Going to Market

On the Chesapeake Bay, oyster harvests peaked in the 1880s during Captain Avery's lifetime, driven in the mid-19th century by national population growth, immigration, Baltimore oyster canneries in the 1840s, and the railroad, while northern packers and oystermen such as Captain Salem Avery of Blue Point, Long Island, migrated to the Bay to join the flourishing industry. At oystering's peak in the 1884–1885 season, watermen harvested 15 million bushels from the Bay, but one hundred years later the Chesapeake yielded less than 100,000 bushels of oysters. Crabbing emerged much later as a major industry: crabs were first offered for sale in the late 1800s, Maryland's first crab cannery opened in 1900, soft-shell crabs and peelers were preferred in the early 20th century, and crabbing did not become a viable livelihood until after World War II, before Chesapeake crab harvests reached 100 million pounds in the 1980s. Captain Salem Avery and his son Salem Walter Avery worked as oyster-industry middlemen and buy-boat captains, anchoring on the water, hoisting flags to signal they were buying, paying tongers cash on the spot, and carrying catches to Baltimore docks or local packing houses so watermen could stay at work and oysters remained fresh. Oysters were then shucked, packed, and shipped by rail to places including Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Francisco, but as packing houses moved closer to oyster beds in the 1930s, Baltimore seafood plants began closing. By the mid-20th century, the West River area had seven oyster packing houses, while crab processing there remained largely a cottage industry in which women steamed and picked crabs at home, packed the meat in pound containers, and sold most of it locally to summer cottages and boarding houses.

Shady Side, Maryland · United States