Hannah Freeman Bean

This pole bean has long pods that can be eaten young and tender as a snap bean and beautiful patterned seeds that can be cooked in the shelly or dry stages. It thrives growing next to Puwhem Corn and climbs it as if enthusiastically greeting an old friend. Hannah Freeman (1730-1802) was a Lenni-Lenape woman who made baskets, worked seasonally in agriculture, traditional healing, and childcare, and travelled the Brandywine River Valley by foot where she lived primarily among European settlers. She was known as Indian Hannah and then after her death as the "last Delaware Indian of Chester County, Pennsylvania." While most of her tribe fled westward, her family stayed behind, and into her old age she was a daily reminder to the Quakers who occupied her ancestral lands that the land was not truly theirs. William Penn promised that as long as Lenape people lived by the Brandywine River, he would not claim their land. Despite this, colonists divided the land and "pitied" Hannah, providing fo