Jacob Spicer Leaming was the son of Christopher and Margaret Leaming, who, early in the nineteenth century, left Cape May, New Jersey, and moved to a farm on the Little Miami River near Madisonville, Ohio, United States. There Leaming was born and reared.
From his father Leaming acquired an interest in corn culture, for Christopher Leaming was more than an average farmer. He raised twice as much corn per acre as his neighbors because he insisted on selection of his seed, deep planting, and careful cultivation. For sixteen years after his marriage Jacob lived in the old homestead.
A chance drive along the Bullskin Run in Hamilton County in the fall of 1855 gave him the idea which later made him famous. In need of feed for his horses, he stopped at a wayside cornfield and bought some corn. Impressed by the beautiful yellow color of the corn and its early maturity, he purchased a bushel for seed. The next year he moved his family to a farm two miles from Wilmington, and here he raised corn until 1884. In the spring of 1856 he planted the corn he had bought the previous autumn and by careful attention was rewarded by a yield in excess of one hundred bushels per acre. Farmers regarded it as a phenomenal achievement and began to visit his farm to buy seed. This they planted next season and referred to it as "Leaming corn. "
In 1857 Leaming was advised by a country physician interested in scientific agriculture to devote his entire attention to corn cultivation. He did so, and by careful, intensive cultivation, with the aid of his sons, he began to produce superior corn. He selected his seed from the standing corn, choosing tapering ears because he believed they matured earliest. Stripped of part of the husks, these seed ears were hung in a crib to dry. The following spring a second selection was made, again from tapering ears. By this method he developed corn which matured early. The demand for it became so pressing that Leaming advertised his seed and soon developed a flourishing seed business. The variety which he developed became well known and widely used in corn-producing sections.
Leaming was credited with developing of yellow dent corn. He was, perhaps, the first to plant corn in shallow drills, "one grain in a place, 12 to 14 inches apart in rows 4 feet apart. " At the Paris Exposition in 1878, Leaming corn won a few prizes. Jacob was also awarded a silver medal for his corn at the Paris World’s Fair in 1884.
On March 1, 1839, Leaming married Lydia Ann Van Middlesworth by whom he had nine children, seven of them boys.
