True Red Cranberry Bean

The history of this rich, maroon-colored pole bean is one of remarkable persistence. True Red Cranberry was among the very first bean varieties ever grown in the Northeast, alongside its fellow Abenaki “seven sisters” crops like squash, sunflowers, and eight-rowed flint corn.

Among the earliest written descriptions of True Red Cranberry appeared in American Cookery by Amelia Simmons (1796) — the very first cookbook to be published in the United States — and in 1863, Fearing Burr referred to it as “one of the oldest and most familiar of garden-beans [which] has probably been longer and more generally cultivated in this country than any other”. Yet despite its long-standing popularity in New England, True Red Cranberry eventually slipped into obscurity (as many historic varieties do) and by the mid-1900s, it had nearly vanished entirely.

It was around this time that the famed bean collector John Withee came across those old descriptions by Simmons and Burr, then began his eleven-year quest to track down any seeds that still exist. Withee’s search ultimately led him to a farm in Steep Falls, Maine, where True Red Cranberry was finally rediscovered and brought back into the fold of New England’s culinary tradition.

Last Grown in 2025