Antique 1930s-40s 🥫 Maryland Chief Stringless Beans Label Large 13" NOS Baltimore MD

Who Packed Maryland Chief Beans? 🥫 Antique 1930s-40s Stringless Beans Label, Large 13", NOS, Baltimore MD

Size: 13" x 4 1/2"

🥫 A proud chief in a feathered headdress against a pale moon, MARYLAND CHIEF in big gold letters on deep navy and purple, and a bowl heaped with cut green beans. It's a big 13-inch can label for Maryland Chief Stringless Beans from J. Langrall & Bro., Inc. of Baltimore, never put on a can, and my pictures seriously don't do it justice.

🔍 What's On It

The left panel: Maryland Chief BRAND, PACKED BY J. LANGRALL & BRO. Inc., BALTIMORE, MD., and a banner reading CONTENTS CUT GREEN 1 LB. 12 OZ. STRINGLESS BEANS. The middle panel says READY TO SERVE, HEAT ONLY, gives the can size (No. 2½, about 3½ cups, 5 to 7 servings) and a little recipe: heat the beans, then add a teaspoon of vinegar, two tablespoons of butter and some parsley. It ends with "Ask your grocer for 'Maryland Chief' peas, tomatoes, red kidney beans, hominy, carrots & peas, carrots, beets, spinach, wax beans. You will like them," and QUALITY CANNERS FOR OVER 60 YEARS. The right panel is the big chief portrait, TRADE MARK REG. 1878, and an Art Deco L-and-J monogram with & BRO. Inc. The printer's line reads SIMPSON & DOELLER BALTO MD. The 13-inch length is simply the wrap for a No. 2½ can. The back is blank.

That "over 60 years" dates it. The Langralls started in 1878, the year printed by the chief, so this label can't be older than 1938, and the firm's later Maryland Chief labels read "over 70 years." That puts this one in the late 1930s or the 1940s.

🦪 J. Langrall & Bro.

James and Leander Langrall started out in 1878 packing oysters and fruit on Boston Street in Baltimore, and moved after one season to Aliceanna Street, between Chester and Boston Streets, where the firm stayed until the 1970s. By 1882 they were packing "Celebrated Maryland Chief Brand Baltimore Oysters" and selling them all over the Western states through a branch house in Peoria, Illinois. James even patented an oyster-feeder in 1879. The firm incorporated in 1907, canning oysters, vegetables and fruit at Baltimore and over on the Eastern Shore at Centreville, and Leander was in the canning business from 1878 until he died in 1937. His son E. Elmer "Pinky" Langrall took over as president, and in 1939 the trade press described the firm as canners since 1878 whose Maryland Chief foods were distributed nationally. In 1955 you could send in two Maryland Chief labels and fifty cents for a "Remindex" kitchen shopping-list gadget.

The brand outlived the family business. In the 1970s Maryland Chief passed to Charles G. Summers, Jr., Inc. of New Freedom, Pennsylvania, with a new chief in profile on the labels, and in 1977 the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait even warned Summers that a Taiwanese firm was making near-identical copies of the Maryland Chief red kidney bean labels.

🖨️ Simpson & Doeller of Baltimore

The printer was one of Baltimore's great can-label houses. John Simpson started it in 1886, Henry Doeller joined after 1896, and from 1908 the firm worked out of its big plant on East Preston Street, known for stock labels for canners all over the country. In September 1954 it was sold to United States Printing & Lithograph and its own presses stopped.

📏 Details

• Antique 1930s-40s Maryland Chief Brand cut green stringless beans can label, No. 2½ can
• J. Langrall & Bro. Inc., Baltimore; Trade Mark Reg. 1878; quality canners for over 60 years
• Simpson & Doeller, Baltimore; about 13" x 4 1/2", unused, New Old Stock
• You'll get one label like the ones shown

🖼️ It's long enough to anchor a wall of food labels, and it looks great over a bar cart, a buffet or a long kitchen counter. A natural for anybody from Baltimore or Fells Point.