Maine's Native Americans prepared beans by cooking
them with maple syrup and bits of venison or other meat. Early New
Englander's adopted the bean, cooking it with molasses and salt pork
in large pots. Beans baked in cast iron pots buried in the ground
became a lumber camp specialty and remains popular in Maine to this
day, particularly for public suppers and other special events.
Robert Campbell of Glenburn, Maine, has been
baking beans in a bean hole for nearly forty years.
"Even when I don't need the beans," he
says, "When Friday night comes it's just
an urge comes over me to start that fire and start baking bean-hole
beans."
Local Legacies Project
Members of Congress and individuals across the
nation were involved in the celebration of the Library of Congress
Bicentennial and America's richly diverse culture through the Local
Legacies Project. The Maine tradition of bean-hole beans is one of
nearly a thousand Local Legacies projects that have already been
sent to the Library to become a permanent part of the collection of
the American Folklife Center.
