Adrian A. Parsons, a Civil War veteran, engaged in diversified farming near here in 1884. In the 1890s, he began purposeful, sustained cultivation of soybeans for forage and fertilizer on his farm, at a time when soybeans were not widely grown in U.S. agriculture until the 1930s. He originated the Mikado variety in 1905 and boosted yields by inoculating seed with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil. In 1928, the American Soybean Association recognized him as “the pioneer of all soybean growers in Indiana.” He demonstrated the crop’s practical utility for average farms and advanced its importance. When Parsons died in 1929, Indiana farmers planted 326,000 acres of soybeans. By 1939, more than 1.3 million acres were planted, ranking Indiana second in the nation.