North Lansing - Jacoba Munson Baker passed away peacefully at her longtime home on Auburn Road in North Lansing, NY, on May 11, 2019, just a couple months shy of her 99th birthday.
Jacoba was born in Lansing, NY, on July 6, 1920. She graduated from Groton High School and continued her education, earning a bachelor's degree in home economics from Michigan State University in 1943. She returned home after graduation and got a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension, where she met a young extension agent, Robert C. Baker. They were married in 1944 in Groton.
Jackie and Bob moved to State College, PA, shortly afterward for Bob to work on his master's degree at Penn State, and to Purdue University in 1956 for Bob to earn his PhD in poultry science. In between, in 1950, Jacoba and Bob started Baker's Chicken Coop at the New York State Fair, which is still operated by her children and grandchildren. The two also started Baker's Acres, a plant nursery in North Lansing. Jacoba had a lifelong passion for gardening, and Baker's Acres allowed her to pursue her love of horticulture as well as financially support the operation of their 75-acre farm during retirement. Baker's Acres is still operated by her daughter Reenie.
Jacoba's life was centered in the Lansing area, where she was very active in the Lansing United Methodist Church and many other civic organizations. Additionally, she and Bob had numerous opportunities for worldwide travel due to Bob's consulting work in food science and new product development. Bob's many international graduate students became lifelong friends to Bob and Jackie, keeping them in touch with worldwide events.
Jacoba is survived by her children Dale (Maureen Cowen) of Lansing; Kermit (Joan Barth) of Natick, MA; Regina Robbins (Kelly) of Knoxville, TN; Maureen Sandsted (Jeff) of Lansing; Johanna of Lansing; and Karen Applebee (Jody) of Towanda, PA; along with 12 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren, and her brother Fred C. Munson (Mary) of Manchester, MI. Her second son, Mike, died in 1969.
Jacoba is also predeceased by her husband, Bob, who passed away in 2006, and her siblings Cornelia Downie, Mary Benson, Jasper Munson, and Philip Munson. Her father, J. Paul, was born on Munson Road in Lansing, where he lived most of his life. He was working at the American University of Beirut when he met Jacoba's mother, Johanna Huffnagel, a native of Utrecht, Netherlands, who was at the time employed abroad as a governess. Married in Syria, Paul and Joh returned to Lansing shortly after their wedding.
A memorial service to celebrate Jacoba's life will be held at Lansing United Methodist Church on Saturday, June 15, 2019. Calling hours will be held from noon to 2:00 p.m. A memorial service will begin at 2:30 p.m. at the church, followed by a "Low Tea". As Jackie would have enjoyed, guests are invited to wear hats to the Low Tea celebration.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to Lansing United Methodist Church, 32 Brickyard Road, Lansing, NY 14850.
Information from the Lansing Funeral Home
An obituary as published in the Ithaca Journal on May 18, 2019
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One hundred years ago this past April 15, a woman from Holland married a man from Lansing in Beirut, Lebanon. They stood on a rug the woman had bought in Damascus, Syria.
Then, they traveled in trains across Asia Minor and then army trucks across war-torn Europe, the woman in front with the driver and the man in back with the troops.
They traveled through Constantinople, Turkey, Budapest, Hungary, Berlin, and then, from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, sailed across the U-Boat haunted Atlantic Ocean to New York City. They came to Lansing, where the man, Jasper Paul Munson, began farming with the woman, Johanna Huffnagel. She had never seen a farm before she settled on “The Old Miller Farm” on Munson Road.
“J. Paul” and “Joh” had a daughter, Johanna Cornelia, in February 1917, and then two more: Mary Esther in July 1918 and Jacoba Petronella Munson in July 1920. Mary is 98 years old now, and Jacoba is 96, but the “Munson Girls” have fond memories of growing up in Lansing.
“Our road was a mud road,” Mary said. “It wasn’t even Munson Road then, it was just a side road. When relatives would visit, I would take the horse and buggy down the mud road to meet them at the main road. In the spring, a scraper would come by and smooth out the mud, and we thought it was great.”
J. Paul became the principal (and Latin and algebra teacher) of Ludlowville High School in 1918 and, in 1920, the family moved up the road from the “lower place” to a larger house at 297 Munson Road.
Eight years later, there were six children in the family, the three girls and then the three boys: Jasper Paul, born in 1923; Phillip (“Pheep”) Huffnagel, born in 1924; and Fred Caleb, born in 1928. All attended the one-room “Newman District” schoolhouse on Van Ostrand Road, a mile and a half walk from home.
“Mrs. Bingham was our teacher for quite a few years,” Mary said. “She was grandmotherly and she would call me to her desk and ask for my glasses. She had a big box of clean ladies handkerchiefs and a special one for cleaning my glasses.
“We had a little more play time when we were in the lower grades, and I played outside with Charlie Volbrecht and Randell Tarbell. There was a gully behind the school and we would go down the hill to the creek. It’s always fun to play in a creek.”
There were 32 one-room school houses in the district. When J. Paul was elected district superintendent of schools for Groton, Lansing and Ithaca in 1921, he began a push to combine them. There were five separate consolidations which, in the end, reduced the 32 schools to two — Groton and Lansing. The last year the Newman school was open, there were only two students there.
After grade school, the sisters went to Groton for high school.
“Groton was larger than little Ludlowville,” Jacoba said.
Church, 4-H, and school were the foundation of their social lives. The family attended services and Sunday School at the West Groton Congregational Church, and the girls were active in Vacation Bible School and the Youth Group. The “Wise, Willing, Workers” 4-H group met twice a month for crafts and once a month for business, and the girls also played in the school band — Mary played the French horn (with a fellow named Clarence Benson) and Jacoba the clarinet.
“We were very organized,” Jacoba said. “One day we would drive the Munson car and the next day we would drive the Benson car. We kept very careful books.”
“We would drive our car to the Bensons and then they would drive us into Groton,” Mary added. “Into the city.”
“Clarence played a very musical horn,” Jacoba said. “That was the main thing.”
Both girls went to college after high school. Mary began at Cornell in 1937, and majored in Home Economics. She lived in Carl and Ruth Lewis’ home on Linden Avenue for three years, going to classes and caring for their new baby, George. Jacoba went to Michigan State, sharing rides for the long trip there and back.
When Mary entered her senior year, she moved into the dorms and waited tables at Willard Straight Hall to pay for her meals. Clarence would come on Saturday nights to take her home. “And I was so tired, I just wanted to go home,” Mary said.
Mary graduated from Cornell in 1941 and then taught school for two years in New Berlin. When she would come home, Clarence was still waiting to pick her up. They were married in 1943.
Jacoba graduated from Michigan State in 1943. She came home and applied for a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension agent Robert Baker. They were married in 1944.
Clarence was working at his Great Aunt Hattie Luce Buck’s farm when he and Mary were married, and he continued to work there for 2½ years afterward. Mary worked as a traveling nutritionist.
In 1945, the couple stopped in at the Coon Farm on Lansingville Road. They had heard through the Farm Bureau that the farm was for sale. They took possession in March 1946 with six cows. They named the farm “Bensvue.” There was no indoor plumbing.
Clarence Charles (“Chuck”) Benson was born in 1946; Marjorie Jane in 1948; Johanna Marie in 1950; Sara Elaine in 1952; and Andrew Fay in 1954.
Jacoba and Bob went to Penn State and to Purdue before Bob came back to Cornell as a PhD in Poultry and Food Science to teach and conduct research. He wrote more than 290 research papers, he invented the process for making chicken nuggets and pioneered the sale of chicken parts, rather than whole chickens. And, he invented “Cornell Chicken,” the foundation of so many Lansing fundraisers.
The two started “Bakers Chicken Coop” at the New York State Fair — with more than 30,000 chicken halves sold each year — and “Bakers Acres,” a nursery in north Lansing. And they had six children. Dale Robert was born in 1946; Myron Munson in 1948; Kermit Francis in 1950; Regina Ellen in 1952; Maureen Diane in 1955; and Johanna Maria in 1958.
Today, Jacoba lives in her house near Baker’s Acres and Mary has an apartment at Woodsedge. Their families are partial and present, but the two share a secret sisters’ smile and a laugh, and their care for one another is remarkable.
They also have what is now known as the “wedding rug” from Damascus, which hangs on Jacoba’s wall. All six children of J. Paul and Joh, all of their grandchildren, and more than two dozen of their great-grandchildren have stood on that rug to be married.
Together, Mary and Jacoba have more than 30 grandchildren and 35 great-grandchildren. If you live in Lansing, the chances are very good that you know more than one.
Extracted from the Ithaca Journal, August 3, 2016 [Matthew Montague]
MILLER-MUNSON FARM Munson Rd., Town of Lansing Henry Miller and his family came to this region from New Jersey and settled here about 1813. The original settler on the other side of the family was Caleb Munson, who came from Connecticut about 1817 and settled in the Town of Genoa north of the Lansing line. He was a grain dealer, and the writing-arm Windsor chair that he used in his business passes down in the family. The immediate past operator of the farm is J. Paul Munson, who continues to live on the place. He was principal of Ludlow-vile School for three years and district superintendent of schools for the Groton and Lansing ' supervisory districts for 38 years, retiring in 1959. His wife was the former Johanna Huffnagel, a native of Holland. They met in Syria while he was teaching at the American University in Beirut and she was engaged in Near East work. She died in 1957. Until the mid-1940s, the elder Munson also ran the family farm, then turned over the reins to his son, Philip Munson. The farm has 360 acres. The crops are 20 acres of oats, 30 acres of corn, 15 acres of Sudan grass and grazier for silage; 13 acres of wheat and 136 acres of hay. Livestock consist of a Holstein herd of 100 milking cows, two bulls, and 40 calves and heifers. The Philip Munsons' plans for the future are to pay the mortgage and send the children through college. Mr. and Mrs. Munson are acfive in Extension, Farm Bureau, 4-H Club and school affairs. They have four children: Cornelia, 18, a freshman at the State University College at Fredonia; Philip Jr., 16, a sophomore in Lansing Central School; Miles, 13, a pupil in the eighth grade, and Jasper, 11, a pupil in the sixth grade in Lansing.
Published in the Ithaca Journal on May 22, 1965, Sat • Page 59
A voice recording of J. Paul Munson is included in the the Older Persons' Records Project [Tompkins County], archived in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. [See J. Paul Munson, Munson Road, Groton, New York, 6/76 ]
Jacoba was born in Lansing, NY, on July 6, 1920. She graduated from Groton High School and continued her education, earning a bachelor's degree in home economics from Michigan State University in 1943. She returned home after graduation and got a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension, where she met a young extension agent, Robert C. Baker. They were married in 1944 in Groton.
Jackie and Bob moved to State College, PA, shortly afterward for Bob to work on his master's degree at Penn State, and to Purdue University in 1956 for Bob to earn his PhD in poultry science. In between, in 1950, Jacoba and Bob started Baker's Chicken Coop at the New York State Fair, which is still operated by her children and grandchildren. The two also started Baker's Acres, a plant nursery in North Lansing. Jacoba had a lifelong passion for gardening, and Baker's Acres allowed her to pursue her love of horticulture as well as financially support the operation of their 75-acre farm during retirement. Baker's Acres is still operated by her daughter Reenie.
Jacoba's life was centered in the Lansing area, where she was very active in the Lansing United Methodist Church and many other civic organizations. Additionally, she and Bob had numerous opportunities for worldwide travel due to Bob's consulting work in food science and new product development. Bob's many international graduate students became lifelong friends to Bob and Jackie, keeping them in touch with worldwide events.
Jacoba is survived by her children Dale (Maureen Cowen) of Lansing; Kermit (Joan Barth) of Natick, MA; Regina Robbins (Kelly) of Knoxville, TN; Maureen Sandsted (Jeff) of Lansing; Johanna of Lansing; and Karen Applebee (Jody) of Towanda, PA; along with 12 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren, and her brother Fred C. Munson (Mary) of Manchester, MI. Her second son, Mike, died in 1969.
Jacoba is also predeceased by her husband, Bob, who passed away in 2006, and her siblings Cornelia Downie, Mary Benson, Jasper Munson, and Philip Munson. Her father, J. Paul, was born on Munson Road in Lansing, where he lived most of his life. He was working at the American University of Beirut when he met Jacoba's mother, Johanna Huffnagel, a native of Utrecht, Netherlands, who was at the time employed abroad as a governess. Married in Syria, Paul and Joh returned to Lansing shortly after their wedding.
A memorial service to celebrate Jacoba's life will be held at Lansing United Methodist Church on Saturday, June 15, 2019. Calling hours will be held from noon to 2:00 p.m. A memorial service will begin at 2:30 p.m. at the church, followed by a "Low Tea". As Jackie would have enjoyed, guests are invited to wear hats to the Low Tea celebration.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to Lansing United Methodist Church, 32 Brickyard Road, Lansing, NY 14850.
Information from the Lansing Funeral Home
An obituary as published in the Ithaca Journal on May 18, 2019
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One hundred years ago this past April 15, a woman from Holland married a man from Lansing in Beirut, Lebanon. They stood on a rug the woman had bought in Damascus, Syria.
Then, they traveled in trains across Asia Minor and then army trucks across war-torn Europe, the woman in front with the driver and the man in back with the troops.
They traveled through Constantinople, Turkey, Budapest, Hungary, Berlin, and then, from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, sailed across the U-Boat haunted Atlantic Ocean to New York City. They came to Lansing, where the man, Jasper Paul Munson, began farming with the woman, Johanna Huffnagel. She had never seen a farm before she settled on “The Old Miller Farm” on Munson Road.
“J. Paul” and “Joh” had a daughter, Johanna Cornelia, in February 1917, and then two more: Mary Esther in July 1918 and Jacoba Petronella Munson in July 1920. Mary is 98 years old now, and Jacoba is 96, but the “Munson Girls” have fond memories of growing up in Lansing.
“Our road was a mud road,” Mary said. “It wasn’t even Munson Road then, it was just a side road. When relatives would visit, I would take the horse and buggy down the mud road to meet them at the main road. In the spring, a scraper would come by and smooth out the mud, and we thought it was great.”
J. Paul became the principal (and Latin and algebra teacher) of Ludlowville High School in 1918 and, in 1920, the family moved up the road from the “lower place” to a larger house at 297 Munson Road.
Eight years later, there were six children in the family, the three girls and then the three boys: Jasper Paul, born in 1923; Phillip (“Pheep”) Huffnagel, born in 1924; and Fred Caleb, born in 1928. All attended the one-room “Newman District” schoolhouse on Van Ostrand Road, a mile and a half walk from home.
“Mrs. Bingham was our teacher for quite a few years,” Mary said. “She was grandmotherly and she would call me to her desk and ask for my glasses. She had a big box of clean ladies handkerchiefs and a special one for cleaning my glasses.
“We had a little more play time when we were in the lower grades, and I played outside with Charlie Volbrecht and Randell Tarbell. There was a gully behind the school and we would go down the hill to the creek. It’s always fun to play in a creek.”
There were 32 one-room school houses in the district. When J. Paul was elected district superintendent of schools for Groton, Lansing and Ithaca in 1921, he began a push to combine them. There were five separate consolidations which, in the end, reduced the 32 schools to two — Groton and Lansing. The last year the Newman school was open, there were only two students there.
After grade school, the sisters went to Groton for high school.
“Groton was larger than little Ludlowville,” Jacoba said.
Church, 4-H, and school were the foundation of their social lives. The family attended services and Sunday School at the West Groton Congregational Church, and the girls were active in Vacation Bible School and the Youth Group. The “Wise, Willing, Workers” 4-H group met twice a month for crafts and once a month for business, and the girls also played in the school band — Mary played the French horn (with a fellow named Clarence Benson) and Jacoba the clarinet.
“We were very organized,” Jacoba said. “One day we would drive the Munson car and the next day we would drive the Benson car. We kept very careful books.”
“We would drive our car to the Bensons and then they would drive us into Groton,” Mary added. “Into the city.”
“Clarence played a very musical horn,” Jacoba said. “That was the main thing.”
Both girls went to college after high school. Mary began at Cornell in 1937, and majored in Home Economics. She lived in Carl and Ruth Lewis’ home on Linden Avenue for three years, going to classes and caring for their new baby, George. Jacoba went to Michigan State, sharing rides for the long trip there and back.
When Mary entered her senior year, she moved into the dorms and waited tables at Willard Straight Hall to pay for her meals. Clarence would come on Saturday nights to take her home. “And I was so tired, I just wanted to go home,” Mary said.
Mary graduated from Cornell in 1941 and then taught school for two years in New Berlin. When she would come home, Clarence was still waiting to pick her up. They were married in 1943.
Jacoba graduated from Michigan State in 1943. She came home and applied for a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension agent Robert Baker. They were married in 1944.
Clarence was working at his Great Aunt Hattie Luce Buck’s farm when he and Mary were married, and he continued to work there for 2½ years afterward. Mary worked as a traveling nutritionist.
In 1945, the couple stopped in at the Coon Farm on Lansingville Road. They had heard through the Farm Bureau that the farm was for sale. They took possession in March 1946 with six cows. They named the farm “Bensvue.” There was no indoor plumbing.
Clarence Charles (“Chuck”) Benson was born in 1946; Marjorie Jane in 1948; Johanna Marie in 1950; Sara Elaine in 1952; and Andrew Fay in 1954.
Jacoba and Bob went to Penn State and to Purdue before Bob came back to Cornell as a PhD in Poultry and Food Science to teach and conduct research. He wrote more than 290 research papers, he invented the process for making chicken nuggets and pioneered the sale of chicken parts, rather than whole chickens. And, he invented “Cornell Chicken,” the foundation of so many Lansing fundraisers.
The two started “Bakers Chicken Coop” at the New York State Fair — with more than 30,000 chicken halves sold each year — and “Bakers Acres,” a nursery in north Lansing. And they had six children. Dale Robert was born in 1946; Myron Munson in 1948; Kermit Francis in 1950; Regina Ellen in 1952; Maureen Diane in 1955; and Johanna Maria in 1958.
Today, Jacoba lives in her house near Baker’s Acres and Mary has an apartment at Woodsedge. Their families are partial and present, but the two share a secret sisters’ smile and a laugh, and their care for one another is remarkable.
They also have what is now known as the “wedding rug” from Damascus, which hangs on Jacoba’s wall. All six children of J. Paul and Joh, all of their grandchildren, and more than two dozen of their great-grandchildren have stood on that rug to be married.
Together, Mary and Jacoba have more than 30 grandchildren and 35 great-grandchildren. If you live in Lansing, the chances are very good that you know more than one.
Extracted from the Ithaca Journal, August 3, 2016 [Matthew Montague]
MILLER-MUNSON FARM Munson Rd., Town of Lansing Henry Miller and his family came to this region from New Jersey and settled here about 1813. The original settler on the other side of the family was Caleb Munson, who came from Connecticut about 1817 and settled in the Town of Genoa north of the Lansing line. He was a grain dealer, and the writing-arm Windsor chair that he used in his business passes down in the family. The immediate past operator of the farm is J. Paul Munson, who continues to live on the place. He was principal of Ludlow-vile School for three years and district superintendent of schools for the Groton and Lansing ' supervisory districts for 38 years, retiring in 1959. His wife was the former Johanna Huffnagel, a native of Holland. They met in Syria while he was teaching at the American University in Beirut and she was engaged in Near East work. She died in 1957. Until the mid-1940s, the elder Munson also ran the family farm, then turned over the reins to his son, Philip Munson. The farm has 360 acres. The crops are 20 acres of oats, 30 acres of corn, 15 acres of Sudan grass and grazier for silage; 13 acres of wheat and 136 acres of hay. Livestock consist of a Holstein herd of 100 milking cows, two bulls, and 40 calves and heifers. The Philip Munsons' plans for the future are to pay the mortgage and send the children through college. Mr. and Mrs. Munson are acfive in Extension, Farm Bureau, 4-H Club and school affairs. They have four children: Cornelia, 18, a freshman at the State University College at Fredonia; Philip Jr., 16, a sophomore in Lansing Central School; Miles, 13, a pupil in the eighth grade, and Jasper, 11, a pupil in the sixth grade in Lansing.
Published in the Ithaca Journal on May 22, 1965, Sat • Page 59
A voice recording of J. Paul Munson is included in the the Older Persons' Records Project [Tompkins County], archived in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. [See J. Paul Munson, Munson Road, Groton, New York, 6/76 ]
North Lansing - Jacoba Munson Baker passed away peacefully at her longtime home on Auburn Road in North Lansing, NY, on May 11, 2019, just a couple months shy of her 99th birthday.
Jacoba was born in Lansing, NY, on July 6, 1920. She graduated from Groton High School and continued her education, earning a bachelor's degree in home economics from Michigan State University in 1943. She returned home after graduation and got a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension, where she met a young extension agent, Robert C. Baker. They were married in 1944 in Groton.
Jackie and Bob moved to State College, PA, shortly afterward for Bob to work on his master's degree at Penn State, and to Purdue University in 1956 for Bob to earn his PhD in poultry science. In between, in 1950, Jacoba and Bob started Baker's Chicken Coop at the New York State Fair, which is still operated by her children and grandchildren. The two also started Baker's Acres, a plant nursery in North Lansing. Jacoba had a lifelong passion for gardening, and Baker's Acres allowed her to pursue her love of horticulture as well as financially support the operation of their 75-acre farm during retirement. Baker's Acres is still operated by her daughter Reenie.
Jacoba's life was centered in the Lansing area, where she was very active in the Lansing United Methodist Church and many other civic organizations. Additionally, she and Bob had numerous opportunities for worldwide travel due to Bob's consulting work in food science and new product development. Bob's many international graduate students became lifelong friends to Bob and Jackie, keeping them in touch with worldwide events.
Jacoba is survived by her children Dale (Maureen Cowen) of Lansing; Kermit (Joan Barth) of Natick, MA; Regina Robbins (Kelly) of Knoxville, TN; Maureen Sandsted (Jeff) of Lansing; Johanna of Lansing; and Karen Applebee (Jody) of Towanda, PA; along with 12 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren, and her brother Fred C. Munson (Mary) of Manchester, MI. Her second son, Mike, died in 1969.
Jacoba is also predeceased by her husband, Bob, who passed away in 2006, and her siblings Cornelia Downie, Mary Benson, Jasper Munson, and Philip Munson. Her father, J. Paul, was born on Munson Road in Lansing, where he lived most of his life. He was working at the American University of Beirut when he met Jacoba's mother, Johanna Huffnagel, a native of Utrecht, Netherlands, who was at the time employed abroad as a governess. Married in Syria, Paul and Joh returned to Lansing shortly after their wedding.
A memorial service to celebrate Jacoba's life will be held at Lansing United Methodist Church on Saturday, June 15, 2019. Calling hours will be held from noon to 2:00 p.m. A memorial service will begin at 2:30 p.m. at the church, followed by a "Low Tea". As Jackie would have enjoyed, guests are invited to wear hats to the Low Tea celebration.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to Lansing United Methodist Church, 32 Brickyard Road, Lansing, NY 14850.
Information from the Lansing Funeral Home
An obituary as published in the Ithaca Journal on May 18, 2019
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One hundred years ago this past April 15, a woman from Holland married a man from Lansing in Beirut, Lebanon. They stood on a rug the woman had bought in Damascus, Syria.
Then, they traveled in trains across Asia Minor and then army trucks across war-torn Europe, the woman in front with the driver and the man in back with the troops.
They traveled through Constantinople, Turkey, Budapest, Hungary, Berlin, and then, from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, sailed across the U-Boat haunted Atlantic Ocean to New York City. They came to Lansing, where the man, Jasper Paul Munson, began farming with the woman, Johanna Huffnagel. She had never seen a farm before she settled on “The Old Miller Farm” on Munson Road.
“J. Paul” and “Joh” had a daughter, Johanna Cornelia, in February 1917, and then two more: Mary Esther in July 1918 and Jacoba Petronella Munson in July 1920. Mary is 98 years old now, and Jacoba is 96, but the “Munson Girls” have fond memories of growing up in Lansing.
“Our road was a mud road,” Mary said. “It wasn’t even Munson Road then, it was just a side road. When relatives would visit, I would take the horse and buggy down the mud road to meet them at the main road. In the spring, a scraper would come by and smooth out the mud, and we thought it was great.”
J. Paul became the principal (and Latin and algebra teacher) of Ludlowville High School in 1918 and, in 1920, the family moved up the road from the “lower place” to a larger house at 297 Munson Road.
Eight years later, there were six children in the family, the three girls and then the three boys: Jasper Paul, born in 1923; Phillip (“Pheep”) Huffnagel, born in 1924; and Fred Caleb, born in 1928. All attended the one-room “Newman District” schoolhouse on Van Ostrand Road, a mile and a half walk from home.
“Mrs. Bingham was our teacher for quite a few years,” Mary said. “She was grandmotherly and she would call me to her desk and ask for my glasses. She had a big box of clean ladies handkerchiefs and a special one for cleaning my glasses.
“We had a little more play time when we were in the lower grades, and I played outside with Charlie Volbrecht and Randell Tarbell. There was a gully behind the school and we would go down the hill to the creek. It’s always fun to play in a creek.”
There were 32 one-room school houses in the district. When J. Paul was elected district superintendent of schools for Groton, Lansing and Ithaca in 1921, he began a push to combine them. There were five separate consolidations which, in the end, reduced the 32 schools to two — Groton and Lansing. The last year the Newman school was open, there were only two students there.
After grade school, the sisters went to Groton for high school.
“Groton was larger than little Ludlowville,” Jacoba said.
Church, 4-H, and school were the foundation of their social lives. The family attended services and Sunday School at the West Groton Congregational Church, and the girls were active in Vacation Bible School and the Youth Group. The “Wise, Willing, Workers” 4-H group met twice a month for crafts and once a month for business, and the girls also played in the school band — Mary played the French horn (with a fellow named Clarence Benson) and Jacoba the clarinet.
“We were very organized,” Jacoba said. “One day we would drive the Munson car and the next day we would drive the Benson car. We kept very careful books.”
“We would drive our car to the Bensons and then they would drive us into Groton,” Mary added. “Into the city.”
“Clarence played a very musical horn,” Jacoba said. “That was the main thing.”
Both girls went to college after high school. Mary began at Cornell in 1937, and majored in Home Economics. She lived in Carl and Ruth Lewis’ home on Linden Avenue for three years, going to classes and caring for their new baby, George. Jacoba went to Michigan State, sharing rides for the long trip there and back.
When Mary entered her senior year, she moved into the dorms and waited tables at Willard Straight Hall to pay for her meals. Clarence would come on Saturday nights to take her home. “And I was so tired, I just wanted to go home,” Mary said.
Mary graduated from Cornell in 1941 and then taught school for two years in New Berlin. When she would come home, Clarence was still waiting to pick her up. They were married in 1943.
Jacoba graduated from Michigan State in 1943. She came home and applied for a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension agent Robert Baker. They were married in 1944.
Clarence was working at his Great Aunt Hattie Luce Buck’s farm when he and Mary were married, and he continued to work there for 2½ years afterward. Mary worked as a traveling nutritionist.
In 1945, the couple stopped in at the Coon Farm on Lansingville Road. They had heard through the Farm Bureau that the farm was for sale. They took possession in March 1946 with six cows. They named the farm “Bensvue.” There was no indoor plumbing.
Clarence Charles (“Chuck”) Benson was born in 1946; Marjorie Jane in 1948; Johanna Marie in 1950; Sara Elaine in 1952; and Andrew Fay in 1954.
Jacoba and Bob went to Penn State and to Purdue before Bob came back to Cornell as a PhD in Poultry and Food Science to teach and conduct research. He wrote more than 290 research papers, he invented the process for making chicken nuggets and pioneered the sale of chicken parts, rather than whole chickens. And, he invented “Cornell Chicken,” the foundation of so many Lansing fundraisers.
The two started “Bakers Chicken Coop” at the New York State Fair — with more than 30,000 chicken halves sold each year — and “Bakers Acres,” a nursery in north Lansing. And they had six children. Dale Robert was born in 1946; Myron Munson in 1948; Kermit Francis in 1950; Regina Ellen in 1952; Maureen Diane in 1955; and Johanna Maria in 1958.
Today, Jacoba lives in her house near Baker’s Acres and Mary has an apartment at Woodsedge. Their families are partial and present, but the two share a secret sisters’ smile and a laugh, and their care for one another is remarkable.
They also have what is now known as the “wedding rug” from Damascus, which hangs on Jacoba’s wall. All six children of J. Paul and Joh, all of their grandchildren, and more than two dozen of their great-grandchildren have stood on that rug to be married.
Together, Mary and Jacoba have more than 30 grandchildren and 35 great-grandchildren. If you live in Lansing, the chances are very good that you know more than one.
Extracted from the Ithaca Journal, August 3, 2016 [Matthew Montague]
MILLER-MUNSON FARM Munson Rd., Town of Lansing Henry Miller and his family came to this region from New Jersey and settled here about 1813. The original settler on the other side of the family was Caleb Munson, who came from Connecticut about 1817 and settled in the Town of Genoa north of the Lansing line. He was a grain dealer, and the writing-arm Windsor chair that he used in his business passes down in the family. The immediate past operator of the farm is J. Paul Munson, who continues to live on the place. He was principal of Ludlow-vile School for three years and district superintendent of schools for the Groton and Lansing ' supervisory districts for 38 years, retiring in 1959. His wife was the former Johanna Huffnagel, a native of Holland. They met in Syria while he was teaching at the American University in Beirut and she was engaged in Near East work. She died in 1957. Until the mid-1940s, the elder Munson also ran the family farm, then turned over the reins to his son, Philip Munson. The farm has 360 acres. The crops are 20 acres of oats, 30 acres of corn, 15 acres of Sudan grass and grazier for silage; 13 acres of wheat and 136 acres of hay. Livestock consist of a Holstein herd of 100 milking cows, two bulls, and 40 calves and heifers. The Philip Munsons' plans for the future are to pay the mortgage and send the children through college. Mr. and Mrs. Munson are acfive in Extension, Farm Bureau, 4-H Club and school affairs. They have four children: Cornelia, 18, a freshman at the State University College at Fredonia; Philip Jr., 16, a sophomore in Lansing Central School; Miles, 13, a pupil in the eighth grade, and Jasper, 11, a pupil in the sixth grade in Lansing.
Published in the Ithaca Journal on May 22, 1965, Sat • Page 59
A voice recording of J. Paul Munson is included in the the Older Persons' Records Project [Tompkins County], archived in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. [See J. Paul Munson, Munson Road, Groton, New York, 6/76 ]
Jacoba was born in Lansing, NY, on July 6, 1920. She graduated from Groton High School and continued her education, earning a bachelor's degree in home economics from Michigan State University in 1943. She returned home after graduation and got a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension, where she met a young extension agent, Robert C. Baker. They were married in 1944 in Groton.
Jackie and Bob moved to State College, PA, shortly afterward for Bob to work on his master's degree at Penn State, and to Purdue University in 1956 for Bob to earn his PhD in poultry science. In between, in 1950, Jacoba and Bob started Baker's Chicken Coop at the New York State Fair, which is still operated by her children and grandchildren. The two also started Baker's Acres, a plant nursery in North Lansing. Jacoba had a lifelong passion for gardening, and Baker's Acres allowed her to pursue her love of horticulture as well as financially support the operation of their 75-acre farm during retirement. Baker's Acres is still operated by her daughter Reenie.
Jacoba's life was centered in the Lansing area, where she was very active in the Lansing United Methodist Church and many other civic organizations. Additionally, she and Bob had numerous opportunities for worldwide travel due to Bob's consulting work in food science and new product development. Bob's many international graduate students became lifelong friends to Bob and Jackie, keeping them in touch with worldwide events.
Jacoba is survived by her children Dale (Maureen Cowen) of Lansing; Kermit (Joan Barth) of Natick, MA; Regina Robbins (Kelly) of Knoxville, TN; Maureen Sandsted (Jeff) of Lansing; Johanna of Lansing; and Karen Applebee (Jody) of Towanda, PA; along with 12 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren, and her brother Fred C. Munson (Mary) of Manchester, MI. Her second son, Mike, died in 1969.
Jacoba is also predeceased by her husband, Bob, who passed away in 2006, and her siblings Cornelia Downie, Mary Benson, Jasper Munson, and Philip Munson. Her father, J. Paul, was born on Munson Road in Lansing, where he lived most of his life. He was working at the American University of Beirut when he met Jacoba's mother, Johanna Huffnagel, a native of Utrecht, Netherlands, who was at the time employed abroad as a governess. Married in Syria, Paul and Joh returned to Lansing shortly after their wedding.
A memorial service to celebrate Jacoba's life will be held at Lansing United Methodist Church on Saturday, June 15, 2019. Calling hours will be held from noon to 2:00 p.m. A memorial service will begin at 2:30 p.m. at the church, followed by a "Low Tea". As Jackie would have enjoyed, guests are invited to wear hats to the Low Tea celebration.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to Lansing United Methodist Church, 32 Brickyard Road, Lansing, NY 14850.
Information from the Lansing Funeral Home
An obituary as published in the Ithaca Journal on May 18, 2019
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One hundred years ago this past April 15, a woman from Holland married a man from Lansing in Beirut, Lebanon. They stood on a rug the woman had bought in Damascus, Syria.
Then, they traveled in trains across Asia Minor and then army trucks across war-torn Europe, the woman in front with the driver and the man in back with the troops.
They traveled through Constantinople, Turkey, Budapest, Hungary, Berlin, and then, from Rotterdam, The Netherlands, sailed across the U-Boat haunted Atlantic Ocean to New York City. They came to Lansing, where the man, Jasper Paul Munson, began farming with the woman, Johanna Huffnagel. She had never seen a farm before she settled on “The Old Miller Farm” on Munson Road.
“J. Paul” and “Joh” had a daughter, Johanna Cornelia, in February 1917, and then two more: Mary Esther in July 1918 and Jacoba Petronella Munson in July 1920. Mary is 98 years old now, and Jacoba is 96, but the “Munson Girls” have fond memories of growing up in Lansing.
“Our road was a mud road,” Mary said. “It wasn’t even Munson Road then, it was just a side road. When relatives would visit, I would take the horse and buggy down the mud road to meet them at the main road. In the spring, a scraper would come by and smooth out the mud, and we thought it was great.”
J. Paul became the principal (and Latin and algebra teacher) of Ludlowville High School in 1918 and, in 1920, the family moved up the road from the “lower place” to a larger house at 297 Munson Road.
Eight years later, there were six children in the family, the three girls and then the three boys: Jasper Paul, born in 1923; Phillip (“Pheep”) Huffnagel, born in 1924; and Fred Caleb, born in 1928. All attended the one-room “Newman District” schoolhouse on Van Ostrand Road, a mile and a half walk from home.
“Mrs. Bingham was our teacher for quite a few years,” Mary said. “She was grandmotherly and she would call me to her desk and ask for my glasses. She had a big box of clean ladies handkerchiefs and a special one for cleaning my glasses.
“We had a little more play time when we were in the lower grades, and I played outside with Charlie Volbrecht and Randell Tarbell. There was a gully behind the school and we would go down the hill to the creek. It’s always fun to play in a creek.”
There were 32 one-room school houses in the district. When J. Paul was elected district superintendent of schools for Groton, Lansing and Ithaca in 1921, he began a push to combine them. There were five separate consolidations which, in the end, reduced the 32 schools to two — Groton and Lansing. The last year the Newman school was open, there were only two students there.
After grade school, the sisters went to Groton for high school.
“Groton was larger than little Ludlowville,” Jacoba said.
Church, 4-H, and school were the foundation of their social lives. The family attended services and Sunday School at the West Groton Congregational Church, and the girls were active in Vacation Bible School and the Youth Group. The “Wise, Willing, Workers” 4-H group met twice a month for crafts and once a month for business, and the girls also played in the school band — Mary played the French horn (with a fellow named Clarence Benson) and Jacoba the clarinet.
“We were very organized,” Jacoba said. “One day we would drive the Munson car and the next day we would drive the Benson car. We kept very careful books.”
“We would drive our car to the Bensons and then they would drive us into Groton,” Mary added. “Into the city.”
“Clarence played a very musical horn,” Jacoba said. “That was the main thing.”
Both girls went to college after high school. Mary began at Cornell in 1937, and majored in Home Economics. She lived in Carl and Ruth Lewis’ home on Linden Avenue for three years, going to classes and caring for their new baby, George. Jacoba went to Michigan State, sharing rides for the long trip there and back.
When Mary entered her senior year, she moved into the dorms and waited tables at Willard Straight Hall to pay for her meals. Clarence would come on Saturday nights to take her home. “And I was so tired, I just wanted to go home,” Mary said.
Mary graduated from Cornell in 1941 and then taught school for two years in New Berlin. When she would come home, Clarence was still waiting to pick her up. They were married in 1943.
Jacoba graduated from Michigan State in 1943. She came home and applied for a job with Cornell Cooperative Extension agent Robert Baker. They were married in 1944.
Clarence was working at his Great Aunt Hattie Luce Buck’s farm when he and Mary were married, and he continued to work there for 2½ years afterward. Mary worked as a traveling nutritionist.
In 1945, the couple stopped in at the Coon Farm on Lansingville Road. They had heard through the Farm Bureau that the farm was for sale. They took possession in March 1946 with six cows. They named the farm “Bensvue.” There was no indoor plumbing.
Clarence Charles (“Chuck”) Benson was born in 1946; Marjorie Jane in 1948; Johanna Marie in 1950; Sara Elaine in 1952; and Andrew Fay in 1954.
Jacoba and Bob went to Penn State and to Purdue before Bob came back to Cornell as a PhD in Poultry and Food Science to teach and conduct research. He wrote more than 290 research papers, he invented the process for making chicken nuggets and pioneered the sale of chicken parts, rather than whole chickens. And, he invented “Cornell Chicken,” the foundation of so many Lansing fundraisers.
The two started “Bakers Chicken Coop” at the New York State Fair — with more than 30,000 chicken halves sold each year — and “Bakers Acres,” a nursery in north Lansing. And they had six children. Dale Robert was born in 1946; Myron Munson in 1948; Kermit Francis in 1950; Regina Ellen in 1952; Maureen Diane in 1955; and Johanna Maria in 1958.
Today, Jacoba lives in her house near Baker’s Acres and Mary has an apartment at Woodsedge. Their families are partial and present, but the two share a secret sisters’ smile and a laugh, and their care for one another is remarkable.
They also have what is now known as the “wedding rug” from Damascus, which hangs on Jacoba’s wall. All six children of J. Paul and Joh, all of their grandchildren, and more than two dozen of their great-grandchildren have stood on that rug to be married.
Together, Mary and Jacoba have more than 30 grandchildren and 35 great-grandchildren. If you live in Lansing, the chances are very good that you know more than one.
Extracted from the Ithaca Journal, August 3, 2016 [Matthew Montague]
MILLER-MUNSON FARM Munson Rd., Town of Lansing Henry Miller and his family came to this region from New Jersey and settled here about 1813. The original settler on the other side of the family was Caleb Munson, who came from Connecticut about 1817 and settled in the Town of Genoa north of the Lansing line. He was a grain dealer, and the writing-arm Windsor chair that he used in his business passes down in the family. The immediate past operator of the farm is J. Paul Munson, who continues to live on the place. He was principal of Ludlow-vile School for three years and district superintendent of schools for the Groton and Lansing ' supervisory districts for 38 years, retiring in 1959. His wife was the former Johanna Huffnagel, a native of Holland. They met in Syria while he was teaching at the American University in Beirut and she was engaged in Near East work. She died in 1957. Until the mid-1940s, the elder Munson also ran the family farm, then turned over the reins to his son, Philip Munson. The farm has 360 acres. The crops are 20 acres of oats, 30 acres of corn, 15 acres of Sudan grass and grazier for silage; 13 acres of wheat and 136 acres of hay. Livestock consist of a Holstein herd of 100 milking cows, two bulls, and 40 calves and heifers. The Philip Munsons' plans for the future are to pay the mortgage and send the children through college. Mr. and Mrs. Munson are acfive in Extension, Farm Bureau, 4-H Club and school affairs. They have four children: Cornelia, 18, a freshman at the State University College at Fredonia; Philip Jr., 16, a sophomore in Lansing Central School; Miles, 13, a pupil in the eighth grade, and Jasper, 11, a pupil in the sixth grade in Lansing.
Published in the Ithaca Journal on May 22, 1965, Sat • Page 59
A voice recording of J. Paul Munson is included in the the Older Persons' Records Project [Tompkins County], archived in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. [See J. Paul Munson, Munson Road, Groton, New York, 6/76 ]
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