A group of about 60 extended family relations arrived by train to Chehalis in 1893.
They were the first Appalachian group that traveled from West Virginia and Virginia, and they soon settled east of Mossyrock in Lewis County.
Floyd Riffe, the Baptist pastor of the bunch, soon established the Riffe Post Office. The Appalachian group brought their religion, their dialect, their work ethic and their food culture with them.
Every family had garden and flower seeds stowed away in their belongings and, among those seeds, were a bush, dry-bean seed they had grown for generations. The heritage beans had been grown by mountain families for so long, they often named them after themselves. Some called them the little brown bean. Some called them the Belcher Bean or the Blankenship Bean. The beans, when dry, are light colored with reddish stripes and age to a somewhat darker purple color. They plump up to light brown when cooked.
Berlin Kiser Osborne said her family called them “peggy” beans and had them tucked in with their belongings in 1905 when they arrived from Virginia. At age 86, Goldie Jo Cook Mayhew said she always remembered a childhood incident in connection to the beans. About 1915, her mom sent her out to pull up the dried bean plants and she heard something. “I looked up to see my first airplane. It was a two-wing thing. There it was, flying up there in the sky.”
The highlanders generously distributed the prolific beans until they were being raised throughout Mossyrock, Riffe, Kosmos and Glenoma areas during the 20th century. They appeared in nearly every garden and they were sure to show up with ham and onions at every potluck.
Gradually, over the years, fewer families raised them, especially after the Mossyrock Dam took out the Riffe community. Subsistence gardening became less prevalent, with fewer and fewer families growing gardens or raising the beans. The Belcher family passed down their Belcher Beans until about 35 years ago, when Harry and Helen Belcher were the last to grow them in their family.
My grandfather, Jim McMahan, grew them until 1985, when he passed away. My dad, Willam Bud Evans, began growing them from 1986 up until about 1998 and called them Noey Beans, because he got his from Grandpa Jim. Grandpa Jim said he called them Noey Beans because he got his from Noah Blankenship. Noah was the son of highlander Thomas I. Blankenship, also known as T.I., who arrived by train with the first families who brought the beans.
After my dad stopped raising the beans in 1998, he meticulously saved and stored them while trying to find someone else in our family to grow them. Finally, I decided to take up the challenge; however, the seeds were too old and would not sprout.
For the last several years, I tried in vain to find someone left in the valley who still grew them. With all the elderly family members passing away, it has been difficult to find anyone in the area who still grows them or even remembers them.
I had about given up when Amanda Blankenship discovered I was looking for them and introduced me to her father, Dave Blankenship, who still grows them on the homestead of his grandfather Noah Blankenship in Ajlune.
I hadn’t even thought of seeking out the original family of my grandfather’s Noey Beans. Dave said they always called them the Blankenship Beans, but he liked the name Noey Beans, too, and had never heard that name for them.
“We’ve always saved seed every year to replenish and keep growing them from year to year, all the way back from when they came from West Virginia,” he said.
Dave Blankenship, fourth generation from his great-grandfather who brought the beans from the Appalachia Mountains to Riffe, said “T. I. Blankenship, the first blacksmith in Riffe, brought the beans I grow, but he grew them in Riffe. Noah, his son, this is his place. My dad said I could have Grandpa Noah’s house when I was about 19 years old. It had been empty about 15 years. This place is a real special home for me. We kept the seed from year to year, from whenever T.I. brought them and we still have them. I fixed up the house and have been building on the place ever since, all my life. It’s been pretty special they passed it on to me. We downsized our garden this year, and it was pretty manageable. My garden has shrunk quite a bit over the years. I’m really tickled some people are getting interested in the beans. I was afraid they were getting lost. It makes me know they are going to continue and that’s really special.”
