Beals Island
Each month, Down East editors select our favorite response to “Where in Maine?” Here is our favorite letter from July’s photo.
The minute I read the first sentence in your July issue and saw the statement “he nearly stood seven feet tall,” I knew in a flash the location was Barney’s Point on Beals Island, named for Tall Barney Beal. The folk hero and gentle giant was my great-great-grandfather. Years ago, I participated in a Tall Barney history project at the University of Maine. I showed some documentary footage and had a seven-foot cutout of Tall Barney made for the occasion, with the idea of donating it to the Beals Historical Society. A few years later, my sister Deborah and I were all packed up to deliver the seven-foot Tall Barney to the historical society when we discovered that he was too tall to fit into my car. So we had to unpack the car and reload our gear and Tall Barney onto the bed of my husband’s lobster truck. Tall Barney was delivered and now resides at the Beals Historical Society as the official doorman, posing with many island citizens and visitors for photographs. Tall Barney lives on!
— Marcia Beal Brazer, Ogunquit, Maine
