Salt Cod, Boas, and Dancing: Hayseeders Ball Returned Friday Night
Historic event brought music, community and a lot of suspenders to Bar Harbor hotel
BAR HARBOR—The numbered badges adorn forty men’s suspenders or hang from their pockets and their guests must show an invitation or they aren’t allowed inside, but there’s still a spirit of community that blossoms past nostalgia and into the smiles, goofiness, and discussion that mark Bar Harbor’s annual Hayseeders’ Ball.
A guestbook and invitation checker is stationed at the front door. Part barn dance, part social affair, part homage to the past, brought music and community, Friday night, at the Atlantic Oceanside.
Once billed as one of the two major social events for Bar Harbor’s year-round residents, the event had been on hiatus, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, until last year.
“Whoa,” said a woman as she stepped inside and took in the straw hats, flannel, mixed with flapper attire and 1950s poodle skirts. “This is a little weird. Cool, but weird.”
Donuts sat in plates. Wine and beer glasses were hoisted, cheersed with and then placed on tables as some danced, some talked, and some simply watched the crowd.
Cool, but a little weird.
The Hayseeders’ Ball traditionally features a “Grand March” entry of the Hayseeders and spouses at 8:30 p.m. There’s time to dance, try some salted cod, and catch up with friends and even local politics. The event is invitation only and in the recent past there have been invitations to be had, but it wasn’t always this way.
In a 1916 Bangor Daily News article, the regular correspondent detailed the ball writing,
“Bar Harbor has one institution peculiarly its own, which has never been quite duplicated by another place, although some colorless imitations have tried from time to time. This is the annual Way Back or Hayseeders’ ball, when costumes of a bygone day resurrected from the garret, when the met get out their farm clothes and old-time rigs, and the girls hunt up the prettiest of the old-time styles and spend the evening in an all-around good time.”
Back then, the event was held in the Bar Harbor Casino and seven hundred tickets were snatched up and many were left wanting. It’s not quite the same now. But there are still only 40 members of the Hayseeders and all are still men. They each have a badge. Some badges have been passed down through the generations of Bar Harbor men. Many of the current Hayseeders come from outside of Bar Harbor and they meet as a group once a year prior to the event. An invitation and announcement has been typically printed in the Mount Desert Islander. Its former editor is a Hayseeder.
In the past, the Bar Harbor Casino was decorated with lanterns and wagon wheels, yokes, harnesses, and farming tools to go with the theme.
According to the February 21, 1954 edition of the Portland Press Herald, one guest wrote to a friend after going to the ball, “There’s no dullness there in winter, from Eden to Odd Fellow’s Hall; and you never can know your Bar Harbor by leaving each year in the fall. For ‘tis until the season is over that the home folks get going at all, and the night of nights in Bar Harbor is the night of the Hayseed Ball.”
According to the blog, The History of Mount Desert Island, the casino was located at the corner of Cottage and Bridge Streets. A New York Times article says it was originally meant to be built on the corner of Mt Desert and Main Streets.
Check out a video prior to last year’s event by Steve Peer, Katina Anne Stanwood and Jc Neel.
Link to MDI Historical Society image.
Portions of this article appeared last year.
Shaun Farrar, one of the two current contributors to the Bar Harbor Story (and my husband) is a member of the Hayseeders. Many thanks to Tammy Packie for taking photos of the event and sharing them with us.
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