Dates

• Existence: 1918-

Biography

Miriam M. Hawthorn Baker Nye, mother, author, researcher, and public speaker, was born in Monona County, Iowa on June14, 1918 to Dr. and Mrs. H. B. Hawthorn. Through her childhood she lived with her family in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio, as they moved to follow her father's job as a university professor. Miriam Baker Nye graduated from high school in Castana, Iowa in 1935, then continued her education at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa. At Morningside she was involved with the Morningside Manuscript, an undergraduate, creative writing publication. She graduated with a B.A in 1939. After two years of junior high teaching in Rock Falls,Illinois, she married Carl Baker on June 21, 1941. The couple lived for a shorttime in Spencer, Iowa, and then moved to Moville, Iowa, where they had twochildren, Kent and Dale Baker. Miriam Baker taught school in Moville Community school, which later became Woodbury Central school from 1957 to 1964. She was widowed on May 12, 1970 when her husband was killed in a car accident. Three years later, on December 25, 1973, she married the Reverend John Nye, a Methodist minister whom she met on a Christian Heritage tour. She was highly active in the church in addition to assisting in the research and writing of Between the Rivers, a church history by Reverend Nye.

An activity that spanned many years of her life was her work as an author and poet. She wrote the column "From the Kitchen Window" from 1953-1981 for the Sioux City Journal Farm Weekly. Miriam Baker became the authority on rural women through her columns she wrote of diverse topics ranging from recipes (later to be collected in Recipesand Ideas "From the Kitchen Window") to families to community andrural life. Partially as a result of her column's fame, she also came to besought-after as a public speaker.

In addition to the recipe book, Nye wrote But I Never Thought He'd Die : Practical Help for Widows (WestminsterPress, 1978).

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