The Beals Island Giant
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So we're in Jonesport, Maine, about to drive over a bridge to one of Maine's many islands along the coast. Yep, we're heading over to Beals Island. Yeah, there's not much on Beals Island besides a bunch of neighborhoods. I get the sense people live here, but they work on the mainland just over the shore bridge. Yeah, I'm sure you're right. And if we follow this road a little ways more, the neighborhoods would give way to a forested area. The whole island's about six square miles. It's pretty. Residential. Looks like a fine place to live. Yep, absolutely.

Okay, make a right up here. Okay, got it. And we can pull over right over there next to the Beals Village Cemetery. Now, we've begun more than a few adventures in cemeteries, Jeff. It's usually a fine place to start. We looking for a ghost this time? No, Ray. We've come to Beals Island, Maine to search for a giant. ♪

Hey, I'm Jeff Belanger. And I'm Ray Ogier. Welcome to episode 388 of the New England Legends podcast. Thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every wicked, strange legend in New England one story at a time. And we can't do it without you. After all, you send us most of our story leads.

Thanks to Lauren Middleton for this one. She also helps us with our website and our free New England Legends app. If you've got a story you think we should check out, please head to our website and email us anytime. So we'll go searching for the Beals Island Giant right after this word from our sponsor.

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So we're walking through the Beals Village Cemetery. I could see a few headstones with the Beals name on it, which makes sense. It does. I mean, the island is named for them. Right. Maine Warring Beal was the island's first permanent resident. He came here in 1774 and helped build up a fishing village. His family grew, and soon others joined them out here. It was one of Maine Warring's descendants who they say was a giant. And that would be Tall Barney. A gentle giant, kind...

But strong. Handsome, they say, but huge. They say when he would lie down on his bed to sleep at night, his feet would stick out the window. And there's evidence of him all over the island. Maine already gave us Paul Bunyan, if you believe the locals. So you're saying Maine has another giant, too? They do. Though not as big as Paul Bunyan, not as famous. But Tall Barney was more of a local folk legend. But still a giant nonetheless. So let's head back to 1856 and meet Tall Barney.

It's the spring of 1856, and love is in the air on Beale's Island, Maine. Franklin Pierce from Hillsborough, New Hampshire, is president of the United States. Though there's tension with southern states, folks up in Maine don't think too much about it. They're too busy with their own lives. So back in December, Barnabas Coffin Beale III married Phoebe Ann Stanwood. 20-year-old Barnabas towers over everyone else in this fishing village that bears his family name. Barnabas is 6 feet, 8 inches tall, and as strong as five men, they say.

Though no one around here calls him Barnabas, he's better known as Tall Barney. They say he can tote a fishing dory on his back and carry it down to the water. They say he can carry a hundred pound barrel under each arm with ease. He's huge and strong as a horse. Right. So Tall Barney, like his father and grandfather before him, is a fisherman. He earns his living from the sea and knows his way around boats and water. Now considering Tall Barney and his wife intend to start a family here, he knows he also needs a house.

So Tall Barney uses old wood from ships to construct their home. The home isn't very large for such a big man. It's one and a half stories with a chimney in the middle. It's painted white, a nice simple home. But I imagine Tall Barney hits his head a lot when walking inside. No doubt. They say in the summer he'd sleep with his feet sticking out the window because his bed wasn't long enough.

And when he's not in bed, given how tall Barney towers over everyone else, he gets a lot of attention. And it's not always good attention. We're following tall Barney on a trip to Portland, Maine. He doesn't get into the city much, so he's walking around wide-eyed at all the sights and sounds. And he's hitting a local pub. Let's follow him inside. Yeah. Two beers, please. Cheers. Cheers.

So inside the pub, it's really, it's kind of funny how much taller Tall Barney is compared to everyone else around here. As time passes and Tall Barney sinks more drinks, pretty soon the others around him start to flex their beer muscles. Yeah, you can kind of feel the tension, can't you? It's like there's going to be a fight. Oh, yeah.

Oh, man. There it is. That local drunk just dared Tall Barney to show him how strong he is. And Tall Barney told him the next thing he sees outside, he'll hit it. The crowd's following him outside. Let's go. Barney's walking up to that horse. Oh! What'd he do? Oh, my gosh. Barney just punched that horse between the eyes. With one hit, he killed the horse dead. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe it.

Now Barney's reaching into his pocket and he's handing the horse's owner a wad of money for payment for the animal. People are giving Tall Barney a wide berth here in the streets of Portland. I mean, who can blame them? Yeah, and I guess we learned something. Yeah, don't mess with Tall Barney when he's had a few drinks. Back on Beals Island, Tall Barney's family is growing. He and his wife Phoebe welcome a child into the world. This little house suddenly feels a little more crowded.

More time passes. Each summer, Tall Barney wins an annual rowing race at the Fisherman's Festival in Gloucester. No one can beat him. And all the while, his legend grows. And so does his family. Over the years, Tall Barney and his wife have 11 children in that small house on Beals Island. But they make it work. More years pass. And there's more stories of the Beals Island Giant.

It's now 1899, and the 63-year-old tall Barney, he isn't doing so well. No, he's laid up in his chair. His legs are swollen up around his feet. He's got fluids bad. They call it dropsy. Some of his friends are coming by to pay their respects. Even here at the end, Barney loves sharing stories.

And he said his one regret in life is that he never got a chance to fight the famous prize fighter, John L. Sullivan, when he was in Gloucester. Now, John Sullivan was a big-time prize fighter. You didn't just walk up to that guy on the street and pick a fight with him. No. It had to be scheduled, and it became a ticketed event. Tall Barney wanted to prove his strength on a big stage, but he never got the chance. Now, near the end of his life, that's his only regret. Not bad overall.

Barnabas Coffin Beals III dies February 1st, 1899. And that brings us back to today. And today, Tall Barney's buried in the Beals Village Cemetery right over this way. I wonder what his casket looks like. Right? A few extra feet to it? I can see he shares a headstone with his wife, Phoebe, who died in 1917. So Tall Barney became a main folk hero. Some say he was 6 feet 6 inches. Others say 6 foot 8. Some say he was over 7 feet tall.

Though we can't seem to find an exact measurement, everyone agreed he was big.

And if we take a short walk west of the cemetery, we'll walk down. Oh, oh, oh, Barney's Cove Road. Yeah, right. Which takes us by Barney's Cove. And out there in the water, just a little ways. I see a small island out there with a clump of trees. And that would be Barney's Little Island. Wow, this guy really left a mark around here. He did. Photos of him survive, as does a poem written about him in 1938 by Alice Frost called The Ballad of Tall Barney. We'll leave you with a couple lines from the poem.

Mere five feet folk were puny lot, and six feet people somewhat squat, for Barney Beale was six feet plus with seven inches fabulous. He knew no fear and slight restraint when others frothed or made complaint, but settled every quarrel quick with energetic kick or lick.

And that takes us to After the Legend, where we explore this week's story a little deeper, and sometimes we veer off course. Sometimes. After the Legend is brought to you by our Patreon patrons. Our patrons make the magic happen, and with your help, we could do even more for our community. They help with our hosting and production costs, travel, marketing, and everything else it takes to bring you two stories each week.

Membership's only three bucks per month. For that, you get early ad-free access to new episodes. You can listen to our entire archive of shows. You get bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear and discounts on merch and ticketed events. To sign up, head over to patreon.com slash newenglandlegends. We would really appreciate it. And to see some pictures of Tall Barney and the Beals Island, click on the link in our episode description or go to our website and click on episode 388.

Hey, killing a horse is not cool. Not cool at all. Obviously. No. Unless...

the horse is a jerk. I mean, we don't know that. We don't. We assume not. Animals have personalities, don't they? Of course. And clearly when the guy had some drinks in him, you didn't want to mess with him. He did pay the animal owner, the horse owner, which is nice. Yeah. Well, thank goodness. But then who's going to argue with him? So I did have to look this up. In 1860, the average height for men in the United States was around 5'7".

Oh, yeah. So I was, well, what is it now? I kind of figured I'm average now at 5'7".

Although basketball teams were a lot shorter, especially in high schools back then. My dad was like 5'6", and he was a star basketball player in high school. So the average height for men in the United States now is around 5'9". So I'm short. Just a little. Just a little bit. So when the average height is 5'7", to be a foot taller than that is quite a bit. Right, because everyone around you is shorter, obviously, 5'7", being the average. Yeah.

Um, but yeah, that's, that's a big boy, but not impossible. I mean, not impossible. And now you wouldn't really think of it, would you? It's just a tall person. Yeah. Yeah. Six, eight is, I mean, you know, wouldn't be a giant. You wouldn't say no, but that's a lot. Yeah. Six, eight is pretty darn tall, you know? Well, especially back then. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So he stuck out, he stuck out in Maine and you wonder how that happened coming from the family he did. Cause it's,

It's not like the newspaper accounts said, oh, all of his family was tall. Right, right, right. It's just him. And by the way, we got a lot of our information from this great old Bangor Daily News article that described the island and really centered on him and his stories. And there were so many. There was a giant skiff that 11 men couldn't flip over, but he could. And it's just like the Paul Bunyan thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He stomped his foot and moved a river's flow or whatever. Sure.

Chances are there was an individual that was strong and tall and big. He wasn't flipping boats. He wasn't punching out horses, but those are the legends. Yeah. And there's so much more exciting to talk about then. Well, I saw him lift 50 pounds with one hand. Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So what? Um, but there are photos of him. He's a handsome guy. You can see him on our website. And, um, and,

and the community is adorable, right? It looks like just a cute little Island community where I bet summers out there are amazing. Right. You know, um, winters, maybe not so much, but, uh, but, but yeah, you've got his cove. You've got, there's a little lobster, uh, wholesaler called, you know, Barney's Cove Lobster. Right. You know, right there on the, on the shores. And,

So you think that's a tourist thing? You think that they're centering their tourism around this guy and his legend? No, but only because I don't think a lot of people know about him. Like locals know about him. Right. And there's a community center there and there's a historical society and heritage center that does talk about him because it's, I mean, he's a Beale. But you've got to be there to learn. You're not being drawn in because of the legend. We've all heard of Paul Bunyan. Yeah. We just all heard that.

But, I mean, had you ever heard of... No, no, no. Because somebody brought it up and they're like, listen, we already have a Paul Bunyan. We don't need another one. Yeah. Well, this guy's big. Not that big, but he's pretty big. Did he have an ox? No? Okay. Then forget it. Well, Paul Bunyan was, you know, seems to be purely fictional. Right. Right? We don't even know who he could have truly been based on. Could he have been based... What was the timeframe on this? So, the reason he couldn't is because...

Beal was always a fisherman. He was never a logger. Okay. I'm sure Bunyan's based on some conglomerate of various big men who were, you know, working in the, and they were probably all big. They're loggers. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You swing an ax all day. You're going to get pretty, pretty jacked. Yeah. So thus lumberjack. Yeah. Right. Anyway, but, uh, so Maine, no shortage of, uh, giants with, uh, with feats of strength and, um, you know, who could, who could do superhuman things. But I, I love that, uh,

This one is well chronicled, right? It's not like so long ago that nobody wrote it down. Like we have photos of the guy. We can see the house where he lived. Right. Like all that stuff. You can see what it looked like. The house is so... I mean, you know, the picture of the house. It's a small little house with 11 children and two adults. Was there room to build? All I could think of is... I mean, we know how...

more children are produced in a house that small right you would have been aware yeah all i can say yeah yeah um i don't know what you do probably wouldn't have much time to build either with 11 kids and making 11 kids it's like oh my gosh i've got the lumber outside i have no time to build a house yeah he's out there doing feats of strength and like fishing all the time uh because he's got to provide but also because probably he doesn't want to go home right

I don't need that 12th kid. You're a real workaholic. Yeah, sure. Out here it's safe. I'm afraid of my wife. I could just deal with the sea and the fish and the jobs and punch a horse once in a while and I'll be fine. I wonder what the age range was with all the kids. Yeah, I could look it up, but I didn't.

But you don't feel like it. That's okay. This is how we work, folks. This is what I have to deal with. How fast can you produce 11 kids? I mean, one a year, one, you know. Yeah. I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but that'd be interesting to know if there was like a 20-year-old and then a newborn or if it was all like 12, 13, like Irish twins. So, right. And he died in 1899. So, like, you know, I'm sure he's got descendants. Yeah.

that are still out there. Oh yeah. That wasn't that long ago. Yeah. That could be a great or, you know, great grandkid could be like a great, great grandkid out there somewhere, or maybe even one great. Well,

Well, you would think too, with 11 kids, there's family everywhere. Everywhere. Right. Yeah. And I wonder if any of them like played basketball. Can you bring up Ancestry.com and we can start a subscription for him? Start doing this. Yes. We'll dig down. But yeah. But a local folk hero who's absolutely a real person buried there. You know, you've seen pictures of him. And I love that. It makes him better than Paul Bunyan in ways, right? Because Paul, you're like, I mean...

I mean, Minnesota claims they have Paul Bunyan, too, right? Right, right, right. So does Maine. They've got the big statue, you know, and stuff like that. Books written about him. Yeah. Nursery rhymes. But you can't argue with this one. You might argue with the feats of strength and all that other stuff, but, like, it's a real person. He was really there. And probably stronger than most people on the island. No doubt. No doubt. Probably wouldn't mess with him.

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