Jacob R. Baker, president of the Rock Elevator & Milling Company, one of the leading shipping and exporting concerns of Hutchinson, Kan., may be regarded as an excellent example of what perseverance, a good business head, and willingness to work, may accomplish in the Sunflower State by men who start with little capital. He was born on a farm in Wyoming county, N. Y., May 18, 1863, a son of Henry, and Rosena Baker, both natives of the same state, where they passed their lives and were at last laid to rest. Jacob was reared and educated in his native county, attending the country school in the winter and working on the farm in the summer until his twentieth year, when he borrowed $100 and determined to seek his fortune in the West, and did not seek in vain, for today Mr. Baker is one of the prosperous and representative citizens of one of the finest towns in the West. Soon after reaching this state he located at Lyons, and engaged in the grain business for some fourteen years but, in 1884, formed a partnership with R. W. Quade, under the firm name of Quade & Baker, with elevators at Pawnee Rock. A year later Mr. Baker bought his partner's interest in the business and continued it alone, until he removed to Great Bend, in 1898. In 1903 the present company was organized and a headquarters office established in Hutchinson. The company owns some thirty-eight elevators with an especially large one at Hutchinson. They handle about two and a half million bushels of grain a year, mostly wheat. In addition to his grain interests Mr. Baker owns about thirty quarters of land in Edwards, Barton, Gray and Pawnee counties and owned the property where the historic Pawnee Rock is located. He is one of the successful men of Kansas and one of the extensive grain operators of the state.

In 1886 he married Cora M. Gano, a native of Olathe, Kan., and they have three children: Opal, the wife of Scott Clark of Hutchinson; Floy, at home, and Bernice, who is completing her education in the Cours Dwight School, Paris, France.