Eminent Farmer
County: Lincoln
A. J. Wimple, Beresford, has been recognized as one of South Dakota’s most successful corn breeders. His outstanding contribution in this field was the development of “Wimple’s Yellow Dent Corn.” Wimple entered this corn at many state and national corn shows and won numerous prizes, including sweepstakes at the national corn show in Chicago in 1907. He continued to improve this corn by selection and breeding until “Wimple’s Yellow Dent Corn” was one of the best-known and most widely grown varieties in South Dakota.
Wimple was born in Stone Arabia, New York, Oct. 5, 1851. His parents with their family drove overland with a span of oxen to Parkesburg, Iowa, which Wimple was five-years-old. As a lad, Wimple worked on farms during the summer and attended the district school during the winter months.
At the age of 19, he decided that Dakota Territory was the land of opportunity. He hitched oxen to a new lumber wagon, and with $30 in his pocket and a breaking plow in his wagon he started for Dakota, arriving at Vermillion, South Dakota, on Aug. 24, 1870.
At first Wimple worked on farms as a day-by-day laborer. With his savings, he purchased additional oxen and broke the prairie at the rate of $3.50 per acre. In this manner he saved enough money to buy his first eighty acres of Dakota land before he was 21-years-old.
In 1873, Wimple took a homestead near Beresford and made that his permanent home.
Wimple was married to Adelia Le Suer at Butler Center, Iowa, July 9, 1877. Four children were born to the Wimples.