Salem Avery built this house for his family in 1860 as a modest one-room home with a loft, and it was later expanded to two rooms on each floor by connecting a small detached kitchen on the east side. Although Salem Avery died in 1887, his family continued to work the water and live here until 1921. Because rising river water and shore erosion threatened the site, the house had to be moved inland. In 1923, a group of Jewish Masons from Washington, D.C., bought the property as a vacation and fishing camp for their families after Jewish American groups were denied access to private beaches and clubs. Their National Masonic Fishing and Country Club gave these families a place to enjoy summer pastimes and shore life. In 1927, the small kitchen was demolished and replaced with a large assembly hall with eight rooms on the second floor, creating the first-floor Big Room for leisure with family and friends. The property remained a rustic retreat with outdoor bathrooms and showers, cold running water, and communal kitchen and dorms, and in 1968 the club house was named Our Place. Indoor plumbing was installed in 1973, but as new highways and the Bay Bridge made more distant destinations such as Ocean City easier to reach, visits declined. The remaining member families used it as a shared vacation home until it was sold in 1989, after which the Shady Side Rural Heritage Society began preserving the property, adding the boat shed and rain gardens and establishing today’s Captain Avery Museum.