Corn Bread and Corn Pone

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Car0lina’s home bakers made rice bread in the east, corn bread in the west. Wheat bread and rye could be had at the town bakeries and at hotels. After the collapse of rice culture in the 1910s, corn bread has reigned supreme as the chief creation emerging from home ovens. Whether made from scratch or prepped from a mix, it retains a welcome place in the Carolina bread basket, nestling there with biscuits and benne rolls. How did this come to be?