Neal patiently selected and saved the seed from two-eared corn. Little did he know that this breeding process would land him as the first Tennessee Agricultural Hall of Fame inductee and that the new variety would account for $2 million in agricultural revenue by the Great Depression.

 

Neal, born in 1859, purchased the farm his descendants still live on today when he was 21. By the time the wiry little farmer with a balding head and wire spectacles was in his late thirties, Neal wanted to help out his fellow farmer.   

 

He got the idea to breed two-eared corn through selection from an article he read one evening in 1898 in the farm paper The Practical Farmer, according to Makers of Millions, a publication of the Tennessee Department of Agriculture from 1951.

 

It was then he began selecting seed, primarily focusing on Tennessee Red Cob. With selection, Neal had three main ideals: no white cobs, medium cob size, and deep grains, according to David Shields, Ph.D., from the University of South Carolina.

 

Shields has written extensively over Southern food culture and production. Neal’s Paymaster sticks out among some of the other corn developers, especially for Tennessee.

 

When many think of Southern crops, cotton and tobacco come to mind while corn is considered to mainly be grown in the Midwestern fields of Iowa, Indiana, and Missouri. Tennessee, however, ranks 17th in the U.S. for corn acreage according to the Tennessee Farm Bureau. In fact, an estimated 121 million bushels of corn are estimated to be produced in Tennessee.   

 

There were other farmer-initiated experiments before Neal. Squire Watson of Big Flat Creek in Bedford County and C.S. Looney of Franklin County both improved upon the red cob variety. But their corn seeds required rich soil and ample water and only rarely produced two ears of corn per stalk, according to the Shields.

 

Neal’s Paymaster Corn, Shields explained, “proved able to produce two good ears on most soil types in Tennessee, so it had a reputation of being a ‘reliable’ corn…14 to 16 rows” around the cob.

 

 

An ad page (page 11)  from the Lexington Herald published in 1918 featuring Neal’s Paymaster Corn.

 

 

However, Shields mentions that Neal’s Paymaster Corn of the red cob variety is considered outdated today.

 

The hybrid corn seeds were developed after World War II and are considered more ideal today. Hybrid corn seeds are crossed between two varieties of corn. They produce corn that is more sturdy and tough and has a greater yield potential weight-wise.

 

But it was the strengths of Neal’s Paymaster that was used by H.S. Bidwell of Minnesota to begin the process of hybridization, according to Makers of Millions. 

 

Paymaster’s increase in yield per acreage, reliability, and decent cost per pound were what made Neal’s corn stand out impressively by 1914 and become a staple in the catalogues by 1920, according to Shields. 

 

The name “Paymaster Corn” was suggested by Neal’s wife, Mary Lucinda Waters. She said the two-eared corn could pay a farmer as well as a prize-winning colt. The name became well-known across Tennessee and Kentucky.  

 

Eventually, the variety’s success was recognized in 1926 when Neal was presented with a “silver loving cup” by the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and then in 1929 when his corn won the Grand Championship at the Tennessee State fair. 

 

Upon receiving recognition, Neal said, “No man can live alone in the world. We must help each other in whatever ways we can. That is all I tried to do.”

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Hard-work and humility have transcended time through the generations of the Neal family. Today, they are still farmers, raising Black Angus and Hereford cattle in their acres of land scattered across Wilson County.

 

But like the remembered impact of their occupation, the legacy of W.H. Neal is quickly fading, remembered only by the yellow pages of old newspaper clippings and a photo or two.

 

“He was just a hard-working person...ahead of his time. He was trying to help everyone out,” said Ina Neal, wife of the late Kenneth Neal, grandson of W.H. Neal.

 

Even at 86 years old, Ina, a retired elementary school teacher, likes to work in her yard. Five months ago she fell down as she worked her garden. She sat on the sofa, injured leg propped on a stool in the home that she and her husband built together in 1958.

 

Their home is down the road from the reconstructed Bethlehem Church of Christ where W.H. Neal was an elder. And at the foot of her stool was her black leather-bound Holy Bible, a testament to the values she and her family still carry today.    

 

“I remember my husband talking about how he really never made a lot of money on it. He was really wanting to help the farmers…he never over-charged,” she said.

 

Her eldest son rode up in his white pick-up truck which carried two large rolled bales of hay in the back of its black Triple C Hydra Bed, the sure sign of a cattle farmer. Standing well over six feet tall, hands thick and callused, blue eyes tired but sharp, Pallas Holmes Neal strode into his childhood home and greeted Ina with a “Hey, Mama.”

 

Pal, as everyone calls him, raises cattle alongside his younger brothers, Phil and Perry.

 

“It’s more a way of life; gets in your blood,” Pal said

 

Growing up they raised mostly tobacco and cattle, and he remembers his father working him and his brothers from dawn until dusk, encouraging them to farm.

 

He understands, more so than the average person, the importance and remarkability of W.H. Neal’s corn at the time of its development.

 

“He could’ve made a bunch of millions and passed it on and we wouldn’t have to do all this work,” joked Pal.

 

“But it took a lot of perseverance. I really don’t know what possessed him to do that. He was really just an ordinary farmer,” he said.

 

But Neal’s success was short-lived. He died in 1934 at the age of 75 after falling off the back porch balcony of his home—which still stands today on Trousdale Ferry Pike beside the fields where he grew corn. A simple road marker in front of the white American Federal style house, built around 1911, is the only reminder of Neal’s contribution.

 

He was a man of his time, improving upon what was before him. And he did it to help out his fellow farmer, according to Ina.

 

“But nowadays if you had something everyone wanted, the first thing they’d want to do is cash in on it…He didn’t look at it that way…it was more on helping their fellow man out,” said Pal rather quietly as he looked away at the table scattered with news clippings of the family legend he never got to meet. 

 

It’s with nostalgia many farmers around rural Tennessee, like Pal and his brothers, remember the men like W.H. Neal who paved the way for them. Now, with fewer Tennesseans becoming farmers, the name of William Haskell Neal and his Paymaster corn remain hidden in the dormant fields beneath skies etched by powerlines.  

 

“As time moves on—that time don’t wait for anything,” said Pal.

 

Neal’s Paymaster Corn, a legend in its time, has been eclipsed by further agricultural advancements that minimize the impact of a corn stalk that can grow two ears. Even so, W.H. Neal’s accomplishment is remembered for its increase in yield and its origin of a man whose lab was his farm.