Barnabas Coffin “Tall Barney” Beal was a giant fisherman and folk hero, known throughout coastal Maine and the Jonesport area, who lived on Beals Island during the late nineteenth century. According to legend, he stood up to seven feet tall, his arms so long that he could touch the floor when he sat on a chair. He was a strong and gentle person, and most of the vernacular tales of his colorful exploits were centered on his enormous size and strength, and his ability to carry effortlessly massive hauls such as ship anchors, dories, and barrels full of clams. In what is probably Tall Barney’s most famous story, he went to Rockland to take some kiln wood and bring back home some flour for the winter. However, when he was told that the delivery horse was gone, he didn’t complain: he just grabbed two 200-pound flour barrels with ease, one under each arm, and loaded them into his boat. This image of Tall Barney walking around with two big barrels under his arms was immortalized by the signboard of the now closed, but famous, Tall Barney’s Restaurant in Jonesport.
Tall tales aggrandizing common feats are very popular in the oral tradition of Maine maritime communities. Such exaggerations result in fish hauls becoming “the largest catch ever made” or bad weather at sea becoming “the closest encounter with death on the water.” Most of Tall Barney stories consist of widely exaggerated personal experiences recounted by eyewitnesses and mostly focus on his unbelievable physical prowess, perfectly fitting in the strongman motif so common in the oral traditions of different regions of North America.
For example, in a tale recalled by Beal’s great-great-grandson Avery Kelley, Beal was asked to help turn over a large scow by a crew of fourteen mariners who weren’t able to roll it over. The men tried to test the giant’s strength by holding the boat in place while pretending to help him. He sank into the sand down to his knees during the struggle, yet he was able to roll the scow and get it into position all by himself. In another story, when Tall Barney was asked if he was able to lift a 1,200-pound anchor for five dollars, not only did he do that without effort, he carried it through the whole wharf to the sailboat of the guy who refused to pay him for the feat.
Barney Beal was indeed a real person. There are documents recording when he was born and pictures that illustrate his great height. He was born December 13, 1835, in Beals Island, Maine, the son of Barnabas Coffin Beal II. In 1855 he married Phebe Ann Stanwood with whom he had eleven children. Many of the inhabitants of Beals Island and Jonesport today are descendants of Tall Barney and his many sons and relatives. Barney drew his ancestry back in time to Manwaring Beal, another towering giant who settled and helped to found the community of Beals Island. Many of the town families were intertwined by marital and parental relationships of some kind. On February 1, 1899, Tall Barney died of heart failure at the age of sixty-three and was buried at the local Beals Village Cemetery. This ordinary cause of death disappeared from accounts and was replaced by a more romanticized tale that he had died performing a feat of superhuman strength while loading a dory. His only regret before his death, as told by Kelley, was not being able to fight a scheduled bout in Gloucester against the great boxer John L. Sullivan.
Tall Barney may be thought of as the Paul Bunyan of Down East Maine, his legend still living as part of local folklore and tourist attraction. One point of comparison is that in 1873, he used lumber stripped from a vessel that wrecked ashore to build his house near Barney’s Cove. The door of the home, much bigger than a typical door of its day, testifies to the height of its builder. Additionally his bedroom was alleged to be too small for him so he had to air his feet out of the window, and a dining table folded into a chair in order to accommodate his enormous size. In 1938, his tales were celebrated in a poem written by Alice Frost Lord titled “The Ballad of Tall Barney” and published in the Lewiston (Maine) Journal.
Tall Barney sometimes came under the influence of alcohol and could burst into terrifying fits of anger, despite the fact that he was a mild-mannered man. In one account, Barney and his fellow fishermen pulled into port after a fishing expedition and retired to a saloon. Barney soon became the object of taunting by a few of the other patrons, who mocked his down-eastern style of clothing. Tall Barney was very proud of the pea bouncer (derby hat) and butcher’s coat he always wore, because being of such a larger size than the average man he had to wear special clothes custom woven by his wife. In a fit of anger, Beal picked up his tormentors one by one and threw them out the door like ragdolls. Another time while he was drunk, a horse annoyed him with its constant whickering (or biting, depending on the tale source), so he struck it out of the blue, and killed it with just a single punch.
While he was on a trip to Nova Scotia, a Canadian saloon owner refused to sell whiskey to his crew of fishermen. Tall Barney managed to convince him otherwise just by walking into the bar and thumping on the counter a few times. He was overly protective of his territory and knew no fear: in another occasion, while fishing on Black’s Island, he got boarded and attacked by Canadian guardsmen, who wanted to capture his sloop at gunpoint with the pretext that he was trespassing into English waters. One of them struck him across the nose with an oar Barney promptly grabbed. In a show of monstrous strength, Tall Barney snapped the wooden oar in two across his knee, then broke the Englishman’s arm by wrenching it from its socket with ease. When the other sailors threatened him with a gun, he grabbed it and bent it with his bare hands as if it were a mere toy.
The daily life of Maine fishermen was a quiet and yet rough one: they were simple folks who spent a great deal of their time on fishing vessels, where superior physical strength and endurance were greatly admired qualities. It’s no wonder that a larger, healthier, and more powerful man, such as Barney Beal, was so admired by his peers to the point that he achieved the status of a local hero. Maine coastal populations, and in particular Jonesport and Beals Island inhabitants, are born fishermen generation after generation. They take pride even today in their common heritage of Tall Barney tales, which were always accepted as an authentic part of local culture.
During the nineteenth century the down-eastern maritime communities’ culture and oral traditions were deeply influenced by English settlers. Belief in witchcraft and fear of “ugly” women or men endowed with special powers that could bring misfortune were still very much alive and persisted until the turn of the twentieth century. Even more locally specific maritime lore and mariners’ floating stories, such as the wind-buyer legend of the Maine tradition, often depict natural elements as malevolent and cruel entities that require some form of appeasement in exchange for survival. The necessity of some kind of powerful character that could protect these vulnerable communities from evil forces and other catastrophic events may have been the reason why local individuals possessing extraordinary capabilities so often became mythicized figures able to perform supernatural feats.
In this regard Barney Beal possessed all the attributes required to rise to the position of father-protector of Beals Island. He was a gentle and generous person, who looked after the poorest and neediest people during hard winter seasons. He was a charismatic character, who was often seen as a leading figure by his peers and fellow townsfolk.
Claudio Butticè
See also Annie Christmas; Febold Feboldson; Joe Magarac; John Henry; Paul Bunyan; Tall Tales
Further Reading
Beck, Horace Palmer. 1957. The Folklore of Maine. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
Dorson, Richard M. 1972. Buying the Wind: Regional Folklore in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dorson, Richard M. 1986. Handbook of American Folklore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Federal Writers’ Project; WPA. 1937. Maine: A Guide ‘Down East’, Part of the American Guide Series. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Peabody, Velton. 1974. Tall Barney’s People: A Genealogy. Williamsville, NY: Periwinkle Press.
Trussell, Ann. 1999. Jonesport and Beals. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia.