Names of bean varieties sold in seedsman's catalogs in early years in the United States were very changeable, and it is hard to know if any one variety was offered over many years...or if it was offered, was it really the same bean from decade to decade? Heritage seed sellers today often quote the provenance of the seed they are growing for sale. As in the art world, a solid provenance of who grew a bean over the years is respected.
I did learn something of interest this morning reading American Varieties of Garden Beans by William Woodbridge Tracy (1907). The Vicia faba that was mentioned yesterday was brought to the United States and offered by seedsmen, the problem being it did not do well in our drier climate.
So one of the beans people were comfortable using was not available to them.
In 1810,
William Booth of Baltimore only had a handful of beans in his catalog. The Broad Windsor, according to Tracy, was a vicia faba. As was the mazagan.
Grant Thorburn in his 1817 "Kalendar" mentioned just seven or eight varieties. He also offered Scarlet Runner early.
About 25 years later he was offering over two dozen beans, and had started to categorize them. Refugee appears on both lists, and probably the Red Cranberry, and I count the Scarlet Runner for both since it was around at Thorburn's much earlier. The others are acquiring variety names.
I really like Refugee's other name Thousand to One! Refugee is a green snap bean, good for home garden and commercial growing. The Scarlet Runner bean has remained in constant mention in popular literature and memoirs; it spans the flower garden and vegetable garden old favorites, being grown for porch shade and the pretty flowers.
While McMahon, of Philadelphia, by 1833, had the following listed.
The Corn Bean caught my eye. It is a kidney pole bean, and considered one of best. Its name changes several times, and by the time we get to the big catalogs at the turn of the 20th century you will probably find it as Speckled Cut Short, or earlier as Corn Hill. A description mentions it is a distinctive bean, not really looking like any other, but if you had to find a similar one it would be Lazy Wife!! (Another of my favorites:-)
As a parting tidbit... beans used as flowers. I will be coming back to that in some other post.
I see the low room with beams exposed overhead; the two windows, with many small panes, looking out on the farmyard in the year—a little world in itself— and two others opening toward the road, and giving to the inmates a connection with the great outside world. I see the whitewashed walls; the map of the township; the print depicting the Concord fight; the tall, old-fashioned clock in the corner, whose slow “ ticktock " gave to the flight of time a solemn meaning; the low, flag-bottomed chairs with straight backs, and one rocking-chair with a wooden seat and curved back supported by numerous rounds—a pattern that the artists have now monopolized. This last was grandma's chair. It had a plump and comfortable cushion, and stood in some dignity beside one of the front windows. Who shall dare to compute how many blue stockings were knit in that chair?
This oven was put in use only once a week, Saturday being the “baking day,” but it did its work so faithfully on that occasion that it well deserved a long season of rest. Its capacity was fifteen pies, or a huge pot of beans and half a dozen loaves of rye-and-Indian bread. The method of heating it was as follows: Early Saturday morning the oven was filled with brush-wood, which was kindled and allowed to burn until the bricks became a bright red; the brands were then removed, the ashes carefully swept out with a damp broom, and it was now ready for work. 
The apple and pumpkin pies were usually baked first, this process occupying less than half an hour, when they were brought to view by the aid of a long wooden shovel; the oven was then again heated as before, and the beans and brown bread took their turn. These were always baked at the same time; indeed, they must be considered complements, one to the other; and for some cause, inscrutable, but without doubt anterior to mere custom, when one is absent from the table the other always misses its presence and sellers in consequence. The bread was molded in round loaves, and deposited on the bottom of the oven, without pans. The beans were ready to be eaten at supper time, and the pot was afterward returned to the oven and allowed to remain there over night, the beans retaining sufficient heat to be ready for serving at breakfast next morning, when they proved still more savory.
How vividly I recall Mr. Ball’s shop on Essex Street, the bakers in their white aprons and brown-paper caps, the oven—a great cavern of blackness, the paste-board tickets by which to identify ownership, the chalk-marks on the side of the pot, the little company of fellow towns-folk bound on the same errand, the warmth of the pot and loaf as I placed them in my basket, their appetizing odor; and, above all, I recall with pleasure the walk home, often accompanied by some gossipy school-chum picked up by the way. Never have I enjoyed the outer world more keenly than during those early morning walks, when, in the solemnity of the staid New England Sunday, the city seemed quite other than the Cambridge of week days. 
