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ORAL HISTORY
Nieman, Kenneth
Captain Avery Museum
1984.012.002
Nieman, Kenneth
1984.012.002
Interview Date: September 26,1984
Interview of Kenneth Nieman
Shady Side, Maryland
Interviewer: Jennie LeFevre
Note: Mrs. Maria Nieman participated in some of the interview and is designated as MN:
JL: Mr. Nieman, could you tell me if you were born in Shady Side?
KN: Yeah.
JL: You were born. Would you mind telling me what year?
KN: 1912.
JL: 1912. Where did your parents live in Shady Side?
KN: Well, they lived over where the old Instrument Company is now, that has been torn down ...
And then the year after I was born, we moved over on the point. Mouth of the creek ... And that’s where I
grew up.
JL: OK. Did you go to, uh, school in Shady Side?
KN: Yeah.
JL: Could you remember who some of your classmates were?
KN: Yeah. There’s a bunch of them. There’s Russell Allen, Francis Proctor, Harry Proctor, Vernon
Joyce, uh. . .Ann Powerbridge(?), George Griner, Jimmy and Jack Wilde, and Jack Hallock, ___ Hallock.
There’s more than that, I just can’t think of all of them.
JL: Could you recall who some of your teachers were?
KN: Yeah. My first teacher was Miss Helen Dawson from ... she lived over in Mayo and then Miss
Mamie Bast, Mrs. Andrews and a teacher named Mrs. Welch, but I never knew her real good, she taught
me a little bit.
JL: In growing up at home, did you have brothers and sisters?
KN: Oh yeah.
JL: Would you mind telling me what their names are?
KN: Well, there’s Roxie and Marion, Ed, Betty, Jack, Mary Lou - Mary Lee.
JL: And Marion?
KN: And Marion, yeah.
JL: Could you tell me what all of you did as little children for entertainment?
A: I guess fighten most of the time (laughter). Not a whole lot.
JL: Did you play ball. Did you ... uh ...
KN: Yeah.
JL: Did you play, you know, along the shore line. .or..?
�KN: Oh yeah, we played around the creek a lot, we lived right on it ... And, yeah, we used to play ball,
mostly.
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JL: Were there any ball teams down here at that time that perhaps you and your brothers played on?
KN: School ... we used to have teams that would go over Mayo some, down Cedar Grove some during
the school year.
JL: Well you must have gotten that from your father, because your father told me he liked to play ball,
too.
KN: Oh yeah, yeah he was a great ball player.
JL: Could you tell me some of the gentlemen that you used to be on a team with?
KN: Just us, I mentioned in ... a while ago.
JL: Some of the gentlemen you went to school with.
KN: Yeah.
JL: I imagine you had a team that won a lot.
KN: Well, I guess we’d win and lose ... yeah, we won some.
JL: Is there anything else that perhaps your brothers and your sisters and ... and what you all did for
entertainment as young children?
KN: No ... (laughter)
(and then Ms. Neiman said something inaudible at this point)
KN: Well, there wasn’t much entertainment. (laughter)
JL: Would you like to tell me about it?
KN: Oh that was just something that happened when I was a kid.
Ms.N: He was very small, he and his brother, they had an apple tree, a small apple tree over there and
they were picking the apples off and eating them ... so their father told them positively not to eat another
apple, take another apple off that tree. So, they didn’t. But, when their mother went out and looked at the
tree, the apple cores were still hanging on the tree.
JL: Now that is a very funny story. That is very funny.
MN: Their father couldn’t chastise them because they hadn’t pulled the apples off the tree. They ate them
JL: They ate them right on the tree?
MN: And my mother-in-law loves to tell that one.
JL: Could you tell me what stores were in existence down here when you were a little boy in Shady Side?
KN: Uh ... yeah ... well, pretty much the same ones that’s in existence now. Uh ... used to be Will Owens
store up there where ... uh … Eddie’s is, Eddie’s store and then they had Nowell’s store, which burned
down around the corner and then ... then there’s Will Crandell, he had a store. And Herb Crandell had one
out, right across from the school where the hall is. And I guess that was about it.
JL: Would you happen to remember the Shady Side Beverage Company?
KN: Yep, yeah.
JL: Could you tell me what you recall about it?
KN: Yeah, I even worked out there a little bit.
�3
JL: Oh, what did you do, Mr. Nieman?
KN: Washed bottles (laughter)...
JL: Uh huh. Was the soda made right there?
KN: Yeah, well they got the syrup from Baltimore, yeah, and they made and bottled the stuff right there.
JL: Did you ever, I mean if you cleaned the bottles, did you ever help them mix up the ... the ... soda?
KN: No, I never did do that. But … uh ... they sold a lot of it, I don’t know why they ever stopped.
JL: I understand that there was also a bake shop there in the same area.
KN: Yeah.
JL: Could you tell me what you recall about that?
KN: Uh ... no, not a whole lot because I was very small then. But I know there was a bake shop. She had
baked bread and pies and cakes and all sorts of things.
JL: Now, this may be long before your time, but do you ever recall a saw mill being in Shady Side?
KN: I never saw it, but I knew there was one here. It belonged to old man Dick Trott ... And he done a lot
of sawing, sawing ... mill work. But, I never did see. it, I guess really, he had stopped using it by the time
I got big enough.
JL: OK. As you were growing up then. .uh. .with your brothers and your sisters, and when you became a
young man … uh … what did you all do for entertainment when you were young teenagers?
KN: Well, I guess that most things was we’d go to Annapolis to the movies, when I got big enough to
drive a car.
JL: Uh, huh.
KN: And before that, well, somebody would have a party, of course, every weekend and they’d all
congregate around that.
JL: You all would go to one another’s houses?
KN: Yeah, whoever was having parties. And they’d have one, well … about every weekend.
JL: Did you ever go to the dances that they used to have down …
KN: No, I never went to dances, I never did any dancing.
JL: You never went down there.
KN: No.
JL: Did you ever go to the movie theater that they had in Shady Side?
KN: Yeah, yeah.
JL: Would you recall how much they would charge you to get into the movies?
KN: I think it’s a quarter, I believe, I’m not really sure, but I think that’s what it was. Wasn’t very much,
of course it was a lot then, those quarters didn’t come too easy.
JL: When you were a teeny, tiny little boy in Shady Side can you recall who you think was the oldest
person living in Shady Side at that time that you knew?
KN: That would have been my grandfather.
�4
JL: I mean, OK, your grandfather. Someone else that perhaps outside of your family, that you, might
have thought was maybe the oldest person living in Shady Side.
MN: Were any of your great grandparents living.
KN: I guess … uh … Aunt Augusta Woodfield’s mother.
JL: And where did she live in Shady Side, Mr. Nieman?
KN: Right over where Hallock’s place is now.
JL. Where the Hallock place is now?
KN: Yeah.
JL: And you think she … perhaps she was about.
KN: She was probably the about the oldest one, I expect, that I can remember, anyway, cause she was,
she was ... uh … Aunt Gussie (try to ID this person) was old then and she was her mother, so she had to
be right old.
JL: Could you tell me what you think perhaps are some of the oldest houses in Shady Side, the oldest
homes?
KN: No, I mean this is supposed to be an old one here...
JL: This one?
KN: It’s over a hundred years old.
JL: Uh … could you tell me who, would you know who owned this home originally or had it built?
KN: No I don’t.
MN: I imagine it was a Nowell.
KN: And the first one that I know of was Captain Jim Nowell. Well, I guess, when I was a teenager, I
guess, he was around 60 or 70 years old then.
JL: And this was his home?
KN: He lived here. Now whether he had it built, I don’t know, I guess the only one that could tell you
that would be Miss Ethel.
JL: OK. Could you please ....
MN: She said that this house was older than the hotel.
JL: I see …
MN: .So ... um … how much older, I do not know.
JL: Mrs. Nieman, would you mind telling me your ... your given name and your maiden name?
MN: Maria Jean Moneykiser Nieman.
JL: Nieman, Ok.
MN: New. . um … Miss Ethel did say, at the time she was telling my daughter about that the hotel was
125 and this one was older, this house here ... this part over here.
JL: Would you mind telling me Mr. Nieman when you and Mrs. Nieman were married?
MN: He wouldn’t know (laughter).
�5
JL: Would you mind telling me?
MN: January the 20th, 1937.
JL: 1937. Uh, would you … uh … please tell me the name of your children, Mr. Nieman?
KN: Yes, Suzie, Margaret, Kenneth, Frances, Mike … ain’t it?
MN: Yeah ... (inaudible)
KN: Mike and Greg, Philip and Terry.
JL: Uh … could you tell me if you have grandchildren?
KN: Yeah, my wife have to tell you that.
MN: 13
JL: You have 13 grandchildren? Do you have any great grandchildren?
MN: Um huh. .
JL: How many great grandchildren do you have?
NM: Seven.
JL: Seven. Uh, when you and your wife were first married, could you tell me where you lived in Shady
Side?
KN: The first year we lived down with her mother.
MN: The first two years.
JL: The first year you lived with your mother?
MN: With my mother.
JL: Oh, with your mother?
MN: In Avalon Shores ...
JL: With Mrs. Nieman ...
MN: And the house that we lived in after that has since burned down and then we were in Virginia for
five years.
JL: You were in Virginia ... then when you came back to Shady Side, where did you live when you came
back to Shady Side?
MN: At my family’s cottage until we built the house where Suzie lives now.
JL: I see. And, how long were you in that house?
MN: About five years, and then bought this one in ‘51.
JL: And you bought this one in ‘51. Would you mind telling me whom you bought this house from?
MN: Clifford Woodard.
JL: I see ok ... (laughter). Could you tell me a little bit about your home life, Mr. Nieman, in growing up?
What did your father do for an occupation?
KN: He was an oyster tonger in the winter, and he done carpenters work in the summer.
JL: Did you ever go out and work with your father on the water?
KN: Yeah, yeah … a lot.
�6
JL: A lot. Could you recall when you first started to work for your father, I mean work with your father,
how much did he used to get for a bushel of oysters?
KN: Uh ... I guess when I first started around, from 60 cents to 90 cents. And then a few years after that
they dropped down to 40 cents, didn’t get better ... it got worse … (laughter).
JL: About how old were you when you started to work with your father on the water?
KN: 15.
JL: 15? During that time and around 15, 16, can you recall anything that might of happened unusual out
on the water, since all the gentlemen here have worked on ... something odd or peculiar or anything
strange, anybody like fall overboard and you had to rescue them or some- …
KN: No, not really. Uh ... the only time anything unusual happened, I got caught in a storm out there one
time.
JL: Well, could you tell me about it please? (Discussion aside) It was a bad storm ... you would prefer
not to talk about it? Ok, we’ll not talk about ...
KN: It ain’t that, I just kinda get choked up for some reason.
JL: That’s ok. Would you mind telling me how many years you worked with your father on the water?
KN: Oh, about six years.
JL: Could you tell me, did your father work on the water all ... your father worked on the water all of his
life.
KN: Yeah, yeah.
JL: All of his life.
MN: He did go in for house … uh working in house construction.
KN: That was just the summer time.
MN: Yeah.
JL: Mr. Nieman, could you tell me if ... uh … after you finished working for your father, did you then
work yourself on the water, or what was your occupation?
KN: Yeah, I worked on the water during the winter a lot, but then I took up boat work.
JL: Well, we going to ask you all about your boat work on the second half of this tape.
KN: Uh ...
MN: He started, he started to finish it with Dick Hartge.
JL: You served your boat building apprenticeship with Mr. Hartge?
KN: Yeah, I worked for him just summer times about uh, six /seven years.
JL: Where did Mr. Hartge have his boat yard down here?
KN: In Galesville.
JL: Oh, in Galesville?
MN: The big Hartge boat yard over there. . . He built boats; sailboats and cruisers.
JL: What was the first thing he let you do in helping building boats? I mean, you know, since you ... in
learning?
�KN: Well, when I first started I was doing painting. He give me a paint brush and then as time when on,
you know, little odd things and finally got into the wood work … So, takes a while.
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JL: Were they hand tools then, or were they power tools?
KN: Some power, mostly hand. And I’d drill ...
JL: Could you tell me what some of the hand tools were?
KN: Well, just the everyday hand tools, hammer and saws, planes and we had ... uh ... drill holes with a
ratchet drill, uh ... didn’t have electric drills then. And most everything was nailed anyway so you didn’t
have to drill too many holes. So ... really the only power tools they had was joiners and band saws and
they took care of the heavy work.
JL: And you worked for him six years?
KN: Yeah, around six, seven, it wasn’t full years, just half of years.
JL: Could you tell me what you would recall of any of the boat, early boat builders in Shady Side?
Would you know who they were?
KN: Yeah uh ... I guess they all ... the first one, I guess, that I know anything about was … uh, Uncle
Perry Rogers.
JL: Uh. .would you mind telling me ... where his boat yard was down here?
KN: Yes, it was where Jerry Joyce lived, that was it there. And then there was old man Will Lee up there
where Sam Lee’s living now. And there was old man George Proctor, he built some and I think Ed
Leatherbury built a few.
JL: Did you ever go down in their boat yard as a young person and watch them build boats?
KN: No, no, just over to my uncle’s ... I did go over there some - to watch them.
JL: Were they the ones that inspired you to be a boat builder?
KN: Well, I liked it, yeah. I ... uh ... got a big kick out of looking at boats.
JL: Well, before we go on the other side of this tape, is there anything else you might want to tell me
about your home life?
KN: Well, not really, I mean just everyday occurrence, just day in, day out. No, no, nothing unusual.
JL: Were there just dirt roads down here then, Mr. Nieman?
KN: Yeah, yeah. When ... uh ... I guess when the first car that came around here the only time you can
run it was in dry weather.
JL: Does your father have a horse and buggy?
KN: No … Never did have.
JL: So you had to walk everywhere you went until you got a car?
KN: Well, living down on that point, we had to come up the road; up the creek in a boat.
JL: Oh, OK. There was a ...
KN: It was a skiff, just had a skiff. And that’s how you went to the store cause all the stores was right
here.
JL: But you didn’t have that far to go though, did you?
�KN: No, just up … you row up the creek and didn’t have too far to walk and of course in dry weather
you could take the old Model T Ford and drive to the store.
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JL: Well I guess, I imagine, it was very exciting, then when your father got his first car?
KN: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a big thing then in them days.
JL: I remember your, your mother and father telling me that all the young children in their family
couldn’t wait to go for a ride in the car.
KN: Oh yeah.
JL: Could you tell me where you just used to go? Just around here or …
KN: Just anywhere there was a road you could travel on, it wasn’t too many of them, no ... uh ...
JL: Did you ever get stuck in the mud with a car?
KN: Oh yeah, plenty of times. (laughter) yep.
JL: You all had to push to get out or someone, had someone pull you out
KN: And of course they used to have chains they could put on the wheels and that would help pull you
out and, but … uh … joyriding then, there wasn’t always a joy. ‘Cause sometimes you had to work hard
to get on, to get out.
JL: I imagine you did.
KN: Yeah.
JL: Could you maybe describe ... uh … Christmas time at your house when you were little?
KN: Oh yeah, that was a big time. Everybody, well you didn’t sleep much that night. (laughter) Most
time you’d catch Santa Claus trimming the tree. Yeah, that was big time that day, that day was.
JL: Did you like to ice skate when you were a young person?
KN: Yeah, we done a lot of ice skating.
JL: Could you tell me where around here you used to ice skate?
KN: Right here on the creek and then in Flag Pond, down … there’s a pond down next to Snug Harbor,
we used to go down there a lot, that was fresh water.
JL: Do you recall some of the people you used to skate with?
KN: Yeah, all the fellows them, uh … went to school with and, well, just about everybody in Shady Side
really.
JL: And you used to skate at night time as well?
KN: Yeah, yeah. Most the time at night, the evening and night we had to do something during the day,
like working, so ...
JL: Oh, I just remembered something. A gentlemen told me that all the men used to get, ge,t together
once in a while and sing.
KN: Not me …
JL: Not you. Not you, no you were never with any of them singing?
KN: I guess there was some of them that did.
�9
JL: Do you recall when the uh, uh, … people … the boarders used to come down in the summer time?
KN: Yeah, yeah, used to come down on the old Emma Giles.
JL: Did you ever ride yourself on the Emma Giles?
KN: One time. (Unintelligible) went to Annapolis ... that was a big trip.
JL: Can you recall how many passengers you thought the Emma Giles would have carried?
KN: Oh, I guess it would carry a couple hundred. Then, of course, freight and stuff. But I really ... it was
kind of ahead of my time.
JL: OK, do you recall the showboat coming into Galesville?
KN: Yeah, yeah.
JL: Could you tell me what your recollection of it is?
KN: Well, that was big time, too. It was up there a good week and you got up there every night you
could, every night you could afford it.
JL: Every night they had a different show?
KN: Yeah, yeah … yeah cause I know I’d go up two, three times a week.
JL: What type of shows did they have?
KN: Oh, just some kind of vaudeville and you know, I don’t even remember what they were, but they
always had shows and I guess the biggest thing was with us, they had a box of candy with a prize in it.
And I guess most of the people went up there to get one of them.
JL: Oh, well what would be a prize in one of the boxes of candy? Could you recall?
KN: No … uh … I don’t remember what was in them, I do, all I remember is that they had prizes in
them. But, I think that some of them was fairly good.
JL: Oh, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. And the boat used to stay for about a week then, the
showboat?
KN: Yeah, it would generally stay a week.
JL: You wouldn’t recall from what area the showboat came?
KN: No, it would come in the Bay and then it would go to Galesville and then I think it went to
Annapolis and it hit all different places and then I guess then it went back on the Eastern shore, I don’t
know. …But I know it would hit different places up and down Western shore.
JL: How many people do you think that they could seat on the showboat when it came and would put a
show on?
KN: They could seat quite a few. I guess a couple hundred. It was a pretty big boat. I think the scow was
big. I guess a hundred feet long.
JL: Could you recall how much it would cost to go to a show on the showboat?
KN: That I don’t remember, but I think it was around maybe 40, 50 cents. (laughter)
JL: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
KN: It wasn’t higher than the movie was.
�10
JL: When you would go to the showboat, would everyone get in their boat and go across to Galesville or
…
KN: No, not all the time. Sometimes drove around in the car, but at that time the roads got a little better,
and you could get around on land a little bit better. A lot of times you’d go up in the boat.
JL: Uh, could you tell me what you all used to do, maybe at Halloween?
KN: Uh, we …
JL: Did you used to play pranks on people?
KN: Yeah ...
JL: What type was that?
A: What they called “rubbin rosin” ... all you’d do is take a long string and shove it up underneath the
well board along somebody’s house and get off in the bushes and take a rosin and rub it on the string and
that would make a hell of a racket. (laughter) And some people didn’t like it . Of course, some people
didn’t care, but, you’d get somebody that, they’d even shoot at you. (laughter)
JL: But nobody was ever hurt?
KN: No. Un uh ...
JL: They just shot at ...
KN: They didn’t, they didn’t shoot at you, they’d just shoot to scare you off.
JL: Anything else they would do at Halloween?
KN: Well, they always had a Halloween party.
JL: Where would they have it?
KN: Like a social at the school house.
JL: At the school ...
KN: At the school house or if they had a hall … rnost time everything was held at the school house.
JL: Would they dress up in costumes?
KN: Yeah, some of them would.
JL: Did you ever?
KN: No, I didn’t, I never did dress up, I just went as I was.
JL: You just went as you were.
END OF SIDE 1 OF TAPE
JL: Mr. Nieman, when you were a young man and you used to go to the stores out here they had a pot
belly stove, some of the stores, didn’t they?
KN: Oh, all of them, yeah.
JL: And some of the men would sit around the pot belly stove and talk? (Laughter)
KN: Every night.
�11
JL: Could you imagine maybe, could you uh ... uh ... think of something in particular they talked about or
some story that you could tell me?
KN: No, not really, I mean it’s just whatever happened that day, they’d discuss it.
JL: They would? Would they sit there and catch oysters and fish?
KN: Oh yeah, well that was about the biggest topic, oystering. How much you, how many you caught,
what the price was, price was a big thing cause everybody might get a little different and everybody
wanted to get the big, top dollar, if he could.
JL: Would you mind telling me when you had your very first boat, what was the name of your very first
boat?
KN: Oh it didn’t have a name on it, just, just had the Coast Guard numbers and that was it.
JL: I see. Now I would like to talk about your boat building business. You told me that you worked for a
gentlemen as an apprentice for six years and then did you start your boat building business here in Shady
Side?
KN: Yeah.
JL: On this property?
KN: No, it was started over to my fathers
JL: What year would you say that was?
KN: Uh ... ‘47, I think it was ‘47. My brother and I, well two or three brothers we all worked over there
for, oh, three or four years until I bought this place and then I branched off to myself.
JL: I see. Would you mind telling me, excuse me, would you mind telling me when you were born, Mr.
Nieman?
KN: When I was born?
JL: Yes sir.
KN: 31st of December, 1912.
JL: 1912. OK. At what age did you start boat building business on your own?
KN: Damn, I don’t remember now. I’d have to figure back. (laughter).
JL: But, ok, you started your boat building business here, then, on your own?
KN: On my own, yeah, uh huh, that was in ‘51. So you would have to go from 1912 up to ‘51 to get that.
JL: And then you started alone. Did you have any helpers?
KN: Uh, yeah, I had people working for me. I had, I say, as much as eight people at one time.
JL: Uh, would you know who some of them, gentlemen were?
KN: Yeah, a boy called T-Lee Wilde, there was a James Atwell, Smith Lee, uh. . .Cottie (Carter?)
Phipps, and I had a couple colored fellows that done bottom work, stuff like that on the railway …
Courtney Denny.
JL: The very first boat you built here, who did you build it for, Do you recall?
KN: I don’t, I don’t. I don’t remember. Uh ... I believe it was for a fellow in Baltimore and I can’t even
think of the man’s name.
�12
JL: Was it a pleasure boat or a working boat?
KN: Yeah, it ... no it was a pleasure boat, in fact most all of them were pleasure boats.
JL: OK on the very first boat you built, do you recall what size boat it was?
KN: Yeah, she was 36 feet.
JL: And ...
KN: And she was just for, strictly for his own private use.
JL: And how long did it take you to build this boat?
KN: Well, it’s hard to say. We generally … generally wound up about, anywhere from seven hundred to
a thousand hours in a boat, depending on how much, you know, how much they want to get done on it.
JL: Would … the boats that you built you say the majority of them were pleasure boats?
KN: Yeah.
JL: But you did build some work boats as well?
KN: Yeah, I built work boats, but … uh … at that time people just couldn’t afford a work boat, wasn’t
making ... they wasn’t making much money out there.
JL: Could you tell me what type of wood work boats were made from?
KN: Well, oak and white cedar, mainly. Some of our ... mainly white oak and white cedar.
JL: Could you tell me where the, what area the wood came from?
KN: Yeah, the white oak came from local, Jim Johnson up here in Highlands cut it and he had a saw mill
and he sawed it.
JL: And the pleasure boats, what were they made of? What type of wood?
KN: That’s it.
JL: The same type of wood?
KN: Same thing, uh huh.
JL: Same type of wood?
KN: Yeah, used the same thing in all of them.
JL: I understand you are still building boats?
KN: I still, yeah I just got one half built in the shop now.
JL: Could you take a guess how many boats you have actually built?
KN: I guess around 40.
JL: Around 40.
KN: I would say around that, yeah.
JL: And were they built to people’s specifications or did you build the boat from plans from your head
and then sell them the boat?
KN: No, most of the time I’d draw up a rough sketch and work from it and they’d just give me the length,
the width, whatever they wanted.
�13
JL: But you had the blueprint, so to speak, in your head?
KN: Yeah, I drew it up, I drew it up on, most the time on a piece of plywood so it wouldn’t get wrinkled
up and I’d use the measurements from that. I’d draw it out ... the profile and if they liked it, then we’d
work from that. If they didn’t like it, I’d draw another one.
JL: Mr. Nieman, have you kept any of these pieces of wood?
KN: I doubt it. I might find one or two, maybe, but I doubt it. For one thing, a piece of plywood sits
around, somebody’s going to use it.
JL: I see. When you first started building boats then, uh … you were using … uh ... hand tools as well as
power tools, or was it just all power tools?
KN: No, used hand tools, then, you can’t get by without some hand tools.
JL: Could you tell me a little bit about building a boat, I don’t know it, I would be interested if you could
tell me.
KN: Well, the first thing you got to do is get, lay the keel off. Then you get that cut to the shape you
want and your stem and stern and you set that up. Then you got to cut frames and each one is a different
shape. And you got to outline them on the drawing just how much curve goes in each frame and you saw
them out. And you cut your chine and your center. And then you go from there and when, once you get
them all lined up then you start the planking on it.
JL: But how would it, how long would it take you to build a boat, let’s, I don’t know what size length,
you ... you ... would you like to give me a length and tell me how long it would take to build that boat?
KN: Well, a 40 foot boat, 12 foot wide with a working cabin on it, you run about 900, well then it would
run a little more than that cause using monnel nails you got to drill for, so that adds another couple
hundred hours onto it, but just ordinary nailing, about 800 to 1,000 hours and then with the monnel nails it
would run you another two or three hundred hours more.
JL: Do you think that the very first boat that you built is still in existence and being used?
KN: The very first one? No, I doubt it. I doubt it very much.
JL: But if you are still building boats, there are a lot of boats now that you built that are in use.
KN: Yeah.
JL: Could you tell me ... uh ... who has some of these boats?
KN: No, I really don’t know because I haven’t seen any of them in years, but I know there’s some still
useable. But the big disadvantage was when we first started, you had to use galvanized, and then after
twenty or twenty-five years, the galvanized nails got soft, ... And the result is you start them to rot and
the boat wouldn’t last as long, today the ... a boat will last much longer than it used to, it’s just one of
them things.
JL: Do you still have people help you build boats, Mr. Nieman?
KN: No.
JL: You do it alone?
KN: What I do, I do by myself. I just got out of the boat building business, it was too much of a hassle
for what you got into it, you didn’t make a whole lot.
JL: When did you stop, actually stop, so to speak?
�14
KN: Well, really, I stopped the majority of boat work around in the first part of the ‘60’s because I could
go clamming and make a lot more money.
JL: Do you still do clamming?
KN: No, clamming died, dead too. (Laughter) Everything’s dead.
JL: Why do you think it is, Mr. Nieman?
KN: Now that’s a political problem. The big problem is chemical companies. Stuff washed in the Bay
and settles on the bottom and kills stuff … and I don’t know what the hell you’re going to have to do
about it.
JL: They’ve killed the oysters.
KN: Well, the, they killing it because the rivers and things is where you get all the spawning from and the
bottom’s so bad they just don’t get a spawn. And if you don’t get a spawn, you don’t get no oysters. Now
the clam, they’ll spawn and come back, but you’re getting about half size and then they all die again.
JL: Did you ever do any eeling?
KN: Yeah. Done some.
JL: Now, I don’t know anything about that. Could you tell me about it?
KN: Well ...
JL: How do you catch them?
KN: You make a eel pot and then you bait. it with, well crab, clams, old horseshoe crabs and stuff like
that. And you catch some, there’s not that many now, but I guess about ’72 to 3, there was a lot of eels
and I think what drew them up there was a rush of fresh water we had from that storm. Man, there was
one fellow came up here from down in Southern Maryland and he was catching a thousand pounds a day.
That’s a lot of eels, in fact he caught two thousand pounds two, three, times.
JL: Was that, that wasn’t a fellow from Shady Side
KN: No, no...
JL: He was from some other ...
KN: The most I ever caught was about a thousand pounds. I caught that a few times, but I would catch
anywheres from 250 to 500 pound most every day.
JL: And then who would you sell the eels to?
KN: Uh, Robochek, down in Virginia was buying them to start off with. And then a fellow from up here
at Rock Hall, name of Edwards, he started coming around in a truck and picking them up and we ... I
worked with him for a couple winters, a couple summers until they got so scarce I just give it up. You can
catch a few out there now, but it ain’t nothing like it used to be.
JL: I mean, Mr. Nieman, this sounds like a dumb question, but what did they do with the eels, do the
people eat them?
KN: No. They didn’t eat them here. He used to ship them all live, clean over into Germany, Ireland,
England and that’s where they went.
JL: And people ate them?
KN: Yes sir. They wanted them, but they wanted them alive.
�15
JL: But the people around here never ate them.
KN: No, they never ate them, they didn’t want them. Oh, there’d be somebody might skin one once in a
while and cook it, but … nobody want an eel.
JL: OK. Let’s go back to your boat building business. That, that to me is very, very interesting. Uh.
.anything else you can tell me about your boat building. . . that you would like to tell me.. .without any …
me asking you any questions?
KN: Well, there ain’t a whole lot, I mean to me, it’s just a job, somebody else might be real interested.
JL: But you liked it Mr. Nieman.
KN: Oh yeah, I’d rather do that than house work.
JL: Well. . . (laughter)
KN: I just had a choice. But … uh … no I always liked build boats and I like change the style of them
and try to get something to look pretty good.
JL: When you built work boats, what type of work boats were they? I mean was there ... uh … uh ...
called a deadrise or what … what ...
KN: Well, I guess when you come down to it, they all of them is deadrise, because that’s what a deadrise
is, it’s in the bow of it. Now Uncle Perry used to build a boat with a kind of a tuck stern, the stern set out
of the water, and it was for tonging oysters the best type built boat there ever was. But … uh … just
ordinary running, they didn’t go very fast, because they’d pull down pretty bad in the stern, but for
oystering you couldn’t beat them.
JL: Well, I bet you the very first boat you ever built you were just as proud as you could be that you built
it by yourself.
KN: I suppose so, cause to tell you the truth, I never built one totally by myself, my brothers always
helped me, but … uh …
JL: But it’d still make you proud, whether your brother helped you ...
KN: Oh yeah, yeah, it was … uh … something that I had done myself.
JL: Well, when you built these boats for people and it took you so long to build them, I’m sure you
almost hated to see them go after you took so long in building them.
KN: Well, the only good part about it was when you got it finished, then you got finished paying for it.
JL: Well, that’s true too. That’s true too.
KN: You just had to let it go.
JL: Well, of course, of course. Was there any specific kind of boat you liked to build best of all?
KN: No, I guess really the 40 foot working boat would be as simple to build as any, because you didn’t
have a whole lot of cabin to bother with, I mean it’s a pretty small cabin for shelter, and it was a whole lot
less trouble. So I guess the work boat was really the best, but even though it wasn’t many of them sold
because it’s a lot of time and money involved and when you’re not making much money, you just can’t
afford it.
JL: You just don’t recall any of the people around here who would have any of your boats?
KN: Well, Norm … uh … Donald Sheckelles has one. He’s Mrs. Nowell’s son—in—law and Doug
Hinton and Steve Trott, they have one that I built, not here, but I built that over to the old, my father’s
place. I built it for Louie Wilde. And that one was built in the ‘47 so she is got a little age on her.
�16
JL: But it’s probably still a good boat then if they had her all these years. You must have been a very,
very good boat builder.
KN: She didn’t wood shave neither.
JL: Well it, sometimes it doesn’t matter whether a guy builds a boat real good or not, the people that own
it have to take care of it.
KN: Oh, they do, yeah, if they don’t take care of it, then it ain’t going to stay good long.
JL: Mr. Nieman, could you tell me a little bit about … uh … oyster tongs ... I mean oyster shaft making?
KN: Well, I can’t tell you a whole lot, I’ll tell you what I do know ... Great grandfather, far as I know,
made tong shafts.
JL: In Shady Side?
KN: In Shady Side.
JL: Ah. .do you know where in Shady Side he did it?
KN They lived down, you know where Lerch Crandell, I guess you wasn’t down this way ... that’s where
they lived, in that house. And, after he got, I guess too old to fool with them, then my uncle, his son-inlaw, Uncle Jimmy Atwell, he made them.
JL: What was your great grandfather’s name? His last name?
KN: Rogers ... And, of course, after he stopped my uncle took it up, well he made them for, you know,
20, 25, 30 years and when he gave it up, then my uncle, my ... Leonard Rogers, that’s my mother’s
brother, and he made them until he died in ’39 ... uh ... ‘49, I think it was 49 around that time. And,
wasn’t nobody else to take it up, so I took it up, and I made them for about 10 years until the lumber got
so bad you just couldn’t get the lumber. And now nobody over here makes anymore.
JL: So when your great grandfather started building them here, he probably … how did he build them
just for local people here in then the word spread that they were good?
KN: No, he just build them local because there was no way to get them anywheres else. Maybe people
from Annapolis could run down the boat and get them or Deale, you know local ... uh … Galesville and
places like that. But Uncle Jimmy used to sell them Eastern shore a lot. But he used to send them over on
a boat that used to go over there and buy oysters and he’d take shafts over … and, hell, when I started, I
was even selling them in Delaware.
JL: How long were the shafts?
KN: Well, up to 30 feet was the longest I ever made. (laughter) That’s a lot of wood to be shoving up and
down in the water.
JL: Could you please tell me how you went about making them, Mr. Nieman? I mean what type, what
type wood, for beginners?
KN: To start with, you got to get yellow pine, what we call Georgia pine. You had to go to Baltimore and
pick out a load and they sawed it up in boards and if you got a good load, you made some good tong
shafts. If you got a bad load, you lost money. And it got to the point, to the end, where I was getting more
bad loads than I was good ones.
JL: How many years did you make tongs? I mean the shafts?
KN: About … about 10 years. Until I just couldn’t get anything to make them out of. I could make some
money right now if I could get the lumber.
�17
JL: Could you tell me exactly how you made them?
KN: Well, yeah, well you ... you got a good three inches in the pin tapering off to an inch and a quarter
down the end. You rip them out and then you run them on a joiner, shape em, get them down to size, then
you take a hand plane and finish them up. And you’d do more work with the hand plane than you do with
the power ones. It’s just one of them things where you got to get them smooth, you can’t leave rough
edges, and you can’t cut them too small cause then they’ll be too limber, so it’s a real ticklish business.
JL: How long would it take you to build a set of shafts?
KN: Well, take 22’s for instance, I could make four pair in a day, that is; if I just kept right at it and if I
got interrupted I wouldn’t make more than a couple - two or three.
JL: How many pairs, and they were in pairs?
KN: Yeah, it was two shafts to a pair.
JL: How many pairs would you say you have made?
KN: Good Lord, I made, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea. Uh ... I expect in one season I could make a
hundred. Cause I’d start in September, well, I’d start in August, because a lot of people would want them
for the first of September and I’d start in August making them up and I’d go right on through the whole
winter.
JL: Did your uncle teach you this trade, or did …
KN: No.
JL: Will you tell me how you learned?
KN: Just by taking a shaft and making one like it. No, nobody showed you nothing.
JL: And that you did in your head too?
KN: Yeah, well, when you tape another shaft where you got something to work with and you get your
distance from your pin to the bottom, cause that’s important, and then when you go from there up to the
top and you taper it down, you got to have it tapered just right. And it’s a whole lot work to it.
JL: Do you think that any of your shafts are still in use?
KN: I wouldn’t doubt it. I expect they are. Because a good tong shaft will last a long time, and my
father’s got some over there that he’s had ... I guess they was made back in the ‘40’s and he’s got three
pair over there, still in use, I mean that could be used. In fact I’m going to get a pair of them and cut them
down for little boy.
JL: Well, now that’s, that’s very interesting. I’m glad that I asked you about that.
Kn: Well see, the tong shafts, if you got longs one,s 90% of the time you can cut off and shorten them, if
they get so they ain’t no good long. You never throw them away.
JL: Never throw them away?
KN: The only time you throw them away when it’s broke up … You just keep cutting them down till,
well 18’s about as short as you go.
JL: They don’t really used too many hand tongs now-a- days do they?
A: Not over here, don’t use, well South River you can go up there and two, three little bars, if you don’t
get too many up there, you can make something out of it. But Eastern shore, there’s a lot, there’s a lot
over there. And, I could always sell a lot of shafts over there.
�18
JL: Do you still make them Mr. Nieman?
KN: No, couldn’t, had to stop because lumber got so bad, in fact the ones that’s making them are using
fir and that ain’t much count. Not for ___ tong shafts.
JL: They won’t last very long?
KN: They break easy and they get limber, you just bend those damn things. A pair of shafts today cost
$6.00 a foot, where, when I was making them, they were 50 cents … So that’s the difference.
JL: Indeed it is a difference. So what you were making them from was a lot better.
KN: Oh, it was good lumber, yeah, it was good. I always had people come from the Eastern shore
wanting my shafts cause they was better than what they could get over there.
JL: Well they’re probably sorry you went out of business then.
KN: Oh they was, yeah. But, there was nothing I could do about it, I just couldn’t get the lumber. The
places used to supply most of it for … uh ... uh; Louis Smith in Baltimore burned down. It was down in
Louisiana and when the mill burned down, they went out of business. They just stopped. So, yellow good
yellow pine is just about non-existent. You can get some yellow pine, but it ain’t not good, not for that.
JL: It’s not good for the purpose you need to have it for.
KN: Yeah, yeah. So, it’s just one of them things.
JL: So you, you were building tongs … uh … I mean shafts at the same time you were building boats?
KN: Yeah, yeah.
JL: When your great grandfather started building em … Did you know your great grandfather?
KN: No, no, I didn’t.
JL: You wouldn’t have any idea of what he would have charged for a pair of em?
KN: No, would have no idea, fact I don’t even know what my great uncles charged.
JL: Mr. Neiman, is there anything that your parents or your great … great grandparents told you about
Shady Side when you were little that you would like to share with us? Did they say it was a nice place to
live or something in particular?
KN: Well you know how it is, they always would come back home, but no really I guess they just took
everything for granted, lived here, liked it, and that was it; but I mean, far as anything outstanding there
just wasn’t anything outstanding.
JL: It’s just a nice place to live.
KN: It’s just everyday the same thing, pretty much except for the weather. (Laughter) You couldn’t
control that.
JL: Boy that’s true, that’s true.
KN: But no, I don’t know a thing. I didn’t grow up with anything that really I thought was unusual.
JL: Other than to say that Shady Side was a nice safe place to live.
KN: Yeah. They always wanted to come back anyway, you’d never stayed away long.
JL: OK, thank you Mr. Neiman, we appreciate it very much.
KN: Oh, I’m glad you did.
�19
JL: Thank you
END OF TAPE
�
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
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Captain Avery Museum
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1984012-NIEMAN_Kenneth
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Text
ORAL HISTORY
Siegert, Lucille Kirchner
Captain Avery Museum
SIEGERT, Lucile Kirchner
1984.013.002
1984.013.002
Date of Interview: August 15, 1984
Interview of Lucile Kirchner Siegert
Interviewer: Jennie LeFevre
At Ms. Siegerts home onWest Shadyside Road
Shady Side, Maryland
JL: Mrs. Siegert, could you tell me if you were born in Shady Side?
LS: I was born in Churchton, on South Creek.
JL: On South Creek?
LS: Uh huh.
JL: Um, where exactly on South Creek, would you tell us?
LS: Well, it was a little house there that my father and mother lived in that was on my grandfather’s
property there on Chalk Point Road.
JL: Uh, could you tell us who your mother and father are?
LS: My father was Marion Richard Kirchner and my mother was Gertrude Bullen and her father lived on
Parrish Creek.
JL: I see.
LS: Had a house right on Parrish Creek there, right at the head, right where Back Yard Boats is now.
JL: Uh, did you come to live in Shady Side in your childhood or did you always live in this particular
area you just told us about?
LS: Well, during the flu epidemic my mother and father and one of his brothers died and ....uh ... my
grandparents were very much up against it ... uh ... they were all sick. And my brother was three years old
and I was ten months, so my great aunt and uncle, kept me for them while they were having their
struggles, you know, through that sick period or during that time, and every time my grandmother would
come down to pick me up, I wouldn’t go home with her. At 10 months old I had already established right
here…
JL: In Shady Side?
LS: In Shady Side.
JL: Could you tell us exactly in Shady Side, where your aunt and uncle.
LS: Right here on West Shadyside Road, this is the home.
JL: The home that we are in right now?
LS: Yes, it belonged to Harry Hallock.
JL: Did you go to school down here in Shady Side?
LS: Right straight on through.
JL: Could you tell us where you went to school in Shady Side, where the school was located?
LS: The school was located right, uh, where … it’s a new building, the Eastern Star Building, when that,
the first year that that opened was the first year that I went to school, I was five years old.
�2
JL: Could you remember who some of your classmates were?
LS: Yeah. Marguerite Trott, George Rogers, Marian Neiman, um, let’s see, Dorothy Phipps, I don’t know
whether you’ve ever heard of her, Dorothy Phipps, . . . it would take me a while to get all of them, but I
could get just about all ...
JL: That’s OK. Could you recall who some of your teachers were?
LS: Helen Dawson was my homeroom teacher and she taught four grades, in there; first, second, third,
and fourth. And then I went to Miss Ethel; five, six, seven and eight, that’s when they had the whole
thing. (Laughter)
JL: Well, could you tell us in growing up in Shady Side, uh what you did for entertainment as a child?
Were there other brothers and sisters, well you said there were other brothers and sisters in your family?
LS: Uh uh, my brother remained with his grandparents and ... uh … grew up there on Chalk Point Road.
JL: Well, could you tell us what you did a little bit for entertainment down here as a young child?
LS: Well, let me see ... I followed my uncle in the fields, as soon as he’d let me, you know, I loved
outside and I rode the horses and I followed the cows, and um ...
JL: He had a farm here?
LS: Yeah, this was all farm land.
JL: How many acres would you say he had.
LS: He, uh, had ten acres right in here, but he also farmed this piece of ground here that belonged to the
Hayes family which was originally, a Hartge, uh from the Hartge family, um, in here and it’s about 75
acres of that property and he, uh, kept their stock for ‘em, they had some very nice dairy cows and, uh, he
took care of those and they had chickens, uh, he didn’t necessarily fool with their gardens or anything
because they did that when they came down, they were … they spent the summer, I mean the winter in
Washington, D. C. and the summers down here. Is it out?
JL: Could you tell us what else you did? Did you do things on the water or …
LS: Yes. I was on the water a lot. I didn’t learn to swim right here in West River, it was an accident
where I learned to swim, it was up in Spa Creek. I was visiting another branch of the Hallock family and I
thought; they all went swimming so I went with them. And I was trying to swim out, or walk out to the
float and all of a sudden the bottom disappeared so it was either swim or sink, so I swam. (Laughter)
And that’s the reason I’m here yet, I guess.
JL: So you were really were like an only child, then.
LS: I was raised as an only child, but I mean they had no children and um, I guess my grandmother felt
that I was doing ok here and so that was it, I mean ... but at one time they thought of letting my aunt, one
of my brother’s … my father’s sisters take me, but that never materialized so I remained here with the
Hallock family.
JL: When the flu was going around, I believe that you said that both of your parents did die of the flu.
LS: Right, uh huh, one died one day and one died the next.
JL: What year was that?
LS: 1918.
JL: 1918.
�LS: Uh huh, it was in November, I think it must, because I was 10 months old and I was born in
February.
3
JL: Then you completed your schooling down here in Shady Side?
LS: Yes, uh huh ...
JL: Then when you became a young lady what did you do for entertainment down here?
LS: Well they had a movie theater out here, um, I had a large group of friends and we’d all get together
and walk out to the movie theater and they also, in the summer time, they had the dances out at the hall
there at Nowell’s store and we used to go up there and listen to the music and finally I learned to dance,
and you know.
JL: Someone told me it was called Shimmy Hall.
LS: (Laughter) I never heard of it called that, we just called it Nowell’s.
JL: Ah ha! When you went to the movies there could you remember who some of the stars were at that
time?
A: Oh well ..._____ cowboys are Gene Autrey, I mean, and Hoot Gibson, I didn’t like those mystery ones,
the real weird ones, they used to frighten me, but I did see “The Ten Commandments” there, the first one
that ever came out, you know.
JL: Do you remember who was in that one?
LS: No, I really don’t. “The Ten Commandments” and another big one ... that they ... I can’t (sigh) oh
well.
JL: So your father had passed away, could you tell me what his, what his, occupation was?
LS: He was an oysterman.
JL: He was an oysterman? OK, Oh ... sorry, go ahead.
LS: He was only 24 so he didn’t, he, you know, he hadn’t established himself a whole lot I suppose, but
he did make a living at oystering.
JL: He was 24 when he died? Could you tell us ... uh ... then in growing up and as a young lady down
here who some of your friends were that you went to these different things with?
A: Well, um, this, when we used to walk out there in the summer time, it was … there were a lot of
people in here from um, from the shores that had summer homes down here and they were usually from
the District. One was Lucille Goldstein and Gloria Goldstein, uh, let me see ... well, Ralph Renno was
one.
JL: You became very good friends with the young ladies then, that came down in the summer?
LS: Yes …
JL: And you would look forward to seeing them in the summer then?
LS: Oh yes, that’s right. Un huh.
JL: Could you think of any other things you did for entertainment?
LS: Well, I rode horse back. I had a horse and I rode all over this area here before, before, there were so
many houses and so many people in here and I finally had to sell my horse because the roads were so
narrow and the people would come so close to her and she wasn’t the type of horse that um, you know ...
JL: Liked automobiles?
�4
LS: Well, no it wasn’t the automobiles, I’ve had people reach out of the car, put their hand on the horse,
try to pet them and you know that’s kind of scary, because she didn’t go down the road like an old plow
horse, she had style. She went first one way then the other, you know, and you never knew which end was
coming out.
JL: Did you used to ride alone? Were there other people that used to ride?
LS: Well, only ... uh ... mostly I rode alone because that was ... I rode the year round and in the summer
when my uncle’s work horses were free, maybe on weekends, then I could saddle up a few of them and
we’d ride out through these woods and all around there and there’d be different ones ... Lucille Goldstein
was one of them, oh and of course Phoebe Crandell, I don’t know whether anybody ever mentioned her,
but she was one of my real close girlfriends and uh …let me see, Bernard Fox, I don’t know whether any
of you, whether you’ve heard of him or not ... um ... lived up here where K.D.B. Ranch is, they used to
run a boarding house up there.
JL: Could you tell us about the boarding house, please?
LS: Well, the boarding house ... um ... um ... Mrs. Jessie Fox, as I think is what her name was, ran that
board house where K.D.B. Ranch is. There was a big house there and they had a big … a dining room,
they had rooms, they had ... uh ... a pier out there with boats and they had a lovely sand beach along that
shore there, I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen it or not, it’s still there, but you can’t, no one can get
in there now because K.D.B., they don’t allow that.
JL: Uh. Would you happen to know what year she operated that hotel there?
LS: Well, they operated that hotel up until I was in high school, I believe and that would have been up
until, oh Lord, I can’t, I’m awful with dates ...
JL: That’s OK. Uh, would you happen to know what they would charge for people to stay there, for the
week? You don’t recall?
LS: No. And when if there was an overflow, we had a room that we used to rent to those people, I mean
she would call, you know, and asked if a couple could stay over here at the house and my aunt would do
that, you know, take in extras, but they didn’t eat here, they would just sleep here and go on up there to
the hotel and eat.
JL: Did you used to skate on the river in the winter time?
LS: Oh, yes I did.
JL: Oh, good, we would like to hear about that.
LS: Well, I guess you might say I was determined to learn how to skate, I had the most wretched pair of
skates you ever did ... oh … I used to have a terrible time keeping the skates on and where I really got the
most help was down here at Parrish Creek, with the Neiman family, where Betty Neiman was a close
friend of mine and her brothers, so we used to all go skating out there and I’d work on a chair and two of
the boys would grab hold my arms and ... uh ... we … I finally learned to stand up and able to learn to
skate and then, from then on I um, the years that the river froze solid that I could skate from here to
Galesville, I would do that and I had a dog that I used to take along with me, I guess for protection. He
probably would have come home if I’d fell in one of those holes out there or something, because ... uh ...
my uncle used to say you be careful about those holes where they’re oystering, because they had to break
through the ice, you know, and ... uh ... to get to the oysters, well they were easy to see because ... uh ...
you know, the moon light and everything, you could see there was a big break in the ice and ... uh ... so
I’d go over there and ... all that, we’d just have a ball, we’d crack the whip and skate up until 12:00 and
I’d come home half dead and try to get up the next morning to go to school.
�5
JL: Would you know, could you tell us who some of the people were that you skated with?
LS: Yeah, oh well, a lot of them were, well most of them were from Galesville, which would have been .
.um. . Ethel Hazzard, Dorothy Hazzard and um, let me see, Dixon. .George Dixon would be down there
and George Kirchner, young George Kirchner and Marian Kirchner and prob. . .no the other one would be
too young... Jackie would be, probably was too young ... uh ... hum ... Lois Dixon huh, that’s about it.
JL: Could you give us some of your recollection of the Emma Giles?
LS: Yeah, I used to see her come in from this side and hear her; blow, she always says she entered the
river up here right at … I think she went in the Rhodes River too. I’m not sure, but there’s a wharf there,
but when she would get in so far she’d toot the horn and everybody would run to see her and all these
fields would be clear, you could see her come in very well and … uh … the … I’ve … I’ve ridden to
Baltimore on her and … um … went to Tolchester was up on her, on an excursion, that, they had a big
place over there with um, amusement park, Tolchester Beach.
JL: How much would they charge you to go to either Annapolis or Tolchester?
LS: Isn’t that ... uh ... I don’t know.
JL: That’s ok, that’s ok.
LS: I mean, after all, I didn’t pay for it, you know, I never even...
JL: OK. OK.
LS: I guess I must have thought it was for free.
JL: So you would go sometimes with some of your friends?
LS: My aunt would take me. She’d go with a group, you know, and then we had friends in Baltimore we
used to go up by the boat to visit them and ... um … stay for maybe a day or two and then come back and
uh, I remember it distressed me because I’d see them loading the stock, on the, on the boat to take to
Baltimore to the slaughter house. I learned later, you know, that that’s what happened to them and our ...
beautiful little calves that we would have around the place here, they’d take them down there and load
them on the boat and ship them into Baltimore. Well that, that never did set well with me, I mean I would
see that happen, cause all the animals around here were pets, as far as I was concerned, as soon as they
were born they were our pets.
JL: Would you know anything about the Shady Side Beverage Company that used to be here?
LS: I remember that, yeah uh uh.
JL: Would you tell us about it?
LS: It was ... uh ... wasn’t it, um, Luther Leatherbury and his brothers? Uh, and the Leatherbury family,
as far as I know, uh ran that. You know, it would be neat if we had some of the bottles that were ...
JL: It would be.
LS: Wouldn’t it though.
JL: It would be.
LS: I don’t know, you might ask around, somebody may have saved them.
JL: What type of things did they ... what type of beverage did they make?
LS: Well, as far as I remember it was grape and orange, I remember those two because they were my
favorites. Root beer, they made root beer as far as I know and as far as going inside of it I think once or
twice I had looked in there and that was about all.
�6
JL: Could you tell us what it looked like?
LS: Well, it was a building right there where the ... you know where the ... road that goes into um the old
home place, it was right there on the edge of that road, right there on that ...
JL: Were they filling the bottles by hand?
LS: No, it was, it was a machine that did it and then they had a thing that put the tops on it ...
JL: The caps?
LS: Uh huh. I saw the conveyor belt, you know, going around. They also ... listen, did you know that they
had a canning house right down here where Mrs. Smith lives?
JL: We would like you to tell us about it.
LS: Well, they had that, it was a oyster house, they processed oysters or had oyster shuckers come in here
and they were mostly Polish and they’d come down from Baltimore and they’d live in these little shanties
in there. My uncle used to, um, um, butcher beef here and they’d come up and buy the beef, you know,
and stuff like that, and. .uh. . they did the oyster shucking and then they would move on and then another
group would come in and they would can the tomatoes and I’ve seen this road, from all the way down to
the canning house, all the way out as far as you could see with ... uh … loaded with tomatoes that had
come down off of the highlands, you know, say Deale on up through that, Sudley, all back in there, all all,
they’d haul them down in horse and wagons and they’d be stacked usually two, two tomato baskets high,
you know, two layers on the, on the wagons.
JL: About what years was it in operation? Could you remember that?
LS: Well, it must of been, it must of been when I was at least five years old, so it would have been what?
1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, it was in there, in that time.
JL: And it operated quite a long time?
LS: For quite a while, yes, and ... uh ... they ... uh ... I don’t know where that old lime kiln is still over
there, but that’s where they used to put all the oyster shells and they used to ... put a fire under it, isn’t that
how that worked to make lime?
JL: I really don’t know.
LS: Well they and they would process that. People would buy lime to put on their, their ground, their
property, you know, to sweeten the soil, I suppose. Well, that used to be there, I remember that.
JL: Well, you’re telling me, us interesting things that I didn’t know, maybe other people knew but it’s
been interesting. Is there anything else that you could recall?
LS: Well, they … I never saw the boat come in, but at the end of Hayes’ Road, which is, they call Hayes’
Road now, it goes right straight on down to the water. Past _______ place, you know, look right straight
down there, well, there used to be, the boat used to come in there, too, the steam boat.
JL: Oh, the steam boat. What was the name of it, do you know?
LS: Johnson’s owns the property now, they finally closed it off and they pulled most of the piles up, you
don’t see ‘em any more, but at one time the boat used to come in there, but they stopped that and they
continued to come in ...
JL: Was that the Emma Giles you’re talking about?
LS: Yeah, the steam boat, used to come in there, that would be, for this area right in here, where the other
would be for anything above that between, um say, say ... um … on around to Galesville because they
had one there at Galesville, they also had one at Chalk Point, didn’t they? The boat used to go in there.
�There was, there was one or two here in Shady Side, there was one at ... um, at Chalk Point and then the
one at Galesville. They may have gone into the county wharf, too, which was right there near the
steamboat, it all depends on, maybe it wasn’t the steamboat, maybe it was another company that went in
there, I don’t know.
7
JL: Could you give us some of your recollection of when people used to come and stay at the Nowell
Hotel?
LS: Well, I didn’t know a whole lot about that out there, I really, uh ... I used to go out there to visit
Glorious when I was going to school, but I remember when Glorious was born ... when, uh, ... and and
that they weren’t living there at the hotel then, they were living out here at, right across from ... uh ...what
do they call that, the house burned down and I can’t think, well I’s across from Annie Rogers’ house, they
... uh ... that piece of property still belongs to Miss Ethel, I think, anyway. But the house burned down and
that’s where Glorious was born in there. Uh, but I don’t remember a whole lot about, miss about the hotel
to tell you the truth, I never was there even though it was run by my great aunt’s sister. See ...
JL: So, you didn’t go to too many dances?
LS: I went, now this was ... this was across the road, the hotel, the dances weren’t at the hotel. The
dances were at the, what was the store and the post office and also there were rooms upstairs that I believe
they rented out ... uh ... for people that were in there ... uh ... well, like the hotel, overflow from the hotel,
probably, and I think Mrs. Mary Nowell and Mr. John Nowell rented those rooms out.. .and they lived in
another section of ... it was a big building, but that burned also. And then one whole section along the
road there, that is where they had the dances and you could hear the music all over the place. (Laughter)
They’d have bands come in, you know, and play. They also had dances down there at ... uh ... um ...
Danes on the Bay ... but, I never got in on that. My uncle always said well I’d never find a husband in a
ballroom and I told him I wasn’t looking for a husband all I wanted to do was dance! (Laughter) So he
couldn’t quite say much about that.
JL: Could you tell us a little bit about some of the stores that existed in the are,a in your youth down
here?
LS: Well the store that’s run by, right out here, um, can’t, Bresnick I guess is running it now ... that store
belonged, or it was run by G.C. Hopkins and they had it for years and prior to that I believe Hartge, some
Hartge, ran it ... I don’t know for sure, but I think he bought it from the Hartge, I’m not sure of that ... um
… and after he gave it up or had … I think, I don’t know whether he died down here or whether he sold
out ... the family of Foxes that run this hotel took it over and they ran it for a while and then I can’t
remember who took it from there. I don’t think the Bresnick’s did, I don’t believe they did, they were later
coming in ... uh. Of course this place where you live, I remember when they built that, Mr. Hartge ...
JL: What year did they build it, I wonder myself?
LS: Oh well, it’s ... I must have been at least 9 or 10 years old so I mean that’s the only way I could go by
... probably, 1928 or ‘30.
JL: That, was it built to be a store?
LS: Yeah, right. A store, right, and they lived in that one side and up, and the rest of it was a store.
JL: Uh huh ...
LS: And they had the front porch out there and you could go over there and sit there ... and get the news.
JL: How long did that run as a store, how many years was the store in operation?
LS: I would say roughly 10 years, I … I guess.
JL: And people would go sit on the front porch and talk?
�LS: Yeah, they would sit there on the porch and talk and meet, you know, it wasn’t ... it was, oh, and
there was a store down here at the end of this road but that one, is it finished?
JL: No
LS: There was one down at the end of this road that belonged to Wallace Owings ... Wallace and Liddy,
Liddy was a Bast, and they had raised two children down there, that was ...
8
JL: What were the children’s names, do you know?
LS: Preston Owings and Mae Owings Thomas, her husband just died last year, and she’s living up at, um,
Rolling Knolls at this time, but Preston’s still here and his son has the list, you probably met ... um …
Bobby, haven’t you and ... um ... Barbara Owings ... ok, well they’re living in his uncle’s ... it would be
his great uncle’s place.
End of Side 1 of Tape
LS: OK, Well, should I go by this?
JL: Whatever you would like to tell me, some more of your recollections of Shady Side.
LS: They had a big ... um ... uh ... country fair out at, actually it’s in the area where, um, the road runs
right through it now, it’s part of Lerch’s property, I think it used to be. And ... uh ... had these oak trees
and everything; well, they had cont ... this fair to get money enough to put the state road down into Shady
Side, prior to that we had mud holes and mire and you name it.
JL: Could you tell us what year they held that fair?
LS: It must of been in about, let’s see, 18, 19, 20- 21, in 1921 somewhere in that area cause I don’t think I
was much more than three years old, if I was that old, when they had it and ... uh ... what I’m leading up
to is the fact that I was ... they had a beauty contest for babies and, um, Billy Heinz grabbed me up and
put me on the platform where they were judging the babies, Billy Heinz lived down on Wagner’s Point
and he was a great friend of my aunt and uncle’s and of course he put me in the contest, and I won ....
JL: First prize?
LS: First prize, which was a pair of baby shoes, blue, baby blue shoes. So in about an hour’s time, um, I
wasn’t interested in anything like that and all I was interested in was horses and the wheels and all that
kind of stuff with the buggies, so I went to ... happened to pass this buggy and my aunt says I took my
finger and I went right around the axle, where the axle grease was, and I got it all over me, I was full of
axle grease from this buggy. Well, she said she heard somebody come by and said, huh ... that’s the baby
that won the beauty contest! (Laughter) She had to take me home and clean me up and bring me back.
But they had, at the fair, of course I remember the horses because I was always crazy about horses and ...
um … my uncle brought his out to use for the ... uh ... um ... you know, to spear the rings, what do they
call that?
JL: Jousting, jousting.
LS: Well, they had a contest for that and we had our horses out here, out to the fair and, let’s see ... what
else now …
JL: Uh, We would like to know a little bit about the history of your house.
LS: Of this house well ok. This place, as far as I know, in fact I have the deeds, some of the deeds here
from it. Well, originally it was ... uh ... a piece of property about ten acres that was given to, um, my
husband’s um grandmother, who was Mathilda Hartge. The Hartge family owned a great piece of this area
here and … uh ... when she married Peter Clement Siegert, well, they took this piece of property right
here which had a log cabin on it and a little lean-to shed, you know, that was a kitchen.
�9
JL: Who built the log cabin?
LS: That I don’t know, I don’t know who built it, but the original, that’s the room right there and it had a
stairway up that wall and a bedroom over top and I think they ended up by having at least; I think, it was
five children while they were here and then he drowned and my husband’s ... um ... father helped to raise
the family. He was quite a young man at that time and he helped to raise the rest of the family. Uh ... I
don’t think she ever married again, his mother, I don’t think she ever married again ... uh ... and in the
mean time, Mr. Siegert married ... uh ... Ella Mae Nutwell from Sudley and they bought a place in
Galesville. First they lived down where the, well let’s see, what is, what do they call that restaurant there
now in Galesville? The building’s still there...
JL: Pirate’s Cove?
LS: No, not Pirate’s Cove, that was Zangs.
JL: Steamboat Landing?
LS: No, the other one there.
JL: The Fat Oyster? (Note: Actually talking about Topside and its other variations.)
JL: Yeah, I guess it’s called the Fat Oyster ... no, no, no, no. That one is, that one is, that one is out here
where the pier or where the boats and everything are. No, I can’t think of what they call it, but that’s ...
they lived there for a while and I think they ran a store there and then they ran a store where the post
office is now. And then they bought the place down on Lerch’s Creek, which is owned by Fred Siegert’s
widow now. So, anyway, um … that’s where my husband was born, down there. Um.
JL: How did the property come into your family, then. All right, yeah, I’m getting way off.
LS: Let’s see ... in this, his, his grandmother sold this piece of property to ... Charlotte Hallock or
Joshua Hallock … um … it must have been during the Civil War or right shortly after the Civil War
because that’s where Grandmother Hallock met Joshua Hallock. Joshua Hallock was from Long Island
and he was down here with the Union Army and ... uh ... when he got his discharge, I had his papers …
his discharge papers from ... uh ... uh ... let’s see ... uh ... Falls Church, I think, or Alexandria, Alexandria,
that’s where it was. He went back to, he had met Charlotte at that time, but he went back up to New York
State, next thing you know, he’s back down here again and he and Charlotte got married. Now I never did
get the whole story on their courtship, but Grandmother Hallock had always promised me that she was
going to tell me about it but she never did. I never stayed still long enough, I guess, for her to tell me.
Anyway, after Captain Hallock died, he was also a boatman and the Captain part of it was because he
owned a boat and he used to run ... um ... um ... goods for the stores …um, in the area, from Baltimore to
here, back and forth, you know, that kind. . . plus he was oystering, too, and fishing. Uh, so, let me see,
after he died, uh, Grandmother Hallock’s, let’s see, second son, which was William Henry Hallock, better
known as Harry Hallock, uh, bought the place with, from her so that she would have, wouldn’t have to
live alone and ...
JL: What year was that? Do you know?
LS: Yeah, it was, let me see, must have been 19- 1900.
JL: 1900?
LS: 1900, I think, somewhere in there. (inaudible aside about tape recorder) I think that was 1917 as far
as I, I can remember and I want to give the names of Charlotte and Joshua Hallock’s children. It was
Thomas, who had two sons, Edwin Hallock and Bernard Hallock; and John Hallock had ten children, I
won’t name all of them and the third son was William Harry Hallock, who had no children but he raised
me. Uh ... anyhow, Annie Hallock Rogers had three children, Edgar, Isabelle and Archie, everybody knew
Archie, he was a character and George was the youngest and he had seven children and I won’t name all
�of them. OK. Now to get back to the history of the, of this place, um ... um ... after Harry Hallock died,
um, my husband, Graham Siegert and I moved in with three children to ... uh ... be here with my great
aunt.
10
JL: What year was that?
LS: It was 1951, and um in 1952 is when our son was born, he was born here in this place or at the
hospital and brought back here, but anyway, and then when she died, about ... uh ... three years later, they
she left the place to me ... it’s sort of ironic because the property has done almost a complete circle
because his, my husband’s, grandmother, owned this place and then the people that raised me owned this
place, and when we married, it made the deed go back into his name and my name, so I mean it’s ... it’s
just odd that it should happen that way, but that’s the way it did. Uh ... ok, then uh ...
JL: Could you tell us what year you and your husband were married?
LS: 1938.
JL: Is your husband still alive?
LS: No, he died in 1979.
Q: And how many children did you have?
A: We had four. We had a daughter and four years later we had twin daughters and I sort of gave up hope
of ever having a son, (Laughter), but eight years later we had a son. (Laughter).
JL: Will you tell us the names of your children?
LS: Sandra, Sandra Siegert Strohm, she just got remarried in December of this past year ... uh ... the
twins are Maribeth Siegert Biard, she lives in Melbourne, Florida and she’s a registered nurse at Holmes
Memorial Hospital, the other twin is Sue Ann Folks, she’s a registered nurse, she works for Sibley
Hospital in Washington, D.C. Gregory Graham Siegert is a ... works for Illinois Institute of Technology
and he’s 31 now.
JL: Ok, ok. Is there anything else you would like to tell us about Shady Side? We have about ...
LS: Well, one other thing I’ll tell about this ... my aunt had ... um ... a reed organ here and... uh ... Eddie
Bast and his wife, Jeanette, used to come up here and Eddie played the guitar and, um, Jeanette would
play the organ and we’d have a real song fest here. Everybody seemed to enjoy it and ... uh ... about the
bake shop ... also about the bake shop there at the Leatherbury’s , I said … (laughter) distillery, wasn’t a
distillery, it was the soft drink place.
JL: That’s ok.
LS: I hope I didn’t mess up here.
JL: No, that’s fine ...
LS: Well, anyhow, at the bake shop they used to ... uh ... have the baked goods and a Mr. Wood, um ...
well ,anyway, his son is still living in Galesville ... uh ... Robert Wood, used to go around with a truck and
sell these baked goods and ... uh ... boy, were they ever good, that’s when the summer people used to go
for them, best pies and I think it was one of the Leatherbury girls, probably Dolores, that did the bakery,
did the baking, and uh um, used to sell. I think they also had an ice cream shop in there, so ... that’s that.
JL: Are there other things you can tell us about Shady Side?
LS: Upph, well, I don’t know.
JL: Are there some other things you would like to tell us about Shady Side?
�LS: You try to think, give me some questions.
11
JL: Who, when you were a little girl down here, who was the oldest person you knew of in Shady Side?
LS: Grandma Hallock, she was 90 some years old when she died, and I was about 16, but wait a minute,
there was also a Mrs. Tucker over here um, I don’t know what her real name was other than it was Mrs.
Tucker and she was a great big fat lady and she used to ... um ... her daughter was Mrs. Harry Wilde out
here and she used to go out there to be with her daughter and she’d always have this great big bundle of
… handbag like this, you know, and it would be stuffed full of things that would be heavy, and I’d come
riding along on the horse, you know, and I’d say, Mrs. Tucker, would you like for me to cart your bag
down for you, so I would take her bag and hook it on the um ... I had a hook, uh horn on the saddle, I’d
hook it on there and take her bag on down and hang it on the gate post down at her house, and she did
love that, you know, I mean it freed her up ... God, was the thing running.
JL: Yeah.
LS: I didn’t know that.
JL: Are there some other interesting things that you could think of?
LS: No, I don’t know right off hand, I mean I’d have to sort of mull it over ... easiest place up here.
Well, I mean I don’t know whether you would want to ...
JL: Yes mam, we would like to know what’s in your photograph album here.
LS: Well, this here ... um ... this was a Bernice, she, uh ... Atwell, I guess was her name and John Atwell
and this was when I was about three years old and I used to walk up there, this house right up there, not
this new one, but that one up there. This is Hayes’ place and that’s Mrs. Hayes’ granddaughter, Chere,
who was a good friend of mine, and she live in Mexico and used to come up and visit. This is Lucille
Goldstein sitting on the haystack here. This is the dog that used to go ice skating with me, Lindy. He was
a very famous dog, at least I thought so. This is Ralph Renno and his mother. This is Phoebe, my
girlfriend and my brother there and that’s me when I was 14 and ... uh ... this place here, is now, it was
built by the Stork family ... um ... I wished I knew what the man that um ... owns it now, very nice people,
they are … he’s, he was a gunsmith and he lives, it’s down the road past Preston’s place, and this my
uncle, he was grading that property there, straightening it, you know, making a nice lawn for it. And, of
course, that’s the horse that I used to ride all the time.
JL: There you are sitting on the horse.
LS: Lady, and this is the dog.
JL: That took you skating?
LS: Well, I had him for 10 years so I mean he was quite a member of the family and … uh ... these are
just some of the ... this is Ralph Renno and his mother and father and ... uh ... oh, I won’t go any further,
and that one. This is also down. Oh, there’s a picture of the oyster, where they used to shuck oysters and
had the tomato canning factory, right there, that’s part of it.
JL: OK.
LS: And, uh, this is Grandmother Hallock, she was 90, almost 92 years old, when she died. And this is
the horse that I had and this horse was born here on this place, his name was Dick and this is the barn as it
used to be.
JL: How many farms were down here in Shady Side?
LS: Well, on this, this, this one I say my uncle farmed, which was about ten acres, then this piece over
here that the, the Hayes’ owned, he farmed that too, he had hay and corn and one year they raised one
whole field full of cabbage over there. You talk about when that spoils, if that doesn’t smell to high
heaven ... and even tried raising tobacco over there, but it, the thing of it is it won’t cure down in this area,
�12
so I don’t know really what happened to it. Mostly they had dairy stock and the chickens up there, but. .
.um ... the other part, the other farm would have been Wilde’s farm down, down, on the other side, on the
Bay side of the peninsula.
JL: Would you know some of the names of the men who were the boat builders down here at that time?
A: Captain Ed Leatherbury was the closest one to me that I knew, you know, and really saw at work. He
built those, what they call the ... um ... um ... deadrise sailboats, and they were heavy as lead, I mean
that’s one thing, they used to race them in the Labor Day races and they would win, if we had a stormy
Labor Day weekend and high winds, those boats would win because they were sturdy, but if we had little
wind, and a calm bay, his boats didn’t do too much and the boats, the light weight boats would always
win. Um, and there are still a few of those boats that Captain Ed built, in fact there’s two of ‘em down
here in this creek now, smaller ones, I think one’s 18 feet and the other’s about between 12 or 16 feet,
maybe it’s 14 and ... uh ... the other, I don’t know whether, well that’s it.
JL: Would you like to show us some more of your pictures?
LS: Um ...
JL: Ones that are really pertain to Shady Side.
LS: Well, there’s Ralph in his kayak. He and his father built that little kayak and ... uh ... it’s, what would
you say, it look like it’s about 10 feet long, but we used to get on that and paddle all the way across to
Galesville in it, which is about a mile, you know, but all of us could swim, so we didn’t worry about it too
much, but, oh boy, did we ever take water on in that little thing, but it didn’t sink, it wouldn’t sink and
that’s it. That’s about ...
JL: Could you tell us if you met your husband down here, you didn’t tell us ...
LS: I didn’t know Graham Siegert was alive until I went to high school and I was sitting in the, in the um,
class room and we were eating lunch, because it was at the old Tracy’s Landing High School and it was
the first six months before they put us over into the new high school, so luckily, I went to two new
schools when I first started, but, we were sitting there eating lunch and I was sitting next to Mack Hall
and Graham Siegert started edging up and Mack poked me in the ribs, he says, now that’s one guy you
should stay away from.
JL: Uh oh.
LS: But, uh Graham won out. So, I knew his brother, Fred, because Fred used to get around I think
because he had a car, and ... uh ... but I didn’t know Graham was even alive until I went to high school
and from then on he started saving me seats on the bus.
JL: You were telling me earlier about the type of lights you had in this house before you had electricity.
LS: Yeah, we had ... uh ... Mr. Person Leach (Peirson Leitch?) from down at Friendship was selling these
systems that operated from a carbide gas and that was a combination of carbide crystals with water and as
those crystals hit this water they formed a gas and that gas was the most beautiful white light you ever
wanted to see. Um, my uncle bought the system and had it installed and it’s uh, the tank is still out here in
the yard, I mean it, heck, it’s been there for however long the …, I don’t know, how long has it been ....
JL: A heck of a long time.
LS: A long time.
JL: I was going to ask you, I was going to ask you if you remember when you did get the gas light here?
LS: Well, it was a few years before they ever had the electricity put in down here, whatever year that was
...
JL: Were you the only people down here with gas lights?
�13
LS: It seems, I don’t know of anybody else that had them and they were beautiful lights, um, all you
did there was pipes through the house that carried this gas from that tank and they ... uh ... would have a
little piece of flint that you would flip and it would throw a spark and the gas would light, you know, and
the only thing … trouble with that was it would only last about nine months and then you had to take the,
refill the tank and put new carbide in.
JL: Could you tell us where the carbide came from?
LS: The carbide was shipped in here off of, probably on some of those steamboats or some boats from
Baltimore and it was a product of Union Carbide, which still makes batteries and things like that and other
things.
JL: Well, I guess you were the envy of everyone in Shady Side because you had gas light and they had
kerosene light.
LS: Yeah, it’s true, and it really was a nice light, and ... uh ... we really enjoyed it excepting that when the
nine months was up and everything went like ... psst ... like that and we’d have to fill the tank up and my
uncle would get provoked at that, but the byproduct from that was a beautiful whitewash that he used to
whitewash all the out buildings, like the barn and the chicken house and, and uh ... things like that and it
really was nice to have that ... fence posts ... all the fence posts would be painted white and
Q: Are there any other reminiscence of Shady Side that you would like to tell us about?
LS: Can’t think of anything else?
JL: Mrs. Siegert, you were just telling me about when you learned how to drive, could you tell me about
it? How old were you?
LS: Well, I was about twelve or thirteen years old and I learned to drive on a um, 1916 Model T Ford that
you had to crank up, but it was alright unless I choked dead and my uncle had to get out and crank it, he
didn’t like that too much..
JL: Was that before there was paved roads here?
LS: Oh, yeah ... dirt roads, dirt roads. We had a dirt road and shells on the road and in the summer time
you’d walk out there in you bare feet and the dust would squeeze up between your toes and if it had
rained, it wouldn’t be dust, it would be mud, and the summer people would come down and we had a real
good rainy spell, they really got stuck and my uncle used to have to hitch the horses up and pull them out,
pull them out, and finally, that’s when we had that fair and we talked and, I don’t know whether that was
the fair for this road down here or not though, but the fair was for the road to come into Shady Side, say
from Galesville on into, just down to the …
JL: Shady Side proper?
LS: Down to the Eastern Star building, actually it made a turn there and went out to Hopkins store or to
Bresnick’s store, that’s where they stopped it, but I can’t even remember when they tarred this road down
here, but it was wonderful to have that happen. So …
JL: Mrs. Siegert, we thank you very much. It’s been a delight talking to you and it will make a grand
contribution to the listening library. Thank you very much.
LS: Thank you.
End of Tape
�
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
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Captain Avery Museum
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1984013-SIEGERT_Lucile_Kirchner
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/13888/archive/files/1fa8a8ef830dfaac22c2725487cf45b0.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=gDEb8roF9pFXnaCfqaoh%7E%7ErEzzj0doIp3UjdTO8Gye7FQC4lLbZ881icS3uOeEHWnd8mEoMCxkIC8jh6YbV7I2YWFPpLgCMUR1sOdN88EKCGlEHKs5-SeF7KgxEjIGAts6-rpSDOFcNjDPP1vs1xXzO5LFVC5UzsxYAy6gAT3-LwwhvHtiZo%7Ekyj-ELiL-6rc4huv7wzLJt3JlHku3RJylXoHSVbGTQnWpvNgcpP6vs56vf3z3FjZvwmq3Vtnv82DtCrhq1Amm3dpe5i0quS11RB2YOOM-YHjYUWRvsoabBEkRVElNbm70axKQa2WwyE2TCza2BcrfhclXranYdq6Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY
Proctor, George Capt.
Captain Avery Museum
1984.017.002
An Interview with Capt. George Proctor, August 3, 1984
Sponsored by: Shady Side Rural Heritage Society
Interviewed by: ?
Transcribed by: Christina Davidson: 2009
Q. … August the 3rd, 1984, interviewing Capt. George Proctor, Woodsworth (?) Road, Shady Side.
Capt. Proctor, can you tell us when you came to live in Shady Side – what year?
A. [Capt. Proctor] Yes, I was born in Shady Side in 1894. I never got much schooling.
Q: Did you go to school down here in Shady Side?
A: Yes, went to school, when I went was down here.
Q: Do you remember who some of your classmates were?
A: I remember so many of them.
Q: Well, would you like to tell us the names of some of them? We’d be interested to know.
A: Yes… Gertrude Bullen(?), Minnie Atwell … there were two Minnie Atwells – Minnie Miller and
Millie M. ? Our teacher was named Miss ______ at this time, the head teacher. And there was Helen
Leatherbury and Mamie Weems, Annie Weems, Delores Leatherbury, Tilla(?) Leatherbury, … Lilian
Wilder, ______? Linton, Ester Linton, Mabel Rogers… and Bernice, Lizzy, … and my wife was going
there too then – Nellie. ________________.
Q: So you met your wife when you were going to school down here then?
A: Yes, oh yes.
Q: How old were you met your wife? If you were going to school together, what ages did you meet?
A: I don’t know… I got married before I was twenty. I lived with her mother and father for a little over
two years. I bought this place here from Capt. Richard Trott…
Q: What year was that?
A: In 1916 I bought it. In 1918 we moved here on the 28th day of April and I moved down here with
my boat… and what furniture we had up here…
Q: What was the name of this boat? Could you tell us?
A: Well I didn’t have no name on it – I just had my number on it.
Q: I see. So you moved in the house with all your belongings on your boat …
�ORAL HISTORY
Proctor, George Capt.
Captain Avery Museum
1984.017.002
A: Well I tell you, we lived in that little house … it wasn’t very much of a house, but we lived in it for
four years.
Q: What house was this?
A: A little house that sit down on the shore. And at the end of four years I built this house here. I
saved money enough …. ??? to build it ... and of course I had something left. We lived there until
1923 and I bought Nellie a car…
Q: What type of car did you buy her?
A: A little four-cylinder Buick. I bought it from ______ in Annapolis. ….. ??
Q: What did you have to pay for a car then?
A: I paid $1000 and $20 for the tire? … it was just a little… brand new car, but it was just a four
cylinder Buick. And my wife run that until 1929 and I bought her a Mark 10? She used that a long
time. She would drive it all the time. … ? …. she got in it, she drove it. And she was a good driver –
even better than I was. We went up in Canada in that car… ? In the Leatherbury family … Delores
is gone, Sil? is gone, Merl? is gone… and another one’s gone too… four of them. All four of the boys
are gone. That was Luther, Gilbert, and Edward and Taylor. And they all four gone, and they were
all a lot younger than I am… but they’re all gone.
Q: Well we’re glad you’re here, that you can tell us some of these nice stories that you’re going to tell
us about Shady Side.
�
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Title
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Captain Avery Museum
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1984017-Proctor-George
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/13888/archive/files/d3956535f6ce2a3745441d2022330bbe.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Y61rsIAqbgv8iPVshRP-i46mRy7p3gSiZRVsQNoNhioAgg-417Z6gLf6NG3duCpl5BReG8Sz4OG-X%7E-JutbqZ9FE5Ck24Zv0DEKPvLS-t76fb3hw3gDMixy%7EKbKkkhLMKxramCQ66JCv3LabJOXCZqL9hvyvRwGdvUQDF2sQaQQKgsC38ULO2oDfMYeZZpn6g4WQ5AHvl6C4S55LrRw1nBZze-MGD9iXgDryIM6MD1DEGYEsEVQ82w34KK%7EwRSexUMznbllT3L7ULuL%7ErqKT24i1NmccS9VaXnix5OaEWDKwd32re6o0LHiXVfytEfkoZaFCp%7EtGDL0hkyoCB8hc9w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
108d32fab9485a2c7ad2c419d87d2acf
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY
Heinrich, Gustav
Captain Avery Museum
1984.019
Name of Interview: Gustav Heinrich
Cedar Lane
Shady Side, Maryland
Date of Interview: September 17, 1984
Interviewer:
?
Transcriber:
Donna J. Williams, March 2006
[Interview begins as follows:]
Qt: “September 17, 1984, interviewing Gus Heinrich, Cedar Lane, Shady Side. Mr.
Heinrich, could you please tell me if you were born in Shady Side”?
GH: “Yes.”
Qt: “You were. Would you mind telling me what year”?
GH: “1908, in August.”
Qt: “And where did you live in…”?
GH: “In Cedar Point. Ms. Somerville has the home now.”
Qt: “Do you have brothers and sisters”?
GH: “I had one bother, he died in ’77 and my sister died in ’81. But I do have two
sisters, Anna down there and Irma (?) in Fair Haven” (?)
Qt: “I see. So when you were growing up, you lived down on Cedar Point.”
GH: “Until I was 13 and we moved up West River where the store was.”
Qt: “I see.”
GH: “In 1913, we bought that property up there and built a store and we stayed there
until ’57.”
Qt: “I’m going to ask you all about that store in a little bit. Could you tell me what your
father did for a living”?
GH: “Well, when he was a younger man, he was a sailboat captain for a while, then
afterwards he started a oyster house in1914, so from then on he …up till 1950 he run the
oyster house and store.”
1
�[Type text]
Qt: “When he had the sail boat, was he a waterman, or did he…”
2.
GH: “Yes. Run oysters from West River to Baltimore. Some times he run just other
stuff, like canned goods, tomatoes or something.”
Qt: “Did you ever go out with your father oystering”?
GH: “Not much then. I was rather young.” [Chuckles]
Qt: “You wouldn’t happen to remember if your father told you what he used to maybe
get for a bushel of oysters”?
GH: “Oh, they brought any where from $.35 a bushel up.”
Qt: “Oh my goodness!”
GH: “When he quit in 50, they was only $1.50, $2.00 a bushel.” [Laughing] …up to a
$1.50 in 1950! Now when the oysters stopped it was in 1948…plenty of oysters up until
1948. But after ’48 they dropped off completely.”
Qt: “Well, why do you think they dropped off.”
GH: “I don’t know unless it was silt in the Bay … don’t know what happened.”
Qt: “I see. Did you go to school down here in Shady Side”?
GH: “In the old school, yeah.” In the old school in Shady Side, that would be the one on
the corner…where some other (?) people owns it now…it’s different.”
Qt: “Do you remember who some of the people were you went to school with”?
GH: “I imagine so.”
Qt: “Could you remember some of their names”?
GH: “Ms. Ethel Andrews’ was the teacher[chuckles]. Do you know her”?
Qt: “Yes sir.”
GH: “Ms. Bast (?) was one of mine (?) Ms. Dawson (?) was the teacher when I first
started.”
Qt: “When you were growing up with your parents down on Cedar Point, when you did
live there and a young child, what did you use do for entertainment”?
�[Type text]
3.
GH: “Oh, not much of nothing. Time I was old enough, I stayed in the store … mostly
stayed in the store 1914, 1915.”
Qt: “I see.”
GH: “I didn’t do much until 1920 or more than the store.”
Qt: “So could you tell me a little bit about the store now? How many years did your
father have the store.”
GH: “Well from ‘14 to ‘50, that’s 36 years.”
Qt: “And it was down on West River Road”?
GH: “Yes.”
Qt: “Did he also have … you said a oyster house there as well”?
GH: “Yeah, we had oysters. Started that around the same time.”
Qt: “I see. Could you tell me a little bit what …Do you remember what the store looked
like on the inside”?
GH: “Well, it was a … when we first started, we just had a small store, 30’ store, maybe
it was, it right there; did a lot of … oyster houses did business … that made the business
there. People coming in with oysters and they … buying ?? line up there (?)”
Qt: “Did you have a pot belly stove sitting in the store”?
GH: “We did. At first we had a coal stove, something like that. I think that’s what it
was.”
Qt: “And every body’d sit around the stove and talk.”
GH: “Yeah.”
Qt: “Would you happen to remember some of the things they talked about”?
GH: “No, I don’t hardly remember that. That’s been so long ago.”
Qt: “Did you have like barrels of things sitting around and sacks of different things”?
�[Type text]
4.
GH: “We had most any kind of groceries we could get in them days. Of course, half the
canned goods we have now, we didn’t even have in them days. Only half of what they
got now.”
Qt: “How did they get the groceries to the store”?
GH: “Well, a steamboat brought it to Shady Side, and in 1927 they quit … the ‘Emma
Giles’ and them, three or four steamboats, first one steamer then the others would come
in. They had four big steamboats running up and down the Bay.”
Qt: “Did you ever ride on the ‘Emma Giles’”?
GH: “No, I never ride on her. I’d go down the wharf and get the freight. We’d see her
at the wharf.”
Qt: “Could you tell me what the ‘Emma Giles’ looked like”?
GH: “Well, she was a right good size steamer, and they got pictures of her now around if
you want one.”
Qt: “Have any ideas how many passengers she carried.”
GH: “I don’t know, up to 1,200, I think somebody said. I think that’s right [chuckles].. I
think she could carry up to 1200 passengers…I think that’s right.”
Qt: “Oh my goodness!” Do you recall when the boarding houses were down in Shady
Side and all the people used to come and stay at the boarding houses”?
GH: “Oh, yeah I remember them. There was two big boarding houses there: Mr.Hartge
and Ms. Nowell’s …Mrs. Andrews.”
Qt: “Could you tell me where the Hartge boarding house was”?
GH: “Down on the West River shore, not too far from the steamboats up to West River,
further, up in the river.
Qt: “How many people could they board there at one time”?
GH: “Oh, Ms. Andrews generally have up to 100.”
Qt: “At the Hartge’s, they would have…”?
GH: “They might not have that many, but they had a right good crowd. I don’t ever
know how many they had but they had a right good crowd.”
�[Type text]
5.
Qt:: “Could you tell me about some of the pictures you’re ‘gonna show me now … you
said of the store and so forth”?
GH: “What does he want to see [Mr. Heinrich sounds like he might have moved away
from the microphone while reaching for photographs.] My aunt, my father’s sister.”
Qt: “Is this a picture of the store”?
GH: “Yeah…boats, there’s the store.”
Qt: “That’s very nice. Oh, and here’s a whole field full of oyster shells.”
GH: “Yeah, that’s oyster shells … snow storm, that’s how we used to snow.”
Qt: “It says…..”
GH: “That’s my brother; he’s dead …he died in ’76.”
Qt: “He was an electrician”?
GH: “Yes. That’s my mother…some of Irma’s children…” [Slight pause]
Qt: “Oh, there’s…Whose sailboat was this”?
GH: “This was John Bozman.”
Qt: “Was he from Shady Side”?
GH: “No, he’s from over on the Eastern Shore.”
Qt: “Oh, I see.”
GH: “Just below Salisbury.”
Qt: “A ha!”
GH: “That’s the oyster house. This is the store here.”
Qt: “Whose boat is this called ‘The Three Sisters’”?
GH: “That was my brother. He had them…he was born in Sweden….some of his
people.”
Qt: “Your family is from Sweden”?
�[Type text]
6.
GH: “That’s Norman’s daughter. Christine (?) He was in World War II . He was under
General Patton’s …”
Qt: “Did you say that your family is from Sweden”?
GH: “No, my father’s from Germany. My mother …my grandmother’s from Sweden,
my mother was born in this country.”
Qt:: “I see.”
GH: “That was (?) Annapolis – my place????
Qt: “That’s nice.”
GH: “That’s one … must be the farm house.”
Qt: “Which farm house was this”?
GH: “The one at Fairhaven…built a new house…that would be George. He works at the
lumber yard now…you might say.”
Qt: “We’re interested in any pictures you might have of Shady Side … sort of, maybe,
tell the history of Shady Side.” [Pause]
GH: “Some of these of my sister, Deale, and Fairhaven they taken between here ?? and
we lived at Fairhaven.”
Qt: “I see. [Pause] Are these your father’s horses”?
GH: “Yes some of them I believe that’s them.”
Qt: “Did they have horses when they lived out on Cedar Point or
GH: “No we never … Oh, we had a horse on West River Road. We kept him a while,
my father … didn’t keep him too long. This is house…a couple hundred yards away.”
Qt: “Is this, I was ‘gonna say, is that the store”?
GH: “I don’t know who for sure who that is.”
Qt: “When you were a teenager down here, Mr. Henrich, what did you used to do for
entertainment”?
�[Type text]
7.
GH: “Not much because I was in the store most every day.”
Qt: “You were working.”
GH: “In the store most of the day.”
Qt: “So you started working in the store at about 13 or 14”?
GH: “Not much till I was 20. I don’t think I did too much till then.”
Qt: “Did you ever skate out on the West River”?
GH: “Sometimes, yes. When we were closed in the winter, sometimes we skated out
there.”
Qt: “Did you ever skate out there in the evening, when they lit bon fires”?
GH: “Not often. I couldn’t do too much skating.”
Qt: “I see. Did you ever go to any of the dances that they had …”?
GH: “No mamm. I never danced…I don’t know, I just didn’t. I might go there, but I
didn’t dance any.”
Qt: “I see. Do you recall the Shady Side Beverage Company”?
GH: “Leatherbury’s? I knew them, yeah, we used to buy soft drinks and stuff from
them.”
Qt: “Do you also remember the ice cream parlor and the bake shop down there”?
GH: “I think so, yes. So many things in Shady Side are gone now. New people …
gone.”
Qt: “What things in Shady Side are gone now”?
GH: “Oh, I don’t know. There was a lumber yard was down West River Road, too,
when they started. Mr. Will Thomas started down there.”
Qt: “Oh, he did.”
GH: “Right down in there, yeah, he started…that big.. you been down that road”?
Qt: “Yes.”
�[Type text]
8.
GH: “Yes mamm That big house going down there. I don’t know who owns it now.
Then he moved up on the corner and that’s where it is now…Ms. Smith’s house.”
Qt: “Would you know what year he started his lumber yard down there”?
GH: “No, cause it must’ve been round 50 maybe … round the War time, even before the
War. Maybe after the War. I’m not sure.”
Qt: “Would you know how long that they had it down there”?
GH: “Well, he started around 1922 or 23. He came from New York, New York.”
Qt: “And how many years…”
GH: “He was overseas (?) during the War and had a ship load of lumber. The war
stopped, and he lost that.”
Qt: “Oh my goodness.”
GH: “Then he started over again and made some money … made right good after he got
here, but during the War then the lumber prices went down after the War.”
Qt: “Would you happen to remember any of the saw mills that they had in Shady Side”?
GH: “Yeah. Mr. Price had one in near Shady Side.”
Qt: “Where was it in Shady Side”?
GH: “Do you know where the super market is on the corner where the lumber yard is”?
Qt: “Yes sir.”
GH: “You go up that road a couple hundred yards maybe more not much past that. Not
much past where the ?? garden ?? is little past that.”
Qt: “I see. Were you ever there”?
GH: “I have seen Mr. Price working there, yeah.”
Qt: “Could you tell me a little bit about what he did and how he did it”?
GH: “I don’t know too much about it but…been gone about 50 years so, it’s been a long
while.”
�[Type text]
9.
Qt: “Would you recall any blacksmith’s shops in Shady Side”?
GH: “No, wasn’t too many … don’t think it was any … never…”
Qt: “I was just wondering, if people had horses, there must’ve been a blacksmith’s
shop.”
GH: “Well, there was one over in Galesville.”
Qt: “There was one over in Galesville.”
GH: “Yeah, a good blacksmith’s shop there.”
Qt: “Do you remember who owned it”?
GH: “Mr. Joe Diemer, I think owned it. If he’s living, he’s in Annapolis (??). He was
an old man. I don’t know whether he’s still living or not.”
Qt: “When you were a tiny little boy, living in Shady Side, would you remember who
the oldest person that was living in Shady Side at that time? Would you recall”?
GH: “No, it’s hard to say, but there was some old people around … most always some
old ones around.”
Qt: “Would you remember who some of them were”?
GH: “Well, Mr. Bob Nowell was a right old man when he died. He died in ’27.”
Qt: “You’d say he was about the oldest person around..”?
GH: “He died and they had a snowstorm … had to dig the road out to bury him.”
Qt: “Had to dig the road out to bury him”?
GH: “The snow was that deep.”
Qt: “Oh my goodness. [Pause, chuckles] Would you remember any other older
gentlemen who lived in the community at that time or lady for that matter”?
GH: “No, I guess there’s Mr. Crandall and them …getting old ..? lived up the road up
there. John Crandall lives up the road, his father was right old. And Will Crandall was
right old and Gus Crandall, he was ?? and the Averys ..”
�[Type text]
10.
Qt: “I know this is a funny question, since you’re talking about all the men. There had to
be a gentleman down here who was a barber. Who was the barber in Shady Side”?
GH: “Well, I don’t know … different ones. Leatherbury had it one time, Taylor
Leatherbury was the barber one time.”
Qt: “Did he have a shop or …”?
GH: “He worked in there where that lunch room … they tore the building down and built
a new building there. But he had it. He was in that … rented that building there.”
Qt: “Which building was that”?
GH: “Where that lunch …that lunch room across from the store. Out there where the big
store is”?
Qt: “Oh, yes.”
GH: “Right across the road there. That lunch room. Leatherbury rebuilt that in the ‘60’s
and …”
Qt: “And he had a barber shop … was it just a barber shop or was there other things
there”?
GH: “Then Winters … a ‘fella by the name of Winters stayed there a few years. He …”
Qt: “How much would it cost you to get a hair cut”?
GH: “Started at a quarter. Then it went to 50 cents and on up. And now it’s $4.00.”
Qt: “Did you remember what the barber shop looked like inside
GH: “I don’t know, we had a couple pool tables and different things, you know, and cut
the hair, and all. “
Qt: “And all the gentlemen would sit around there and talk”?
GH: “And some of them did, yeah, and some would play pool.”
Qt: “Would you happen to remember any stories that they talked about, any thing in
particular…”?
GH: “No, I …”
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11.
Qt: “There was ? business that happened down here”?
GH: “No, I don’t know too much about it.”
Qt: “How long did he have his barber shop”?
GH: “I don’t know, don’t remember the years but he had it a right good while.”
Qt: “I see. Well, I had not heard any one talk about a barber shop down here and I
presumed there had to be one.”
GH: Taylor Leatherbury had one a good while and I … ??
Qt: “Could you think … I know that you said you worked in the store but there must’ve
been some things that you did to entertain yourself when you were …”?
GH: “Didn’t get much entertainment … and most times the store. ‘Course, oyster boats
would start out at 6 o’clock in the morning. Any where from seven or six, according to
the weather, and in the winter time later on. But in summer … in the fall of the year they
started at 6:30 and go any ??? .”
Qt: “Could you remember some of the things that the men used to buy … that the
oystermen would buy from you”?
GH: “They bought a lot of meat and stuff like that and canned goods.”
Qt: “Could you remember some of the names of the gentlemen who did have oyster
boats who used to come into your store”?
GH: “Well, up there where we was mostly colored fellas up that creek … there’s a creek
there they all sometimes there would be others but…”
Qt: “Do you remember some names”?
GH: “One man was Ben?/Dent Smith. He was half Indian. That’s what they told me,
so…”
Qt: “And he lived down here in Shady Side”?
GH: “Yeah, in Shady Side. He raised a family.”
Qt: “Did he come from out West to Shady Side”?
�[Type text]
12.
GH: “I don’t know where they originally from, Smith. There was another, his brother …
Erwood Avery, his land, ?? the brother owned that land there. Ed Smith.”
Qt: “I see.”
GH: “They were part Indian according to what they tell me. That’s all I know.”
Qt: “Could you remember some of the names of some of the other people who used to
come into your store”?
GH: “Oh, Gross up there and Scott, plenty of Scotts up there. Gross and Matthews and
all them kind.”
Qt: “And they all were oystermen…”?
GH: “Most of them were, yes. R.C.?? ? And Bast way up the creek.”
Qt: “Did your family have a boat? I know that they ran a store but did they have a boat
of any kind”?
GH: “Who’s that”?
Qt: “Your family.”
GH: “No, we didn’t have one. My brother had one but we didn’t do much with it…had
it a couple years, let somebody else use it.”
Qt: “Did your brother work on the water”?
GH: “He did for a while, but he was a … manual electrician in ’27, I think.”
Qt: “I see.
GH: “So most of the time he was an electrician.”
Qt: “And every body used to come and sit in your store and talk and …”?
GH: “Oh yes.”
Qt: “Would you be able to tell me a little bit about it, maybe just to describe what a day
was like in the store”?
GH: “One ‘fella lived across the river … from West River … [Slight break or pause in
the tape, or maybe the microphone was moved.] … Will Smith ? had ? little pictures of
�[Type text]
13.
him ?? He lived across the river. He come over across in a row boat, and sit in the store
and talk for a while. He lived up the head of the creek there, no body was close by so
he’d come over the store once in a while.”
Qt: “Did they used to sit in the store and talk about what all happened out on the water”?
GH: “all things like that.”
Qt: “Did you happen to remember anything in particular about maybe something they
said that was unusual, odd that happened out on the water one day”?
GH: “They had a heavy storm in 1927, I think it was. Around 1930 that was. Three men
got drowned on (an) oyster boat.”
Qt: “Who were these gentlemen”?
GH: “Oh, Selman ??, Scott and them, Scott boys.”
Qt: “The Scott boys? How many of them were in the boat”?
GH: “ Three in the boat.”
Qt: “All drowned at the same time”?
GH: “That happened around the 7th of April, I think.”
Qt: “That’s terrible.”
GH: “It was an awful storm.”
Qt: “And how long did it take them to find them after …”?
GH: “They found ‘em the next day, I think.”
Qt: “Found ‘em the next day. Anything else that …”?
GH: “Oh just it gets rough out there ?? I don’t think anything that bad out there.”
Qt: “You wouldn’t happen to remember anything else that they talked about”?
GH: “No, it’s hard to …”
Qt: “See, this is for the history of Shady Side, and there must’ve been some other
peculiar thing they talked about.”
�[Type text]
14.
GH: “I imagine to … so many things.”
Qt: “So many things they talked about.”
GH: “Yeah, that’s the trouble.”
Qt: “If the store opened at six in the morning when did you close in the evening”?
GH: “Any where around 8 or 9 o’clock in the evening, something like that.”
Qt: Eight or nine o’clock…”
GH: “If we
Qt: “And you just had a steady stream of people in there all the time”?
GH: “Most of the time. Always be somebody either going or coming Not too many.”
Qt: “Do you recall any other stores that were in Shady Side at the same time”?
GH: “Yes. Hopkins had a big one in Shady Side. Nowells had a store, too, then. Will
Crandall had a store. And Leatherbury later on had one up the road there.”
Qt: “Where did Leatherbury have his store”?
GH: “On Cedarhurst turn, on Cedarhurst only now he’s not other business.”
Qt: “I see. And that’s all the other stores you can remember in Shady Side”?
GH: “And the year before that, I don’t know, Will Crandall had another store … closed
it around 1930, something like that. He got old and boys went somewhere. John
Crandall’s store on ??? Road.”
Qt: “How many years did you work in the store with your father”?
GH: “Up until ’57.”
Qt: “Up until ’57. Then what did you do for a living”?
GH: “Well when I come down here, I went clamming a few years…on the Bay
clamming.”
Qt: “I’ve never asked any one. Did they used to see clams by the bushel”?
�[Type text]
GH: “Clams, yes, by the bushel.”
15.
Qt: “How much did you used to get for …”?
GH: “Well when we was clamming, it was around $2.00, $3.00 at most. I don’t know
how much they are now. [Chuckles]
Qt: “Now did you clam alone or ..”?
GH: “No, it was always two men in the boat, sometimes three.”
Qt: “I see. Could you tell me what the name of your boat was, do you recall”?
GH: “I don’t know the name of the boat, but Mr. Halleck was … Mr. Halleck and his son
owned the boat when I was … Then I worked for Alvin Joyce for a while. Do you know
him? He’s dead now.”
Qt: “Oh.”
GH: “Yeah. He died about a year ago.”
Qt: “I’ve never had the opportunity to meet him. You clammed, did you also oyster”?
GH: “I never did oystering. We had oysters mostly out of the store.”
Qt: “How about crabbing”?
GH: “We crabbed some … soft crabs and stuff like that…hard crabs…”
Qt: “Do you remember how much people would pay you for a bushel of those”?
GH: “We’d sell big hard crabs for 25 cents a dozen. [Chuckles] Selling best …We’d get
about $2.00 a bushel something like that. Now look where they’re at!” [Chuckles]
Qt: “Where would you sell the crabs”?
GH: “Around home mostly, folks always … somebody wanted some.”
Qt: “A buy house or buy boat”?
GH: “Sometimes …mostly sell ‘em around home for 25 cents a dozen. [Laughing]
Now they’re, what, $3.00 a dozen? $4.00, $5.00 a dozen, maybe.”
Qt: “Ye sir, yes sir. And then did you work on the water until you retired”?
�[Type text]
16.
GH: “No. I never worked much on the water. I would do some crabbing in the summer,
but mostly around the store and like that. Then we had… In the summer … in the store
we had oysters with my father, but then I was crabbing??”
Qt: “I see. And then really what was your main occupation”?
GH: “Well I don’t know. Went up on the farm work about 10 years, I think, worked up
on the farm. Quit in ’76.”
Qt: “What farm was this”?
GH: “I worked for Leatherbury for a while. ??Tenant work at Mrs. Well’s. That’s this
big farm … was split in half. Leatherbury had half the farm and Mrs. Wells got the other
half. Worked up there a lot.”
Qt: “I see. Could you tell me what type of things you did on the farm”?
GH: “Well I raised a lot of hay, corn, didn’t do much corn. On the other farm, mostly
race horses. We just took care of horses. She had mostly race horses there, see, I didn’t
train them but I worked out there with them. I cleaned the barn, and worked around the
barn.”
Qt: “Were they really good race horses”?
GH: “Some of them were right good, yes.”
Qt: “Can you remember the names of some of the real good race horses”?
GH: “There was one horse, I think … Cloud Dawn, I think, I don’t know. Frances, he
called one, I think. I don’t what the real name…. She went blind before I left … that one
horse was blind.”
Qt: “Which was the best horse they had that was a race horse”
GH: “They didn’t have no real good ones there because she was raising a few young
ones once in a while ??... some of them was right bad.”
Qt: “Did you say you didn’t train any of them who was it …”?
GH: “She had some different ones ?? type … that … horse ??…knew what to do with
them.”
Qt: “Was it anybody from Shady Side so speak”?
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17.
GH: “No.”
Qt: “Do you remember… maybe this was before your time … but do you remember
when the farms were down here and the thresher machines used to come”?
GH: “Yeah, I used to see them. I used to watch them thresh wheat.”
Qt: “Could you describe to me a little bit exactly what they did”?
GH: “Well, Mr. ?Weems ? had a great farm down here, and then they had a threshing
machine here every year….they threshed wheat right down in West River Road where he
had a big farm.”
Qt: “And everyone came down and helped him.”
GH: “ ….he didn’t own his rig; he was always hiring somebody else would thresh the
wheat for so much. I don’t know but they did thresh it that a way.”
Qt: “They would never pay the pan … would they pay the man who came with the
thresher machine”?
GH: “Oh, yeah. They would have to pay him so much a bushel for each bushel
threshed.”
Qt: “Do you remember how much”?
GH: “No I never heard how much.”
Qt: “Do you recall the name of the man who had the thresher machine”?
GH: “I think Price had one - I think he had one. I’m not sure it’s been so long ago.”
Qt: “Did you help them, or did you watch”?
GH: “No I never helped.”
Qt: “What did you do for a living”?
GH: “Mostly oysters in the summer or the winter.”
*** [SEE Notes on Page 28: ….] Qt: “Was he a white man or a black man”?
GH: “Colored fellow lived down the ….”
�[Type text]
18.
Qt: “I heard he had a log canoe sailboat.”
GH: “Yes.”
Qt: “Was it an oyster boat”?
GH: “He oystered in it, yeah … a sailboat.”
Qt: “Could you tell me…remember what year this gentleman had this boat”?
GH: “Well, he oystered for Mr. Hal Owings, think it was around 1922, Mr. Hal Owings
sold ?? down here and went to Annapolis, ?? his two daughters live in Annapolis now.
See Mr. Will and his brother owned that big store where Mr. Hopkins had … where that
man is now.”
Qt: “Do you happen to remember the name of his boat”?
GH: “No I don’t. I heard it, too, many times but I just don’t think of it right now.”
Qt: “It was a log canoe”?
GH: “Yeah, log canoe.”
Qt: “Did you know he built this boat”?
GH: “No, I don’t, but I imagine ??built it …?? that I know of.”
Qt: “And how many years did this gentleman operate this boat”?
GH: “Well he … a right good while. He died in 1950, ?? I don’t know. I don’t know
what year but he died around that time.”
Qt: “Were there any other men who had log canoe sailboats”?
GH: “No. They had power boats, most of ‘em, so…”
Qt: “And he was the only one that had a log canoe boat.”
GH: [No response audible.]
Qt: “Would you recall who some of the early boat builders were in Shady Side.”
GH: “Well, Lee built boats in Shady Side. Mr. Perry ??? made two… some others that
built some later.”
�[Type text]
19.
Qt: “Did you ever go down in their boatyard and watch them build a boat”?
GH: “I had but too often. I been down there. My brother got one. Mr. Lee built the boat
we had.”
Qt: “Is it the boat you still have now”?
GH: “No. I don’t know. We sold it to a colored fella about 30 years ago, to a colored
fella. He’s probably gone to wreck now… they dead now.”
Qt: “I see. When you lived down there it was called ‘South Creek’”?
GH: “That’s right, that’s right.”
Qt: “How many people live down there on South Creek”?
GH: “Wasn’t many down there, now a few more now, accumulating all the time.”
Qt: “Who was it that lived down in that area when you had the store”?
GH: “Well, Crandall lived on the shore and Johnson lives up a little bit further from it.
Howard ?? Johns, he had four or five sons and they, some of ‘em live down there.”
Qt: “Sold it”?
GH: “No, they just had a home there and lived there and oystered. Most of them
oystered.”
Qt: “I see. And that’s about all the houses that were down there then”?
GH: “There were some real old homes there, but I never knew much about them, who
built them or …”
Qt: “Don’t know who lived there or …”?
GH: “Different people lived in them but no one … Henry Scott owned them one time.
He died in ’24 so that’s a long time ago.” [Chuckles]
Qt: “I guess so. Could you think of something odd or, other than these three gentlemen
dying out on the Bay, something else in particular that happened or something very
unusual that happened down here that maybe you could tell us about for history”?
GH: “I don’t know – who built the road down here.”
�[Type text]
20.
Qt: “Do you remember it”?
GH: “In October 1929, I think or 30. That was the first State road that come to Shady
Side around 1930.”
Qt: “Was that a shell road or a paved road”?
GH: “No, that was a …yeah, just a gravel road. They built a gravel road.”
Qt: “Did you attend the carnival that they had to raise money to put in the road”?
GH: “I don’t know. I think some carnival, but I don’t know whether I …”
Qt: “For that one in particular”?
GH: “No.”
Qt: “But you can’t think of anything else that might’ve happened down here or that was
unusual or some particular story you could tell me someone did”?
GH: “No. We had a couple fires in the family when we be up at …??”
Qt: “In your family”?
GH: “We had a store that burned down in 1922.”
Qt: “In Shady Side”?
GH: “Um huh.”
Qt: “What store was that”?
GH: “We just had a small….”
Qt: “Oh, it was your family’s store”?
GH: “Yeah. That was 1930, the oyster house burned down. We had to rebuild that.”
Qt: “Would you know what caused the fire”?
GH: “No. We never did find out what caused it.”
Qt: “Well, I was just going to ask you what happened down here when there was not a
fire department. What did every one do”?
�[Type text]
21.
GH: “Well, we didn’t have any then. We didn’t have nothing in 1930 when
….?Galesville had to come down to get, when the oyster house burned down. They came
down around that time. They came down around 1930, so right after the fire, a year or
two after.”
Qt: “Were you all running around with a bucket brigade trying to …”?
GH: “Wasn’t too much there to do, just let it burn. Wasn’t no way to get to it. We called
West Annapolis, but when they got there, the building was gone.”
Qt: “They came from Annapolis … the fire company came down. Now that’s
interesting, that’s very interesting.”
GH: “That was West Annapolis came down in 1930.”
Qt: “And how many trucks came trucks did they give”?
GH: “Just one came down.”
Qt: “It was a tanker truck”?
GH: “I imagine it was, I don’t remember just now.”
Qt: “Then you rebuilt the oyster house. Correct?
GH: “Yeah.”
Qt: “Then after it was rebuilt, how many years was it in operation”?
GH: “From ‘30 to ‘50.”
Qt: “From ’30 to ’50. How about the store? Did you rebuild the store”?
GH: “Yeah, we rebuilt the store, then the little one we had…built the new one in ’41,
and that one’s still standing…the building’s still standing.”
Qt: “Oh, it is still standing”?
GH: “That’s the way we left it….still there. We built it in ’41.”
Qt: “Is any one living in it now”?
�[Type text]
22.
GH: “No, I think there’s a Swede lives there now. I don’t know his name, though. He
works somewhere else and lives there.”
Qt: “But someone does live there”?
GH: “Oh, yeah. He lives there.”
Qt: “When you rebuilt the oyster house and the store, did you build them bigger than the
ones you had before, or about the same size”?
GH: “No, it might have been a little bit bigger. the oyster house … still both of them
built a little bigger, yeah.”
Qt: “Did it burn down during the day time or was it evening”?
GH: “Fire started during the day, I think burned down sometime near around mid-night.”
Qt: “That must’ve been a real tragedy for your father then”?
GH: “It was time.”
Qt: “And how long did it take him to rebuild”?
GH: “We … I don’t know. We had a store … put a little store and a house there a while
until we built one or something ….?? start a store. “
Qt: “I see. Did everyone around try to come to help you put the fires out”?
GH: “Well, we had a crowd.” [Chuckles]
Qt: “You had a crowd there? Did the house, I mean did the store and the oyster house
burn in the same year”?
GH: “No, there was eight years between the two.”
Qt: “Eight years between the fires…but everyone came to help you”?
GH: “Oh, we had a crowd.”
Qt: “Would you happen to remember… who had the first cars in Shady Side”?
GH: “Years ago, I think Mr. Wagner bought the first car in Shady Side. He lived down
in West Shady Side where Ms. Somerville ..lived over ? Sandy? Point. Mr. Wagner and I
think Somerville married Mr. Wagner’s daughter, if I’m not mistaken. I think that…”
�[Type text]
23.
Qt: What did Mr. Wagner do for a living”?
GH: “I don’t know He lived in Washington. I’m not sure what he did.”
Qt: “Oh, he did.”
GH: “That was a long time ago so I don’t remember.”
Qt: “OK. Was his car the only one in Shady Side”?
GH: “He was the first car, but after that it wasn’t too long before I think different cars…
I don’t remember who the others were.”
Qt: In growing up, did your grandparents live with you, Mr. Heinrich”?
GH: “I don’t know…I only knew my grandmothers, but both grandfathers died. See, my
father came from Germany in 1890. My mother was born over here. But see my
grandfather was in this German War in 1891, and my father was born in ’77, so he, I
don’t think he lived over a year, so…after father was born.”
Qt: “I see, but you do you recall your grandmothers living in the house”?
GH: “Yes, the two grandmothers, yeah.”
Qt: “Did they like it in Shady Side”?
GH: “Yeah, they liked it. She came from Germany in 1890. She was born in ‘37, a long
time ago any way.” [Chuckles].
Qt: “Well, that’s ok. Did your family speak German from time to time”?
GH: “He could speak some but he never bothered about it.”
Qt: “And did your grandmother speak German”?
GH: “No, she spoke mostly American.”
Qt: “She didn’t try to teach you any…”?
GH: “No.”
Qt: “Didn’t try to teach you any at all. Could you tell me what your grandmother’s name
was”?
�[Type text]
24.
GH: “Epstein, I don’t know what the …not sure what it was. It was a funny
name…starts with an “E”, or something or other … same as Epstein … or I don’t know
what it is. I can’t think of the name.”
Qt: “What was her first name”?
GH: “ ?? [No response.}
Qt: “Was that her first name”?
GH: “Something like that.”
Qt: “Ok. Could you tell me what year your grandmothers died”?
GH: “In ‘22.”
Qt: “In ’22 - Both of them”?
GH: “No, the other one died in ’52.”
Qt: “I see. But they lived in your … with your family.”
GH: “Yes. One was 86 when she died, and the other one was 92.”
Qt: “Oh my goodness! Well they had a nice long life.”
GH: [Laughs]
Qt: “They had a nice long life. What did their husbands do for…Did their husbands live
down here in Shady Side … the grandfathers and ...?”
GH: “No, none of them was here living.”
Qt: “They were already gone”?
GH: “No. Grandmother came over here as a young girl from Sweden. She came from
Sweden and she went up … worked up to her marriage somewhere up ? St. Mary’s ?
through that a way. She worked up there for a while. Then she worked different places.”
Qt: “Could you tell me, in all the years that your family had the oyster house and the
store, did your father give it up because he thought he couldn’t do it anymore or because
he wanted to retire or what was the reason”?
GH: “No, he was 70, around 70 years old when he quit his job.”
�[Type text]
Qt: “I see
25.
GH: “He died when he was 75.”
Qt: “He just decided he didn’t want to do it any more.”
GH: “No, he was just getting so he couldn’t do much more no how.” ??
Qt: “OK. Getting back to you working, you worked on the Leatherbury farm you said”?
GH: “Yeah, I worked up there for a while.”
Qt: “And what else did you do”?
GH: “Well mostly running the barn and different work, and getting hay in the spring and
the fall, keeping the barn safe, cleaning up.”
Qt: “And you did not have any other job after you worked on the Leatherbury farm”?
GH: “No, I went over to Ms. Well’s a while and worked.”
Qt: “She had a farm also”?
GH: “Um humm. She bought just half of the big farm that was up there at one time.”
Qt: “I see. So you really worked on farms all of your life”?
GH: “No, only from ’70, around ’68 on. See we sold the store in ’57 so, I didn’t work
much until … I worked clams a few years. My mother died in ’63 so that left me by
myself. My brother died in ’77 so I been ….”
Qt: “Have you ever been married”?
GH: “No I didn’t get married.”
Qt: “You have never been married”?
GH: “No.”
Qt: “And could you tell me when you moved into the home you’re in now”?
GH: “In where”?
Qt: “Could you tell me when you moved into this home”?
�[Type text]
26.
GH: “In this house”?
Qt: “Yes sir.”
GH: “ Since ’57, in December.”
Qt: “Did you buy this house from someone”?
GH: “Yeah, we bought it from Norman. Norman built it. ?? He built it, then after we
bought this one from him, then he built a bigger house on the shore there.”
Qt: “I see. Did they … So you lived in this house with them for a while.”
GH: “No, they lived on the home down the West River shore.”
Qt: “Oh, and I see, he built this house for you”?
GH: “Yeah, and he stayed there until he built … till he built his house. Yeah after he
bought this one then he started on his.”
Qt: “But he built this home specifically for you.”
GH: “I don’t know. He built it for his self, then he changed his mind and started
building one down there.”
Qt: “I see. Would you tell me what you and Anna used to do when you were little”?
GH: “I don’t know …”
Qt: “You must’ve played or …”?
GH: “Time ? … like you say, the store, most of the time, I didn’t have too much time to
play.”
Qt: “Did Anna work in the store also”?
GH: “No, they was?? Youngsters???when they got larger, around 18 or 20 some where
at that time.”
Qt: “I see. But you were the one who really stayed and helped your father”?
GH: “Yeah, I stayed right there most all the time.”
�[Type text]
27.
Qt: “In showing me the pictures that you have there was a big field of oyster shells, they
used to spread the oyster shells around some of the roads here”?
GH: “Yeah. Up, down there at West Shady Side Road. The County built the road.”
Qt: “Did you help do it”?
GH: “..put the oyster shells down and built that road.”
Qt: “The County brought the oyster shells down.”
GH: “And built that road, yeah.”
Qt: “But what did you all do with the oyster shells you all had”?
GH: “Well we’d sell them to the County and different place sometimes. Well, the State
bought them and planted them in the Bay.”
Qt: “How did they sell the shells, by the truckload or…?
GH: “By the bushel.”
Qt: “By the bushel”?
GH: “They measured one truckload and then the others they’d go out and sell them about
the same thing, so they … that way.”
Qt: “Well, that was a good way to get rid of them”?
GH: “Well, yeah. The County bought ‘em from? watermen sometimes when they
needed something.”
Qt: “ I see..”
GH: “The State planted a lot of them out in the Bay. We planted the shells in the Bay
and then the oysters would catch on and ...”
Qt: “Anything else you can think of that you might like to tell me about Shady Side,
since you say this is for history. Some one told me you know a lot of history of Shady
Side.”
GH: “Not so much, I guess. I don’t know.”
Qt: “Well we would be interested in anything you would have to tell us.”
�[Type text]
28.
GH: [Chuckles] “Don’t know too much…I don’t know much more.”
Qt: “Did you like … you must’ve liked working on the farms then”?
GH: “Yeah, farm was all right.”
Qt: “Which did you like best? Just working on the land or helping them take care of the
horses or…”?
GH: “Well, most of the time, worked on the barn , had to clean that barn out every day,
see, so that had … time by myself??…”
Qt: “Did some of the farms that you worked on…. You worked on two farms.”
GH: “Yeah.”
Qt: “Did they also have cows”?
GH: “Well, he did once, but he got rid of the cows when I started working he got rid of
them right after..”
Qt: “So you didn’t have to milk the cows”?
GH: “No, I never milked any cows.”
Qt: “Could you tell me some of the crops that were raised down here”?
GH: “Well there was …….[Side one of this tape ends and shuts off. When I flipped the
tape over, I heard nothing.] SEE BELOW:
Transcriber’s Note: Using the second (or copy) of the two tapes Janet mentioned, I was
able to hear some of the tape, but it actually sounded like parts of the same tape,
beginning on page 17 of my transcription, although I did not hear the name “Charlie
Scott” on the ‘better’ tape! Side two starts with this sentence:
Qt: “Mr. Heinrich, could you remember a gentleman by the name of Charlie Scott”?
GH: “Yeah, I knew Charlie Scott.”
Qt: “What did he do for a living”?
GH: “Most oysters in summer… in the winter.”
�[Type text]
29.
AFTER LISTENING TO THIS TAPE TO THE END, THE INTERVIEW WAS
THE EXACT SAME AS I’D HEARD PREVIOUSLY, UNTIL THE FOLLOWING
QUESTIONS, which pick up where Page 28 ends…
GH: “Well, they raised mostly corn. Some years ago they used to raise a lot’a tomatoes.
In the ‘20’s and ‘30’s they had the canning house in Galesville, used to raise some
tomatoes down here and they canned them down here in the canning house.”
Qt: “You wouldn’t recall the canning house down West Shady Side Road, would you”
Would you recall the canning house that was… ?
GH: “No, I don’t know if there was any canning house down there. I know Galesville
had one.”
Qt: “I see.”
GH: “??Woodfield’s had one.”
Qt: “Oh, Woodfields”?
GH: “Yeah
Qt: “Did they carry everything over by boat or did they carry it over by horse and
wagon.”
GH: “Most of ‘em … Some of em carried by boat. Didn’t have a truck, they’d carry by
boat.”
Qt: “I see. May I ask you, do you remember when the mail came to Shady Side or was
that long long before your time… post office”?
GH: “I don’t know so long ago I can’t remember what year it started. That’s the trouble.
A long time ago.”
Qt: “Well, before the mail … before the Post Office was in Shady Side, where would
you have to go and get your mail”?
GH: “I don’t remember. Maybe it wasn’t much mail at that time. I don’t know
remember … whether Shady Side the first I remember … or not
Qt: “I see.”
GH: “Mr. Leatherbury, I think .???? started a mail route at one time in Shady Side. He
might be the one started it. I’m not sure.”
�[Type text]
30.
Qt: “Did you ever go to the movies down here in Shady Side”?
GH: “What’s that”?
Qt: “Would you ever go to the movies Shady Side”?
GH: “Yeah, I used to go when Mr.Will Nowell ? owned the place.”
Qt: “Mr. Will Nowell – Could you tell me where in Shady Side he had it”?
GH: “That’s across the road from that big store, he had a garage, right.”
Qt: “Yes sir.”
GH: “That big building. That building was built for movies. He had an automobile
dealership, Ford ? dealership, at that time and he built that big building there for movies.”
Qt: “Was that the only thing that was in that building was the movies? Was there
something else that was in that big building”?
GH: “Well, he had an automobile business at that time, a garage-like, so,,,”
Qt: “Oh, in that store”?
GH: “Yeah, in that building …”
Qt: “He sold cars”?
GH: “I think he sold … I know he sold automobiles for a while.”
Qt: “Do you remember what kind they were”?
GH: “Ford cars.”
Qt: “Fords!”
GH: “Yeah, he sold Fords.”
Qt: “Now see, no one has told me about that either. Now that’s interesting.”
GH: [Chuckles] Mr. Nowell had an agent ?? for Fords in Shady Side. It must have been
in the ‘20’s I guess, I don’t know.”
�[Type text]
31.
Qt: “I was just ‘gonna ask you. Now see, no body has told me that. That’s very
interesting.”
GH: “He had the garage and he built and the garage ..?? ??
Qt: “So he had, so he sold cars there and he also repaired them”?
GH: “Yeah, I think so. He had some men there.”
Qt: “Do you remember some of the men who would work for him”?
GH: “No, I don’t know. I think two Leatherburys worked there… for a while his
nephews … worked for him for a while. ??? worked later on.”
Qt: “Well now, that’s very interesting.”
GH: “Will ?? Taylor had his rug cleaning he was…”
Qt: “If you say a lot of black people came into your…You said the majority of the
people who came into your store were black people…”
GH: “Yeah, but we was up there at the head of the creek …think that was all that was up
there at the head of the creek at that time.”
Qt: “Would you recall any of the black boarding houses that were down here at that
time”?
GH: “Matthew Carter had one across from the fire house. That big building there. She
tried to run a small boarding house there at one time.”
Qt: “Did some of her guests used to come to your store and buy”?
GH: “Not on …there’s other stores out on that road, see sometimes …wasn’t much then.
Only other stores, you could go either to Shady Side or Leatherbury’s ”
Qt: “I see.”
GH: “The store that Will Owings had had to stay on Shady Side, then ? in ‘22 to the
Hopkins and then ??? since he was there.” [Chuckles].
Qt: “Do you recall a place in Shady Side called the ‘Dew Drop’”?
�[Type text]
32.
GH: “I think so. I don’t know where it’s at now. I don’t know where it could be. I’ve
heard of the name.”
Qt: “Well, exactly what was it”?
GH: “The Dew Drop Inn? It was called, I think …only thing I know of. … We called it
the Dew Drop Inn, I think.”
Qt: “ And everyone … would people go there and dance, would you remember”?
GH: “Well I don’t know where it would be at. I don’t remember who heard ?? even.”
Qt: “Oh, because some gentleman told me about it and I wanted to know if you had
recollection of it.”
GH: “No, maam, cause I don’t know why … who named it …don’t remember who had
it ??? “
Qt: When people came in your store … a lot of the black community came in store, did
any of ‘em ever bring any musical instruments and just sit there and sing”?
GH: “No, ??don’t know ?? not much about them down there.”
Qt: “I see. OK, because I was told that they used to go to the ‘Dew Drop’ and sing.”
GH: “Maybe they did. I heard it named that, but I don’t know who owned it, that’s the
only thing back at that time.”
Qt: “Is there any other … is there any particular thing that sticks in your mind most
about Shady Side? You’ve lived in Shady Side all of your life
GH: “I was born and raised there.” [Chuckles]
Qt: “Well, you’ve … you were born at home.”
GH: “Down West Shady Side … a doctor…Dr. Dent.”
Qt: “I was going to ask you if the doctor delivered all the babies down here.”
GH: “It was, yes.”
Qt: “There was no mid-wife for it…”
GH: “Doctors … didn’t know what a midwife was then, I don’t believe….1908.”
�[Type text]
33.
Qt: “I see. So Dr. Dent delivered all the babies. He must’ve delivered a lot of babies.”
GH: “Yes He used to charge $1.00 a visit. He told me one time he had enough dollar
bills he covered the whole house with it.”
Qt: “A dollar a visit!
GH: “Now what is it? Any where from $50 to $100.” [Chuckles]
Qt: “Exactly . Oh well now that was interesting. What type of man was Dr. Dent”?
GH: “Well, he drove a horse and buggy and he died in 1936, he was around 80 … close
to 80 years old when he died. He come from St. Mary’s County, I think. They tell me
there’s a lot of Dents down there.”
Qt: “Did anybody ever tell you how long Dr. Dent was down in Shady Side”?
GH: “No, I don’t know … he started …I don’t know. He was down here many a year, at
least 40 years. I don’t know how long.”
Qt: “What type of man was he”?
GH: “I think he was a nice man … told some jokes, though.” [Chuckles]
Qt: “What kind of jokes would he tell”?
GH: [Laughing]
Qt: “They weren’t any bad jokes”?
GH: “I don’t know … any you’d want to know, he’d tell.”
Qt: “Could you tell me what he looked like”?
GH: “I don’t know he was a right old man...had right good age on him. I think he was
over 75 when he died.”
Qt: “Was he a tall man”?
GH: “Not too tall I don’t know, I’d say about 5’8” or 10” … between 8 and 10.”
Qt: ?? “Light hair”? ?? [I could not hear this question.]
GH: “Yes maam.”
�[Type text]
34.
Qt: “Was there anything else you could tell me about him”?
GH: [Chuckles and mumbles something ??]
Qt: “He knew every body in the community, and I’m sure he was everyone’s doctor.”
GH: “That’s right. He made right good money…”
Qt: “But I imagine he would come, night or day”?
GH: “Yes, that’s right.”
Qt: “And he used to come down to Shady Side in a horse and buggy.”
GH: “The last few years he had a car, ? Ford.”
Qt: “ ??? roads down here, the mud”?
GH: “??might have, I don’t know.”
Qt: “I see, awful roads down here.”
GH: “ State roads in 1930 ?”
Qt: “Is there anything else you could tell me? We have maybe about five minutes left on
the tape, because, see, we’re going to keep your voice on this tape forever.”
GH: [Chuckles] “Well, I don’t know…”
Qt: “Mr. Heinrich, you were telling me about the population of Shady Side…”
GH: “I guess there was 100 … maybe about 150 families in 1930.”
Qt: “150 families or “?
GH: “Could be, I don’t know for sure . Could be around 150.”
Qt: “Families or homes or…”
GH: “Started ???? ….in 1932.”
Qt: “I see.”
GH: “ $25,000 in 1932 ???
�[Type text]
Qt: “My goodness!
35.
GH: [Cannot understand what he says.]
Qt: “Look at all the houses that are down here now.”
GH: “Wasn’t nothin’ down here, just the farms. 215 acres of farms.”
Qt: “For heaven’s sakes. Now that’s interesting. Oh, I’m glad you told me about that.
That’s interesting to know. Is there anything else like that you could tell me”?
GH: “I don’t know. That’s about all.”
Qt: “Mr. Heinrichs, thank you very much. We really do appreciate it. You’re delightful
to talk to. Thank you.”
GH: “ ??50’s I can’t find it ???
Qt: “OK, we thank you very much Mr. Heinrichs.”
GH: “???? 75 at the time.”
Qt: “There’s a picture…oh how nice. Mr. Heinrichs, thank you very much. We really
do appreciate it.”
TAPE STOPS.
�
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
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Captain Avery Museum
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1984019-Heinrich-GC
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592b103934f10858eac2508a40efeb74
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY
Hazard, Anna
Captain Avery Museum
1984.020
CASSETTE TAPE: Interview with Anna Hazard, 8/8/1984
Interviewer: ???
Transcribed by: Christina Davidson: (Oct. 2006)
[Interviewer] Q. August 8, 1984 interviewing Mrs. Anna Hazard, Cedar Lane, Shady Side.
Mrs. Hazard, could you please tell us when you came to Shady Side?
A: I was born in Shady Side in 1911.
Q: Could you tell us where in Shady Side this was?
A: In West Shady Side, down on the front shore of West River.
Q: Could you tell us who your parents were.
A: Gustav Heinrich and Agnes Roby (?) Heinrich.
Q: What property did you live in, in Shady Side?
A: I moved to South Creek when, maybe I was about two years old – and lived in South Creek until I
was married in 1930.
Q: So, I presume you went to school here in Shady Side. Could you tell us some of the people you
went to school with?
A: Miss Helen Dawson from Mayo was my 1st grade teacher and she taught me for three years. And
my class… I went to school with Bernie Atwell (?), it’s Ferguson (?) now, Lyda(?) Parks Joyce, Clarrie
(?) Savory (?) Palmer. Now, she remarried, but Palmer was her Annapolis…
Q: I presume you went to the school that’s on the corner down here.
A: No, the old school that I was in has gone and then they built the school on the corner where the
Eastern Star has…
Q: OK, can you tell us where this school was.
A: Let’s see. It was a three room building, just a small building, and we had three grades in the first
three grades, and then we had 4th, 5th, and 6th in the next. And I think it was good, you know, 7th and
8th grade in the larger room, the older children. And when I went into the 6th grade they built the new,
well, it was to us a new school at that time, and from the 6th grade through the 9th grade. I finished
there and then went to Tracey’s Landing in High School… when they started the bus line which was
like 1926. Went to High School for three years there and graduated in ’29, 1929.
Q: When you lived down here, when you lived down here with your parents, did you have brothers
and sisters?
A: Yes, I had two sisters and two brothers.
�Q: Could you tell us the type of chores that you had to do at home.
A: Well, we had a country home. We lived right on the South Creek… had boats. And then my
father had an oyster business. At first he had a boat that he ran oysters to Baltimore – one of those
big boats….
[interrupted by someone asking for a key…]
Q: Could you please tell me about the boat that your father had.
A: Well, the boat was named “Commodore” -- it was a big sailboat and they had a small yawl boat
that… when the wind, you know, wasn’t good for sailing, they pushed the boat with the small boat. I
remember the boat… but the …
Q: What was the length of this boat, do you recall?
A: I don’t know… what would be the length of the big oyster boats that they dredge with? Sixty feet?
I suppose… [inaudible]
Q: Could you tell us if there were other children in your family – the type of games that you used to
play when you were small.
A: We played baseball. Had a game we called “caddy” – remember that?
Q: I’ve had a lot of people talk about that – describe what “caddy” is.
A: Well “caddy” is a game. We drew a round ring and we had a piece of … like a broomstick handle,
that we sharpened it on both ends, and then we had a long stick that we hit one end of it, you know, it
bounced. And I’ve forgotten all the rules [laughter] but the game was, I mean, to see who made the
most… the score was a certain distance, or whatever it was, and then whoever had the greatest
score won the game.
Q: Could you tell me if you used to go ice skating.
A: Yes, ice skating and snow riding.
Q: Snow what?
A: Snow… with sleighs, of course, we walked to school which was two-and-a-half miles.
Q: Well, I hear that there used to be great crowds of people out on the ice and all skating and
everybody seemed to have a wonderful time from what I’ve heard. Could you tell us a little bit about
the times you went skating.
A: Well, we skated in South Creek, so we didn’t have such a crowd, but we always had ice skating
and skated with others who lived in the area.
Q: Could you tell us some of the people you skated with.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 2 of 17
�A: I don’t remember too many…. about the skating in crowds, because we didn’t have the children in
our area… close, that we, you know, that we skated so much with. There was a couple of the colored
girls that we had in our area… the Crowners – Rachel and Anita, and Ben. And they always skated in
the same area with us.
Q: Could you tell us a little bit more about your home life. Can you think of maybe some interesting
things that happened when you were a youngster – when you were a young child at home.
[inaudible conversation with someone else in the room]
Q: Your great, great, great grandchildren are going to hear this tape, because we’re going to keep
this tape forever. And that’s why we would like to know about your life down here. And it’s to go in a
talking museum in Shady Side.
[Other person]: How about fishing and crabbing?
Q: Can you tell us about that – fishing and crabbing?
A: Well, after my father had the oyster house, he had a large pier out there. And all of the oystermen
from up in South Creek came to the pier and got their gasoline… we had the gasoline tanks…
Q: How much did gasoline sell for then – do you remember? Now that would be interesting!
A: Well, as far back as I can remember, maybe 25-cents a gallon. And then the oyster boats brought
their oysters in to our pier and unloaded the oysters. He bought the oysters from the tongers. And
then we had, like 10 to 15 oyster shuckers that shucked the oysters and they packed them, and then
he carried them to Baltimore or Washington.
Q: Could you tell us what they packed the oysters in. Were they barrels or what type of things?
A: No, they packed them in gallon cans to carry to Washington. Then, of course, they had ‘em in the
big barrels, because they were washed…
[Other person]: These were the shucked oysters.
A:… after they were shucked, they were held n the big barrels with ice until they were put into the
cans… gallon cans, and then they were sold. And… let’s see, they weren’t more than a dollar a
gallon, I know. And the oysterers probably paid like 25-cents a bushel [chuckle].
Q: Did you tell us the name of your father’s boat? You said the big…
A: The name of the boat was “Commodore.”
Q: The “Comodore” – oh yes, I see, OK. Could you tell us a little bit, what you remember when the
“Giles’ used to come in here.
A: Well, we also had a grocery store. My father was a person that got into many things, and he also
had a grocery store.
Q: Where was it located?
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 3 of 17
�A: Down on South Creek. There… down the end of West River Road now. We didn’t have a name
for the road then. But, anyway, in the grocery store, of course was, you know, like a little country
store. They sold molasses in the barrel, “KK” (?) by the spicket….
[Other]: … crackers in the barrel…
A: Well, that’s right. A case of nails and so forth, came in barrels. Sugar and all, came in barrels.
And he met the “Emma Giles” and picked up the groceries coming out of Baltimore. And, of course,
all the children used to love to go down to meet the boat, when the groceries came in. Or ride with
the horse and wagon, or else go down in a boat – until we had a truck to carry in.
Q: And you used to go down there with him?
A: Oh yes.
Q: Could you describe a little bit about when you went down there. Who all was there and what they
did.
A: Well, we would go out on the pier and watch the people get off of the boat and lots of times people
came down from Baltimore and stayed at the boarding houses down here in the country. And boats
would come over and pick them up. Mel’s (?) had a boarding house, and Hartge’s had a boarding
house, and my husband’s grandmother had a place in Galesville – Hazards – and those are the ones
I know about. There were some more, I think a couple others.
Q: I understand that at the Now (?) Hotel, they used to have a lot of dances. Did you used to go to
some of them?
A: Yes, when I… after I was in my teens I did.
Q: How often would they have dances in the hotel?
A: Usually on Saturday nights, that Mr. Jarnell (?) had the dances, I think, across from the hotel.
Q: You could get together and socialize with the people in the community and the boarders, as well?
A: Oh yes, I mean, it was a lot of … usually it was a crowd there.
Q: I also heard that Miss Ethel used to put on plays down here…
A: She did.
Q:. Could you tell us a little bit about it?
A: The little bit that I remember. I can’t think of the name of it right now. She probably told you.
Q: No mam, she hasn’t told me. I want you to tell me what you remember. [laughter]
[Other]: Were you ever in one?
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 4 of 17
�A: I was in it, but…
Q: … Oh, what play were you in?
A: That’s what I’m trying to remember… the name of it. [laughter] I can’t. I was probably in the ninth
grade when we had that one. I remember my sister, Sophie, sang – in between acts. She sang “Blue
Eyed Sally” and… all by herself, of course, so that was a big thing to kids, you know.
[Other]: Did your whole family go?
A: I think so, but they had it, you know, in the big building across from Shady Side market. Mr. Now
(?) had the movies there. We used to go to the movies when we were in our teens, of course.
Q: Could you maybe tell us, do you remember some of the movies that you saw? Now that would be
interesting to people. Or who were some of the big stars were then?
A: There was a serial going on, I remember one time, with ? Gibson, you know, the western-type
thing and you know the kids loved that. We watched every Saturday night. You had to go see ?
Gibson. I can’t remember some of the others, but, I guess I’m not a real big movie fan. But, we did
go. Sometimes the picture would be upside down and we’d have to wait a while until that got
straightened out. [laughter]
Q: And I’m sure everyone in the community would go when they… when they were showing the
movies.
A: Well, from Galesville and Deale, came over too. A lot of the people came in and we usually had a
nice crowd.
Q: Did they charge you to see the movies or did they just let you in.
A: No, we paid. It wasn’t much.
Q: Do you remember how much it was?
A: I can’t remember – like a quarter, maybe. Probably was all we had to pay… [inaudible]… children
paid.
Q: Can you remember some other things that you did down here?
A: Well, you know, living in the country, there’s always children to keep busy. We had boats that we
could go in any place. We’d go berry picking, we’d go cherry picking. There was always something
to keep you busy. We swam all summer. Then we had… there was a lady from Baltimore, rented a
house next ot us in the summertime, after our neighbors moved. And it was the Raines (?) out of
Baltimore. And she was an elderly lady, and she loved it in the country, and she’d come down and
either my sister or I would stay with her, when her family wasn’t there. So, then I got to know her
family and …
[Other]: They had young people your age?
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 5 of 17
�A: Yes, she had a couple of grand daughters who came down. Was Nancy Williams and Raine(?)
Williams, and then Mr. John Raine(?) out of Baltimore came and, of course now, I think, one of his
children or grand child is Judge Raine(?) in Baltimore….
Q: … that’s interesting…
A: …. They used to come down on the “Emma Giles” and someone would meet them and bring them
over, you know, to the house. And of course, and I said we walked to school.. What we – took a lot of
shortcuts – we went through the Weems’ and stopped to pick up the friends at Weems’ that went to
school with us. That was Miss Weems’ grand children, the Masons. Then we went across a little
bridge, and went through the woods there and came out behind St. ____? church. And they had a
wooden fence with steps over it and we’d come over through the fence and go through the yard. So
that cut off quite a distance for the kids to walk. A lot of times, there were cows in the woods, and old
Mr. Lerch(?) had a big… Lerch’s place, over on the side… and they had cows. So we would duck
between the trees, keep away from the cows and come through the woods to make our distance
shorter. I remember some of those things. I guess that probably stood out in our mind.
Q: Well, I suppose if you had to walk to school, you were happy to take shortcuts, if you had a long
way to go.
A: It was 2-1/2 miles and we didn’t miss much time.
Q: Could you tell us if you met your husband in school, or….
A: No, I didn’t meet him until I finished high school and I was working in Galesville the last two years
in high school. He and William(?) would be at an ice cream parlor down on, hear, down on West
River… is one of the restaurants right now, in Galesville. And I stayed with them the two summers
after I… the last year in high school and the last summer. And he was down – he came, he lived in
Baltimore. And his Uncle lived near where I was working, so that’s where I met him.
Q: Could you tell us what year that was.
A: 1929. And then I left that fall and went to Washington, in Sibly(?) Memorial Hospital, so I took the
first year of training as a nurse. And I let him talk me out of it, and we got married [laughter] which,
maybe I shouldn’t have done, but I guess we had a good life, so….
Q: What year were you married?
A: 1930.
Q: Could you tell us where you were married?
A: Well, I was married at the rectory up at Christ’s Church, and the Rev. Hart(?) married me. He was
our – well, we were not a parish at that time. St. John’s was, you know, under Christ’s Church. And
Mr. Hart was our minister at that time.
Q: Could you tell us a little bit about your wedding that day.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 6 of 17
�A: Well, I’ll tell you, I guess the exciting thing about it. He was late because the firemen – he used to
go up to the fire company. Now, maybe he worked with them at Galesville, because they had this
new fire company, and they locked him in the firehouse for a while, and held him up.
[Other person]: Well… tell… that he was a city boy and these were all country boys (?) and they
were always playing tricks on him… [inaudible]
Q: Oh, they really played a trick on him.
A: Always, they did, yes – they were his friends. [laughter]
[Other]: They were his friends and like when they were all skinny dipping… [inaudible]… they’d take
his clothes and things like that. We’ve always heard those stories.
A: Well, so then, and… my mother and brother were up with me and one of my sisters and
Cawood(?) Smith, he was going with my sister at the time.
Q: We’re going to interview him as well.
A: Cawood? Well, he married my… one of my sisters. And, William and Grace Woodfield were with
us. And then we went to Carvel(?) Hall, Cawood and them took us. I guess it was Cawood, I forgot
that. Cawood and them took us to Carvel Hall and we stayed all night and then we took the ferry the
next day to Ocean City, and spent the week in Ocean City.
[Other]; Well, you had to have a car.
A: Huh?
[Other]: You had to have a car to get from the ferry to Ocean City.
Q: Did you-all have a car then?
A: If it was, it was the old Ford Coup he had.
Q: Oh, he had an old Ford Coup. Tell us about his car.
A: Well, that would have been in the 20s, I guess. I don’t know what year. I don’t know that much
about these old cars. But, it would have been, you know, like 1927 or ’28 or something like that,
because it wasn’t new. I didn’t think we went in that. I thought we went… see, I can’t remember.
[Other]: The Ferry only went to Kent Island, so..
A: Yeah, but you had, I think, a bus, probably had a bus to go to Ocean City.
[Other]: Then you went on the bus.
A: … and I kinda have a feeling we went… I’ll have to ask Cawood, he might remember.
[Other]: He didn’t go with you… [laughter]
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 7 of 17
�A: No, but he would have been the one who took us.
Q: If you were married in church, did you wear a long white gown, or did you wear a suit, or ….
A: No, it was hot summertime. It was the 28th of August, and I wore a turquoise, well, sort of
material – chiffon maybe – dress, short-like. And ‘course I …. then I changed, you know, when I went
to Annapolis and stayed all night. So, it was a big thing… [laughter]. No, we didn’t have a big
wedding, we just had…
Q: Well, it sounds like it was very nice.
A: Well, it was nice for us, I guess. [laughter]
Q: Then when you were married, did you come to live in Shady Side with your husband, or where did
you live?
A: Well, we went to Baltimore and lived in Ashburton(?) where… with his parents for 8 months. And
then, I guess it was like in May, we rented this house near my mother.
[Other]: Mrs. Raines’ house…
A: Mrs. Raines’ house… and we stayed there for about a year, maybe. A year or two years – I can’t
remember that. But anyway, we were paying $25 a month rent for like an eight-room house. Well
anyway [laughter] – we couldn’t even pay $25 a month rent, because there wasn’t that much work
around to make… I think maybe they… he worked the first year for maybe 25-cents an hour on some
jobs.
Q: What type of work did he do?
A: Well that was it, he was a city boy and there wasn’t anything in the country like the city. [laughter]
so there wasn’t any work for him, really. So he found different kinds of work. He worked at the oyster
house. He tried oystering and he didn’t like that. And he worked with the Smith Brothers for a while,
when they built the bulkhead in Cedarhurst. And he worked with them a while, and then he got a job
with the county for a while – on the roads. And then he worked over at Hartage’s boatyard and
painted boats in the summertime, which he had to row to Galesville in a rowboat ‘cuz he didn’t have a
motorboat. So… but we didn’t worry about that too much, because we had a garden and had
vegetables, and we…. My father had the grocery store, so we always had something to eat, and, in
the country, you know, you always have…. we had soft crabs in the summer, and crabs – all the
crabs we could have, and oysters, if we wanted them.
Q: … and fish?
A: And fish all the time, because my father and them used to have fish nets where the fellows used
to go out…
[dog barking interrupts interview, tape stopped]
Q: And could you tell us, did you like to go fishing?
A: Oh yes,
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 8 of 17
�Q: What was the best thing you liked to do on the water? Was it swimming, fishing, or what did
you…
A: Oh, when I was little, the swimming was great swimming – and then in the wintertime it was
skating on the… well, then we had the boats, you know, we could go all over the creek and in the
boats. Rowboats.
Q: Did you… could you tell us who you all used to go visit when you were young and growing up,
that maybe used to come and visit your parents or that you all went to visit?
A: Well the Owings(?) were our neighbors at that time and they had two daughters, Mattie and Elma.
And of course, we went to school with them and… visited them.
Q: Your daughter told me a little bit ago that your husband built a house down here. Could you tell
me a little bit about the house and where it was?
A: [inaudible]… Well, after we thought we couldn’t pay the $25 rent a month for the big house – well,
my father and brothers and friends got lumber and built the two-room house. And we stayed in that
for several years.
Q: Where was it located down here?
A: Down on South Creek. And one of the years we had one of the hurricanes… when the tide came
so high that there was a … came into the house. But – we stayed there for several years and then
we built another house over on the river front, and we lived there…
Q: Your husband built this house?
A: Well, we had that one built too. But Mr. Bill Atwell(?) built it. And then we lived there until the
children were grown, just about, when we moved down here on the Bay. Then that was about 1959
when we moved here.
Q: Could you tell us a little bit about your children, your children’s names, please?
A: The children were… my daughter was Norma and my son was Norman, Jr.
Q: What year…
A: Norma was born in 1931 and Norman was born in 1937.
Q: So I’m sure, as you went to school in Shady Side, your children went to school here as well?
A: Yes, they went to Shady Side school and Miss Ethel Andrews was my teacher and she was also
their teacher… plus the other women teachers.
[TAPE – SIDE 2]
Q: …. all these different jobs and then what, really, what was his occupation?
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 9 of 17
�A: he was a painter. His father had a big contracting business in Baltimore and he worked withhis
father.
Q: Could you tell us a little bit, how you started your bird sanctuary? We would be very interested
what year, what motivated him to do it?
A: Well, that’s why we moved to the country, ‘cuz he loved birds and all the animals, and so forth,
and he just liked the country. And we started off with ducks, even when we first ere married we had
ducks. A few geese, and pigeons, and just about…. dogs and cats and everything else. But ah…
[inaudible]… Oh yeah, and we’ve had monkeys – different kinds of monkeys and swan. Then he
started up with swan when we lived down on he West River. We had swan ad geese and ducks and
then, of course, when he found this place down the Bay, why, he found that we could buy a piece of
land. We did, and started a place down here. He built the pond and then brought his ducks down
here.
Q: What year was this?
A: 1958, I guess, when we started it. And we moved in about 1959, I guess it was only a year or so
building it. Then we started… he started getting more ducks and then, of course, he had gotten into
other work too. He, by that time, he had started a paint contracting business and we had a store on
Main Street… a paint store on Main Street and I ran the store and he ran the contracting business out
of that. Plus he was a trial magistrate in Edgewater at that time.
Q: Was the store in Annapolis or was it down here?
A: The store was in Annapolis on Main Street. I ran that for 15 years and he continued the paint
contracting business because my son still runs that. And we sold the store and then he retired from
the masters(?) job and he was a civil defense director for 10 years…. worked out of Annapolis and
so, that was after we sold the store.
Q: When he started his bird sanctuary, was it his idea or your idea?
A: His.
Q: And what did you think of it?
A: Oh, well, I like the outside, you know, and I love the flowers and the garden and we always
worked together. Fed the birds and other times we had some help to do some of the work. But he
just loved the outside and hunting and fishing, and loved the birds, so he had all the different kinds of
swan in the world. And we had just about all the ducks and geese that are… the main ones that we
have in the country…
Q: Did he invite people to come down here and look at his bird sanctuary, or did people just know it
was here and just came to look at it?
A: Well, he had a lot of people that did come and a lot of the groups of children… Sunday schools
and Brownies and so forth, that… little children used to go and see the birds. And, of course, he
belonged to the South Arundel Businessmen’s Association, and they always has a … they had a crab
feast here at our place for five or six years, and that brought in a crowd of people and they always… a
lot of them would come back to see the birds.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 10 of 17
�Well, then, we traveled too, after we had the birds. We belonged to several bird organizations
and then each year, when they would have a convention – usually was in the fall – well then, we
would go for a week, or maybe take an extra week off.
Q: What bird organizations were these? Could you tell us?
A: American Waterfowl and Pheasants and the… I can’t think of it… [inaudible]
Q: It’s not important, OK.
A: Wait a minute, let me… because that was the… [pause in tape]… the other organization was the
Game Bird Breeders of the… and the magazine was called the “Gazette” and it was put out by
George Allen of Salt Lake City, Utah. And the conventions were always held in the different states,
every year they’d try to have…(?) and we’d go. Los Angles, Utah two different times and…
Q: In you bird sanctuary, did you and your husband have any favorite birds? Did you like the ducks
better or was there a favorite?
A: He liked the swan and the geese, I suppose better. And we had all the different kinds of swan.
We had the trumpeters, the mute swan, the whistling swan, the black swan. And, of course, they’re
all from different areas. We had a custom(?) rover(?) swan and a black neck swan. And we raised a
lot of all of them, and then, of course, he would sell off the ones… the young ones and raise more the
next year.
Q: Did you five any of these birds names? You must have had some favorites.
A: No. [laughter] we had too many to give them names. We had so many that you couldn’t really
give them names, but… well, we had a pair of Caryopsis (?) geese that were rather tame and… didn’t
have a name, but they would come to you – kind of were pets and would follow you around the place.
Q: I hear that it used to take you almost two hours to fee all of your…
A: Oh yes, well, when we had the little ones in the spring… we raised, you know, 15 or 20 of the
different breeds. And so, we had quite a few. We had a building where we had separate ponds made
inside the building to raise all the babies, to keep the animals and things from catching them.
Because it’s awfully hard to raise ducks in the open pond, because the turtles and different things
catch them, and so, we always raised the babies inside.
Q: When it took you all this time to feed all these geese and birds, did you used to help him, or did he
do it alone?
A: No, I always helped. We worked – always did it together because we were both working in
Annapolis and then we would feed the birds when we got back in the evening. Or, like on the
weekends, we fed them in the mornings and then he would be home. The days he was home, he did
a lot of it himself, and a lot of times he had extra help to come in and help him. But I usually took care
of the babies myself, until they were… had a little size to them. So, I got to like it and was interested
in it.
Q: I’m sure that some of your children helped you feed them too, sometimes?
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 11 of 17
�A: Well, when the grandchildren were here, of course, my children were married by then and moved
away, so the grandchildren would come in and whenever they were here, they always loved to feed
the birds and go down in the pen with him.
Q: Would you mind telling us how many grandchildren you have?
A: Have six.
Q: Do you have any great grandchildren?
A: Not yet. [laughter]
Q: Not yet…
A: I expect one [laughter]. My daughter’s oldest daughter will probably be the first one to give me the
grandchild…
Q: … the great grandchild…
A: Great grandchild. She’s… she lives over in New Jersey so I never see her quite so often.
Q: Could you tell us who were best friends of you and your husband? You know, when you first
moved down here or in later years. Who were your best friends that you would go see or…
A: Well, we had so many friends all over the United States that I can’t say ____ we spent a lot of time
away from here too and I … we made friends when these bird-people were… a lot of his friends. So,
he has a friend, Glen Smart, who works for the Interior Department, that used to hunt with him all the
time. And they… he and his family… used to come to visit all the time.
Q: Is your husband still living?
A: No, my husband died in 1982.
Q: Are you still maintaining the bird sanctuary?
A: I sold most of the birds and I still have some on the pond because I like to watch them and… so I
will keep those.
Q: About how many would you say you have now on your pond?
A: Oh, I have a couple pair of swan, and some geese and ducks. But the ducks are usually the
ducks now that are from this area – like the mallard and the pintail, and the wood ducks. And the
redheads and the black duck are the ones that are from this area and they still raise some babies in
this area. So, it’s a … really a place where in the wintertime now, the whistling swan comes in and
the Canadian goose – they come in. And a lot of canvasback and the black heads come in to my
pond – especially when the Bay had ice in it. Now they would stay in my pond and then, of course,
we’d have to feed some extra birds.
Q: It’s nice to have… it’s still nice to have them around.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 12 of 17
�A: … Nice to watch them and I can sit back in the window and watch them fly in the pond.
Q: Could you tell us some of the things that you like most about living in Shady Side?
A: Oh, I … I like the most, I just… this is home and I just love the Bay and the rivers. I mean, it’s
been my whole life, I guess, so that’s… I just wouldn’t want to live in the city. And since I know all
about this area, I guess I like it the best…
Q: You feel more comfortable…
A: I like the, you know, I would go… have the church and I’ve always gone… known all the people in
Chase(?). I don’t know them now because all of my friends, mostly, are gone. A few… [inaudible].
Yes, taken part in the … worked in the Episcopal Church and we also had a fine Kiwanis Club in
Shady Side at that time, when we worked for the new church.
[Other]: … in the early ‘50s… [inaudible]
A: The Kiwanis Club probably started in around ’45 and then it went on… he was active in the
Kiwanis Club up until in the ‘70s and, of course, then we _____ in the club, so the dinners ____ it was
about five ladies out of St. John’s Church and we put on the Monday night dinners for the Kiwanis
Club, which was good for the Club – it held the club together, because they had no other place to
have their dinners and their meetings. And then our money went to pay our debts on our new church.
So we paid off the mortgage and then by that time, we felt that someone else should take over. We
went every Monday night, except for when I was away.
Q: Your daughter says this was 20 years that you worked…
A: … that we worked in this… yes.
Q: What type of dinners would you prepare?
A: Well, the men always liked the dinners. I guess they were, you know, baked chicken, roast beef,
meatloaf, fish or crab cakes when we could have them in the summer. And all the vegetable things
that would go with that dinner. Plus we would have home-baked pies most of the time, and baked
rolls and we did it all out at the Kiwanis Hall.
Q: You said there were five ladies – could you tell us…
A: Well, they were the ones when we started. Would have been: Hilda Atwell and Sophie Smith, my
sister, and Mable Weldy(?). And then later, it was Kitty Hamilton and Betty Morris, Elizabeth Avery
helped us at times, and Kitty Towneal(?) would help us at times. So we all worked, and some other
ladies came in and helped at times, when we needed help.
Q: How long would it take you to prepare some of these dinners?
A: Well, some of us would go out… I didn’t always get there early, but some of the ladies would go
out like 2:00 or so and get… if they had roast beef and different things that they had to prepare. And
then they would go in early and spend the afternoon at the hall. And then the meetings were 7:00, so
we didn’t get out until about 9:00 at night.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 13 of 17
�Q: And how many hours would you say that you had to work preparing these dinners?
[Other] [inaudible]
A: … that was the time we spent there.
Q: Like six hours?
A: … of course then, I always worked in the church dinners, when they would put on their big
dinners. And the church – St. John’s – used to have some real nice dinners, and I guess maybe the
younger ladies didn’t like to do so much cooking, so we sort of gave it all up.
Q: That’s a shame. Would you tell us what some of your interests and your hobbies are now – other
than the birds you were telling us about, that still come to your pond.
A: Well I , of course my hobby, I guess, was my flowers – always had a lot of flowers and took care of
them by myself.
Q: Could you tell us about your flowers?
A: Always had roses and then I would plant the… all different kinds for summer; zinnias and two(?)
petunias and whatever I had. Snap Dragons or some of the annual plants.
[Other] [inaudible]
Q: Oh yes, your daughter just said you do needlework. Could you tell us what you do?
A: [laughter] Well, I do that mostly in the winter time. I like to crochet this time of year.
Q: What type of things do you like to crochet?
A: Well I… last couple of years, I guess I’ve done mostly afghans for the children.
Q: You make them and don’t keep them for yourself? Then you give them to…
A: Oh no, I usually gave them to the children. So… and now that I have a great grandbaby coming,
I’ll have to make her some blankets, I guess.
Q: You said you’d have to make “her” some blankets.
A: Oh, that’s right, might not…
[Other]: Maybe she meant a grand daughter that’s going to have it.
A: [laughter] I might make it for a boy.
Q: And are there any other hobbies that you like now?
A: Hmmmm. I read and I still take interest in the church – whatever they’re doing and in the
community, if there’s something special I like to go. And then, of course, I visit a couple of my friends.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 14 of 17
�I still visit with Nita(?) Joyce and, of course, I all…. and then go with my brother-in-law Cawood Smith
and his sister, Mable. I spend some time with them. Or else I’m visiting with my two children – go to
Pennsylvania to see my daughter and her children while I’m there, and then my son lives in
Fairhaven. And I have a great granddaughter living in Davidsonville. So I spend my time visiting with
them.
Q: It’s coming to the end of the tape and could you please reminisce a little more about Shady Side,
when you fist moved here in your youth? Anything in particular that… something else you would like
to tell us about?
A: Nothing that I can really remember.
Q: Some people said that they did skate, and you did as well. Did you used to skate at night-time? I
heard that a lot of people skated at night and built fire out on the ice.
A: Not often did we night skate. No, we didn’t really.
Q: Were there ever any hay rides down here?
A: I never went on one of the hay rides. I… we were a little distance from the community area, you
know, in here in Shady Side. So to walk out, when we were little, we didn’t. But we took part in, just
in Sunday School. We had to walk to Sunday School when we were little.
[Other]: Your mother had a horse and buggy.
A: Well, she had a horse and buggy that she would pick us up at school, if it was a rainy day or
something. She would take the horse and buggy and come for us at school.
Q: Do you remember what her horse’s name was?
A: We had a black horse and his name was Bill.
Q: Will?
A: Bill.
Q: Oh, Bill – oh, I see, OK.
A: And of course, they used him to plow in the garden, and well, was that a big garden. And mother
had… well, of course, then they had about 9 or 10 acres of land, and they had cow and the horse and
also raised pigs, way back when I was little. I remember some of that. I didn’t like the time when it
came to kill the pigs.
[Other] [inaudible]
A: Yes, they had a smoke house and they smoked their hams and made the country sausages, and
smoked those.
Q: Well, if you said they had a lot of animals, it’s no… if you grew up with them, then it’s no wonder…
you still loved the animals.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 15 of 17
�A: Sure, she raised chickens at that time. She always…
[Other]: …. she had grandmothers … [inaudible]
A: Yes, my two grandmothers lived with us after they became… well, my father came over from
Germany when he was 14 and then his mother always lived with us until she died. Then my mother’s
mother came with us, but then… Well, she came over when she was 18 from Sweden and married
here in Shady Side.
Q: Did your grandmothers try to teach you German or Swedish?
A: Oh, we learned a few words and I’m sorry, maybe sometimes, that we didn’t learn more, but we
really didn’t.
Q: But I’m sure that they must have… if they lived with you, had very interesting stories to tell you
about the… Sweden and Germany?
A: Well, I can’t remember too much about that. Somehow I don’t [laughter] I really… I remember my
grandmothers, of course, but I can’t remember too much about them telling me about when they
came over.
Q: Could you tell us anything your grandmothers taught you about life? Certain things to remember
or how to live, or certain things you were supposed to do in your life? Most grandmothers tell their
granddaughters things like that.
A: No, we always went to church, had to go to Sunday School. And that was one of the things I
guess we always had to do. And…
[Other] [inaudible]
Q: Oh yes, do tell us. [inaudible]
A: Well they, yes, they worked in the Episcopal Church when it first started, because my father… I
remember him telling me that he helped to build, with my grandfather – helped to build the church –
the first Episcopal Church in Shady Side.
Q: Is it still located… was it located in the same area…?
A: The church was on the same… it was in front of the grave section. And then when they built the
new church in the ‘50s, they built that in the back of the grave, you know, the graves that are there
and the tombstones.
Q: So…
A: The other church was closer up on the road.
Q: So the other… first original church was torn down.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 16 of 17
�A: Oh yes, that was torn down in… I’m sure that is in the history of the Shady Side. You have the
pictures of the first church.
Q: Oh I’m sure that they do.
A: I think maybe Jenna(?) has all that.
Q: Yeah, I’m sure they do, I’m sure they do. Mrs. Hazard, we thank you very much for talking to you.
It’s been a pleasure. And your contribution to our talking library will be… it will be wonderful. And we
thank you very, very much.
A: You’re welcome and I hope I’ve helped you.
Q: Indeed you have. Thank you very much.
A: You’re welcome.
Anna Hazard oral history (8/8/1984) – Page 17 of 17
�
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
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Captain Avery Museum
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1984020-Hazard-Anna
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PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY
Leatherbury,Amy Rogers
Captain Avery Museum
AMY LEATHERBURY
1985.001.002
1985.001.002
Interview of:
Amy Rogers Leatherbury
Date of Interview: October 16, 1985
Interviewed by:
Transcribed by:
Donna Williams, May 2006
Revised, Ann Sparrough, June 12, 2012
October 16, 1985, interviewing Amy Leatherbury at the home of her daughter, Betty Lou Senesi,
Shady Side Road, Shady Side.
Q: Mrs. Leatherbury, would you mind telling me if you were born in Shady Side?
AL: Yes, I was born in Shady Side, on April 11, 1904.
Q: And would you mind telling me the name of your parents?
AL: My mother had been a Hartge. Her name was Betty Ellen Hartge, and she married my
father who was Perry Rogers, and he was a boat builder in this community.
Q: And when you lived here with your family in Shady Side, could you tell me exactly where in
Shady Side it was?
AL: Oh it was on the Parrish Creek. We had, when Momma first married my father, they lived
down there where the Shady Side Market is. In fact they tore down that place and put the Shady
Side Market there and that’s where I was born. And then, when I was about four years old, Papa
went out to cut a tree for the boats, the keel for it, you know, and it fell on his leg and broke it.
And they came back home, and all I can remember, and I can still see them bringing him in on a
door. They had come up to the house and gotten a door off the bedroom and took him, brought
him up on that door and brought him into the bedroom and then we got the doctor. And he said
he had broken his leg. And he was the best skater ever known here, around here, Annapolis,
Galesville, Eastern Shore. All of them come over to race him. Nobody ever touched him on ice.
He was something. He was a very bright man for having only a grade school education. And he
was strict with me but he very much spoiled me, too. My mother used to say he spoiled me and I
remember that, and then I remember that we were going to see the neighbors next door, who was
Sam Atwell and his family. They had a son that was about one year older than I am, he was a
little bit older. And my father slipped, it was in the winter, slipped on ice and broke the leg over
again. So all the skating that he did, the bones never knit and never knit then right. They were
passed each other. They still couldn’t catch him as a cripple. He wasn’t a cripple; he just bent a
little on each side. It was just like something like that. And then, of course, he started us skating
real early. He had skates on me when I was less then; well I might have been 6 or 7 years old.
Because we moved over then now, where Jackie Leatherbury lives. That was my home. That’s
where, I wasn’t born there, but I was raised there and had all my company there. And he taught
me to drive a car when I was 11 years old. All around in the field, I couldn’t get on the road, but
I could drive all around the field and he would do that. He was very much interested in me
learning to drive a car. And then when things got better he bought a different car, like a Buick.
1
�[Type text]
Q: What type of car did you learn to drive?
AL: I learned on a Model T. He and Mr. Leatherbury and my Uncle Frank Rogers were the first
people to have an automobile in this community. And I could see that dust, road dust, coming
and we run down almost to the Nowell Hotel from where I lived, we’d run with the Lee children.
They had four little girls and I’d just love to play with them, and we would all run across that
field to see that car cause we had never seen a car. And so course Papa was, the boys were so
much younger. My one brother was 11½ years younger and the other brother was 9 years
younger so I was kinda alone for a long time.
Q: What were your brother names?
AL: Perry Elliott was the oldest one and George Oliver was the second one.
Q: OK, I’m going to ask you a strange question and you’re really going to have to think about
this, probably. When you were a very young child growing up in Shady Side, who do you recall,
at that time, as being the oldest person who lived in Shady Side?
AL: I really don’t know. I always thought that my Aunt Aggie was oldest. She was my
father’s sister and there were 7 boys and 4 girls in Papa’s family and she was one of the girls,
very ambitions, witty, and smart and she lived right across the creek from us. We were on this
side and she was over on that side and her husband was a carpenter. And she lived to be 101
years old.
Q: And what was her name again?
AL: Her name was Agnes Rogers Atwell and she was a very much thought of lady in the
community, and I would think that she would be one of the oldest, because she never had any
children, and she was so ambitious, when her husband would be at work and before he would go
to work, she had a pier open selling gasoline to the oystermen. She was just a dynamo person.
Q: When you were growing up, what were some of the things you did for entertainment?
AL: I skated and I skated better than any of the girls or women on the creek, and the only one
that could beat me was a colored girl and she had tall, long legs, and we used to race once in a
while. I’ve forgotten her name. I don’t think I remember her name, but she lived right down on
the shore, right not across from us, but diagonal from us. She’d get a little bit ahead of me
because her legs were longer, but to catch me, she couldn’t catch me because Papa had taught me
how to dodge on the ice, like, you know, he did. That’s why couldn’t anybody catch him. It
wasn’t his speed that took him ahead of everybody, it was his, he would jump channels where
people’d cut ice to get boats out in the winter, he would just jump them and people just wouldn’t
do that.
Q: You would skate at nighttime as well as during the day?
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AL: I skated as soon as I got home from school, as soon as I got home from school.
Q: Did you ever skate all the way to Galesville?
AL: No, I never did. My father did, but I never did. We always had plenty of ice in Parrish
creek and all the children that lived nearby and a few that weren’t nearby, came there and skated.
Q: Could you recall some of the names of the people who did skate with you?
AL: Well, Ethel Leatherbury, that was Luther’s sister and um, Alice Rogers Grinder. They were
younger than I was.
Q: Could you recall some of the things that you did in the summertime to entertain yourself?
AL: Well, in the summertime when I was a teenager, I had a lot of boyfriends because we, we
were kinda of the most people around here, you know, Papa had a nice car and I had nice clothes
and I have never known poverty. And I just, we just enjoyed life. But he was very protective of
who I went with, so I always had to bring them home and introduce them before I could go out
with them. But I had several of them that I liked when I was about 11 years old and my brother,
George, was born with appendicitis and he cried and nobody knew why he cried all the time. I
have seen my father go and pick coals up and put them in, the fire instead of raking them in so if
he got a minute to rest, that he could rest. When he was four years old, his appendix bursted and
he was nearly, absolutely dying. They had doctors, after doctors and my mother went and stayed
right in the hospital with him at night and a day and he did get over it, but the doctors said they
had to do it so fast because he was so sick that he would die early from adhesions. And he just
lived 20 years. He died when he was 25.
Q: And what was he name again?
AL: George. And my brother, Elliott, had had a terrible accident falling off of a boat that Papa
had built. And the pier was here and the tide was high so the boat was up high but he managed,
maybe Papa put him on the boat, I don’t remember. But he got up on this boat and he fell off
and hit his head and it always affected him. He had violent headaches; he couldn’t stand for
anyone to walk across the room. And he married a girl, Elsie, (I’ve forgotten her last name) from
Washington. She was a lot younger than he because he was, I think 39 when they got married
and she was about 18 and they were only married 7 years when he died. Both of my brothers
had a very short life and, of course, I am older but I was never sick a day in my life until 79 then
I started falling apart.
Q: Would you mind telling me what age you are now?
AL: I’m 81. I’ll be 82 this coming April. And that’s the reason, I think, things kinda fell apart
because as you get older, you see my mother never did get sick. She lived to be 90 and she never
was sick. My father died at 63 but my mother lived to be 90 and she had never had any sickness,
I have never seen her angry in my life and she took care of her children like an angel. Toward
the last she didn’t know anybody because she’d had a slight stroke. She would recognize you
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but she couldn’t talk to you very much. That was the only time I ever saw her like that or she
was ailing in any way. She had a very strong character and a very good mother and she was a
good wife.
Q: If you grew up in Shady Side, then you went to school in Shady Side. Could you tell me
who your teacher was?
AL: Well, when I first went to school it was Miss Annie Zangs. She was my first teacher. And
I remember my father making a long stick, about this long, and it looked like a pool stick. It was
large at this end and came down to a point for her to point to the lessons on the board. And um,
all that made me more popular, you know to have those kinds of things done. I remember one
day in school, because I had had nice things, when they brought the books in, I said I don’t want
an old book. I want a new book, and they said we’re going to draw for the books. Eugene Lee,
who was family of the Lees that lived down the road where Papa lived, and he said I don’t care
what kind of book I get. And I got the worse book there and he got the best one there, and I’ll
never forget that as long as I live, because I wanted the best and he wanted the worst and it came
out just the opposite. But when I was a young girl, around 11 years old, after George was born, I
had to walk somewhere out here, right down that road where Howard Rogers lives, right on the
left there. My Uncle Harris and his wife, Anna, lived there and they had 3 children, too, a girl
and 3 (2) boys, and I got milk for George and I would get it in 2 quart bottles and carry it in my
arms up the road and one evening when we came, generally came down the road, Luther
Leatherbury was sitting out on the fence waiting for me. He says can I walk home with you?
And I said yes. He took the one quart of milk and I took the other quart and when we got down
to the gateway, he said well, I’ll go on back now. See you later or something like that- wasn’t
very important. When I went in the house Papa said, “Now listen Sister, if that young man wants
to see you, he’s gonna come in here in this home and see you. You’re not going to meet him
out.” So right after that he went away. He was a blacksmith, but they called it angle smith,
when he went away and he was over about 20 men because, this was during the war. And uh, he
was making very good money and he was sending his mother, I remember, $50 a week, when
they had 10 children. She said it carried them through 2 or 3 winters, I don’t know how long he
was doing it. The war didn’t last that long, I guess. But anyway he was up there. Well, I always
wrote to him and he always wrote to me, but then I’d have these other beaus when he was away.
What I wanted really to say was that, I think he was really the first one that I really ever loved,
you know. He’d go away and I’d miss him and write to him and then he would come back and
everything would seem to be the same. But um, My teenage years, I had learned to play a ukulele
and I could play everything and I could sing every song that was ever, I’ve got books and books
of songs that I know every word of. When Miss Ethel had this little play over here, I was gonna
play the ukulele and sing but when I went to play ukulele, my fingers weren’t as supple as they
had been when I was young and I hadn’t; I had played up until Luther died and after Luther
died; we used to play and sing together; I never wanted to do it, so in that time my joints had
stiffened up some and I told Miss Ethel, I won’t do it because I wasn’t as nimble as I had been.
But that’s what I did, with Gilbert Leatherbury and Eddie Bast. Eddie Bast was down here on
the shore, and Gilbert Leatherbury, Luther’s brother. Gilbert played the mandolin and Eddie Bast
played the guitar and I played the ukulele and I sang.
Q: And where did you all used to go to one another’s houses?
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AL: Yes. And we were called to entertain the public sometimes.
Q: Well, where did you go?
AL: Well, we went to Galesville one time. ?___ they used to have plays, so many acts in the
play and then they would have intermission and we were called over there to play for
intermission for a play. They played and I sang until it’s time to stop and then we went to
Huntingtown, which is in Prince George County (sic: Calvert) we were called down there, we
were called to ( I don’t know what it’s called now, it’s called, it’s one of those places where
they’ve always had a lot of trouble, I know, Woodland Beach. It wasn’t Woodland Beach then.
Q: Did you all go and play for free?
AL: Yes, we played for free. Of course, at that time, I don’t believe there were radios then,
because they thought our music was Greek. Well, you know compared to what you hear it was
great for that time. But um, we had so much fun doing that. And I really will never forget it
because all the things that I did was something that I was enjoying doing. I really didn’t have to
do anything except do what I wanted to do. Momma was very efficient, she took care of
everything and once in a while she would say, “Sister, you can clean the lampshades today.”
And I would say, “Momma, I had promised to play with Arthur, Jeannette, and Evelyn Miner(?).
She’d say well go on and play. And I’d knew that she would do that.
Q: Do you recall any of your other school teachers? I’m sure Miss Ethel was one of them.
AL: Oh yes, I had Miss Mammie Crandell, and I had Miss Dawson from Annapolis, and I had
… Miss Ethel didn’t really teach me until they had high school to come back here. I had finished
the 8th grade and she had, I had asked her if I could come back to school. I had been out 2 years.
I said Papa wanted me to go away to school but I didn’t want to go and he never made me go,
but when it came back here then I wanted to go to high school. So I went to high school until, I
missed about 2 months in the two years I went there, because Luther had come home then, he
was traveling around, and he had come home and he was running my Uncle John Nowell’s, he
was Miss Ethel’s brother, who had married Momma’s sister, so he was Uncle on both sides, he
wanted to, well he was helping Uncle John run the pool room and Papa was a very strict
Methodist.
Q: Where was this pool room?
AL: Right here where this first store is, that was Mr. Will Owings.
Q:
Cause I haven’t heard anybody talk about a pool room before.
AL: Yeah well, Mr. Owings never had a pool room, but then a man came from Baltimore and he
opened a pool room in one part of his store and of course Luther having been away, he knew all
about that. He played pool and knew all about it. So this man asked him while he was home
would he run the pool room for him a give him a chance, because he was some kind of an
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engineer, would give him a chance to do something else. So Luther went there every night and I
would try to see him when the pool table closed. My father was a strict Methodist and he didn’t
like pool and he didn’t think it was right for me to go with anybody that was running a pool
room. So he called me one day and said, “Sister, I want to talk to you.” And he said, “Now I
know you’re seeing that Leatherbury boy and I have heard he’s running John Nowell’s pool
room.” I said, Papa, he’s only doing that while he’s home. He doesn’t ever make a living doing
that. He says, “I don’t want you seeing him regardless of why or wherefore and I want you to
tell him when you see him that that’s the reason you can’t see him anymore.” Well I don’t
remember that that upset me too much, but I guess it did at that time. And that night after my
mother and father went to bed and the two boys, I, um, it was raining and dark as pitch, and I
walked from that house up to that pool room after they went to bed, to tell Luther than he
couldn’t come down anymore. That’s how anxious I was to talk to him, and then he said, “Well
if I can’t come there anymore, we’ll get married.” And that’s how we got married.
Q: What year did you and your husband get married?
AL: ’23 in April. April is so important to me because my birthday’s there and my anniversary’s
there. You, too? Well, I always said April is the month of the year for me.
Q: Did you when you were first married come to live in Shady Side?
AL: No, we travelled. We went to Philadelphia and stayed there 2 months. He worked that city.
Q: What did he do?
AL: He sold film and his boss travelled with us and we went to Philadelphia and I guess a
couple months. We always got a furnished apartment because there wasn’t any other way to do
it. Then we went to Buffalo, New York for about two months and then we went out to
Cleveland, Ohio for two or three months. Anyway, we didn’t get back here until fall. I said to
him I am getting very homesick. I said I have never been away from home and I want to go
home. And he said well, he said, what do you think we could do, go home and build a home
there? I said, I would like that, that’s what I’d like to do. So we came home and that was in
nearly ’24, we married in ’23 and he started getting the people, Mr. Bill Atwell and Mr. Frank
Lee, built this home for us in 1925, I think it was. And we had, all of, this home has changed a
very little bit. It was built just like this and I had drawn the plans on a ¼ of an inch scale and the
carpenter’s laughed at me when I gave it to them. And when they finished the house they said it
wasn’t a ¼ of an inch out of the way. I had inherited that from my father see, because he never
had a blueprint to build a boat, he did it from his mind and he, from his eyes and if he had six or
seven men working that day on a boat and when they left at 4:30 in the evening, he would go
down to the shop and do that little job over and never say a word to them. He had a very good
mind, I remember one day, when I was in high school, when Miss Ethel was teaching us algebra
and I was just average in arithmetic, but algebra took to me right away. But she gave us a
problem like, I don’t remember whether it was arithmetic or algebra, probably was arithmetic,
because it was a long written problem, and Papa said to me, “Sister, I think you’re having
trouble,” and I said, I am. I don’t know how to work this problem. He said, “Give it to me and
let me see what I can do.” He had a balsa wood and a pencil and he would read the problem and
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I would read the problem to him and then he would do something and he got an answer. I put it
on my paper. I didn’t know what he had done, so when we got to school, I was the only one that
had then answer. And Miss Ethel said, “Amy, you’re the only one who has the answer. Come
up here and show us how you got it.” I said, Miss Ethel, I can’t do that; Papa worked this
problem for me. That just showed you how intelligent he was. I was in high school and he only
finished grade school.
Q: How many years were you and your husband married?
AL: Fifty-five years and it was a good life. He liked to gamble. He was a Leatherbury. One,
Taylor’son, is a multi-millionaire now from gambling. I don’t know. I never really concerned
myself too much because after we had been here 15 years his brother, Edward, had opened a
store up there where the picture place is, he had a store there. We were, well, Betty Lou went to
college. My younger daughter is 8 years younger and of course she was still in grade school.
That October night, Luther and Carole Ann and I were in that building and I heard this noise and
I said, Luther, somebody is breaking in the store. Wake up. So he ran down the steps, in his
pajamas, and opened the door and the place was in full blaze. He had 2 guns sitting behind that
door and he couldn’t reach and get those guns, so he came running back upstairs and said Amy
get Carole Ann up, the whole place is on fire. We had to get out on the roof and he jumped off
the roof first and then we sat down and slid off and he caught us. And that’s how we got to the
ground. We lost everything. We lost about $65,000 in that fire.
Q: What year was this?
AL: Well, we lived here 15 years which would mean ’40 something, maybe ’41. We were in
there, we weren’t in the new store I don’t think when Pearl Harbor struck. I don’t think we were
in the new store yet. But after that fire we were so far in debt because we had borrowed the
money to build the place. He hadn’t finished paying for this by then. I really wasn’t anxious to
go into the store business but he was and he said he knew he could make a living there which he
did. My mother thought that I ought to go if he wanted to go and his mother thought I ought to
go, so between the two of them they got me going with him, whatever he wanted to do.
Q: How many children did you and your husband have?
AL: We only are the 2 daughters. One was born in ’25 and one was born in ’33.
Q: Do you have grandchildren?
AL: I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Q: How many grandchildren do you have?
AL: I have 5 grandchildren and I have 4 great-grandchildren.
Q: Is there anything else you can tell us about you and your husband, and your store? There’s a
little bit left on this side of the tape.
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AL: Well, he had, most every day, he won. My mother was living with me then. My father had
died; he had died at 63, which left her a lot of time, so she didn’t have anybody. She had the 2
boys, still with her and when Brother got married, she had; George was sick, he wasn’t well but
she came to live with me. But then George had died and Brother had died. She came to live
with me; she lived with me about 16 years. And we could get out of the store every once in a
while and do something else because my cousin Eugen(ia)e Rogers, she married a Wood, she
was Eugen(ia)e Wood, she wanted to come to the store, she liked the business, so she came and
lived with us. We had 4 bedrooms upstairs and a living room, 3 bedrooms upstairs and a living
room. And uh, she helped Momma, so Luther and I could get away so I used to go to the races
with him once or twice a week.
Q: What type of races was this?
AL: It was flat races, horse racing.
Q: Horse racing?
AL: Yeah, and, of course, that is what Taylor and King were so interested in. In fact all the
Leatherbury men were interested in those races. And Mr. and Mrs. Leatherbury always said they
didn’t know where in the world it came from because they had never had anybody in the family
like that before. All 4 of them, of course, the only one that made a lot of money in it was Taylor.
Taylor made a lot of money in it, and then of course he left what he had to King and then King
got into the same business, and he’s a millionaire now. But he’s still working because he loves
the work that he’s doing. But then we went up there, we’d only been up there about a year and a
half when we had this fire and Luther said, “Well, we have to build another store because we’d
never get out of debt if we didn’t build another store and try to do it because when we bought the
store, it was so run down that we couldn’t get any insurance on it. They’d only give us $4,000
insurance on it and it was so dilapidated. His brother was just the opposite from Luther, Luther
was so careful with everything. Edward could drive a car two or three years and it would be
wrecked. And he always said that Edward was hard on things, and um, he went up there and
built a new store and that’s the one the folks are in now. We stayed there, I guess, I don’t know
just how long we were there. Anyway we left in ‘69 and went to Annapolis and we got a home
up there in Admiral Heights and my other daughter is living in Admiral Heights.
End of Side One
Q: Mrs. Leatherbury, could you please tell me what you recall of the ‘Emma Giles’?
AL: I recall that my father used to go down there and pick up board or iron pieces when the boat
came in and I always went with him. And then we’d stay there and watch that ‘Emma Giles” go
over to Galesville and then go to Chalkpoint and then we‘d leave and come home.
Q: Did you ever ride on the ‘Emma Giles’?
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AL: I think I did but I’m not real sure. I really am not because Papa had; as I told you, he had
one of the first cars in the community and I don’t really believe we did. I don’t even recall that
my mother did.
Q: Could you tell me some of your recollections of the early boarding houses here in Shady
Side?
AL: Oh yes, now my father, wouldn’t: didn’t want me to go around the boarding houses
because he said they held dances and he didn’t want me to dance. And so I wouldn’t go except
when I got older and had a boyfriend. We would ride down there, ride to, they have a dance.
They had their summer hotels had certain nights of the week, each one would have a chance to
have a dance. Miss Ethel’s, I think, were Saturday night and my grandfather’s Hartge’s was on
Friday night and my Uncle Hartge, (I’ve forgotten his first name) had them on Thursday night
and they went right through the week like that. There were a couple more that I didn’t mention.
And I, the only time I ever got there was if I went there with another boy and he’d drive down
there, but I never got on the dance floor because I knew I shouldn’t do it. I went to one dance,
one time, with my cousin, Grace Rogers, she’s William Woodfield’s wife, and my father heard
that I was there and he got Momma and the two boys out of bed and said, “I’m going to bring
Sister home.” I was dancing with the fella that was having the party and he sent Edward
Leatherbury in to tell me to come to him that he wanted to see me. So it scared me to death
when Edward told me. But I knew my father wasn’t violent. I knew he wouldn’t do anything
violent, but I didn’t want him to fuss with me. And he went, I went right out got my coat, and
went right out and got in the car. Momma and the two boys were on the backseat and I got in
front with Papa. Not a word was mentioned coming home. I went upstairs and I was sitting on
the side of the bed, brushing my hair, when he came in crying, and sit down on the bed and
talked to me. He wouldn’t let you bring cards in the house, you couldn’t have playing cards
anywhere around. He was strict but he was good to me. He gave me everything when we got
married. He gave me my rugs for this house, a big one in there, a smaller one where I sat the
dining room table cause then we only had this. This kitchen had been built on since we were
here. And um, then he gave me all my silver, sterling silver, and he gave me all my china and I
had that until we had the fire and then everything burned up. We didn’t save one thing out of
that fire. We didn’t have clothes to put on- the next morning. I was in a gown and Carole Ann
was in a gown and Luther was in pajamas. And we went right there at my mothers who was then
living right up here, opposite where Taylor and Linda used to live right across from the Post
Office almost. We went down there where she and brother were, George had died, and we
stayed there until, I don’t know, I don’t think we stayed there very long but anyway, I think he
was renting this house, we were renting this house and um, I think we were able to come back
here, that’s how it was. We were able to come back here until we could get another store built.
That’s how it was. In that time, Betty Lou was getting married and she and Tommy wanted to
stay here, so we went up to the store again, and she and Tommy bought this home from us for
little or nothing and then we stayed up to the store until ’69, that’s how it was. And uh, we had
all those years together. All of them weren’t heavenly, because some of them, it took us awhile
to get back into business again. Luther didn’t want to go back to the Coast Guard, in fact, I don’t
think he could have because he really left there because he had sciatic nerve in the back, he had
suffered with that. I don’t think he would have wanted to go back anymore.
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Q: Could you tell me what your memories are of the soda company that used to be here on the
corner? Did a Leatherbury own that?
AL: Yes.
Q: Could you tell me what you remember, a little bit about that?
AL: I remember that he had an ice cream parlor and he used to go to the Emma Giles and pick
up the ice cream. Then I was friendly with Ethel. I was always with Ethel Leatherbury. And,
we would go down there and he would treat us to a little bit but he wouldn’t give a whole lot
away because he had a lot of children around him, he could have been just standing there,
dipping ice cream all the time. But he would treat, if I was with Ethel, he would give us some
ice cream and we would go in and sit down and eat it. I don’t know how long that lasted, but it
wasn’t so long after that the Leatherbury brothers went into the soft drink business. And they did
real good. They did much better than I expected them to do because every truck that was coming
down here to Shady Side we only had a couple of stores but they were serving them.
Q: Could you tell me what stores you recall down here when you were a young girl?
AL: The only ones that I remember was: my Aunt Mary and Uncle John, had taken, Miss
Ethel’s mother and father: Miss Ethel Andrew’s mother and father had gotten too old to run the
boarding house anymore and Uncle John and Aunt Mary (Uncle John was Luther’s uncle and
Aunt Mary was my aunt and so we both were related to them.) And, they stayed in the store, I
don’t know how many years they were there, but there were there quite a long time because they
had two children Jack and Margaret and I know Margaret went to college from that building.
And um, I just don’t remember how long they were there. But anyway, she did real good
business. They used to have dances on the porch. They had a real wide porch the whole length
of that building. And then around the corner from that was an ice cream and all those kind of
things. My husband and I went over there one summer and we helped them run that business. I
took the kitchen and made sandwiches and cooked somethings that were easy to cook, you know
they didn’t have a fancy place. Carole Ann then was a little girl. Betty Lou and Carole Ann had
taken dancing lessons for two or three years. (I don’t know how long it took them). And anyway
they could both dance and Carole Ann wanted to do things all the time and she would get out on
that dance floor and dance and they’d throw money out on the floor to her. She was only about 4
years old, no, she had to be older than that, I guess, but she was real little.
Q: Could you tell me what you recall, about, were there other stores here, too?
AL: There was Mr. Will Owings and he had the store right here where the turn is, I don’t know
the name of the people. And then Uncle John; they were the only stores here. And Uncle Albert
Hartge – where do you live?
Interviewer: I live in what was the Brashers Country Store.
AL: Right, yes, Aunt Cora and Uncle Albert had that store. They built that there and he, Uncle
Albert, was my grandfather’s brother. They didn’t have any children. Aunt Cora was kind of a
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fancy little woman, and if you go there to see her, she always had something to give you. That
kind of a person, you know. So, that’s the only stores that were here then. The Brashears came
later, he wasn’t early. By the time Brashears came, I think there were more, a couple more stores,
I don’t remember that.
Q. Can you tell me what you recall of the movie theater that used to be in Shady Side
AL: Yes, that was Uncle Bill Nowell, Miss Ethel’s brother., yes. That was um, I had been
married 55, 60 years now, and um, it is still, to me, its way back there. Betty Lou remembers
because we took her. She was old enough to go. He would have some good movies there. Papa
used to go to Annapolis, drive to Annapolis in the evening and take the family. I didn’t care a
whole lot about this place but then when Momma and Papa stopped going to Annapolis and
started going to Uncle Bill’s then I went there too. He had real nice movies and he was, um, he
had a good education, and he wrote little papers and things for the community. He had a little
paper, I remember, Shady Side News, I think it was. And, you know the Evening Capital used to
have a couple pages where the neighborhood ladies would make a letter and sent it to the
‘Capital’. ‘Evening Capital’, and they, would um, say Amy and Luther is spending the weekend
in Ocean City, that sort of thing. Get the names from everybody in the community and write to
see if they could get news from them. Miss Ethel had done that for years. Then when Uncle Bill
started doing it, his was just a little different. He didn’t go around to people, ask or call people, I
guess, as Miss Ethel did, he’d just do what he thought was right and he would get, he used to
speak about Papa in the ‘Spirit of Shady Side’, he said he hoped that Perry would soon be well
again. And I never remember my father being sick but I guess it was maybe when he hurt his
leg; it could have been that time. Yes, because they were all about the same age.
Q: I forgot to ask you earlier could you tell me who some of your classmates were in school?
AL: Well, when we first went to school there was Eugene Lee and Tilden Atwell, Ethel
Leatherbury, me, Ellen Grinder, um, there was um, a Huffman girl, from Baltimore. She went, I
think all her grade schools, I don’t know where she was living, or who she was living with,
Regina Huffman, and she was in our class. And then we had a couple boys that I don’t
remember, who they were. But um, there was such, at that time when they kept that school open
until the new school, it’s old now, but it was new then, that’s where I went to high school over
here
Q: I understand, the old school burned down?
AL: Yes, the old school did burn down, and then they built this new school for high school and
then after, that came to an end, it wasn’t very long the Masonic ladies bought it. I don’t
remember everybody in my class. We used to have a little club that was called the Mysterious
Ten, can you believe that? Ten of us girls, we didn’t have any boys in the club.
Q: Now, what were the 10 girls, who were the 10 girls?
AL: I was just trying to think. I know that Sydney Atwell and Grace Rogers and Lottie Hallock
and Leslie and Madge Avery. And, I said, Ellen Grinder, didn’t I?
11
�[Type text]
Q: And it was a club you all had?
AL: Yes, it was a club – I can’t remember any more.
Q: What did you all used to do?
AL: Well we played in the woods behind, when you go down here to the Steamboat walk road,
there’s a row of houses on each side and behind those houses is a wooded area and we’d go and
play in that woods and make playhouses and take the sticks and fence it off, you know. And
they’d come in to see us and we’d have a place to sit down and all and we never wanted anybody
to know what we did. That’s right I remember Sydney, used to, used to read books all the time,
she was always reading books and she said well we’ll name it the Mysterious Ten because
nobody knows why we play out here.
Q: How old were all of you about that time?
AL: I guess about that time we were about 12, 11 or 12, but I can’t remember all of them.
Q: Now I have heard people say that different people around here had parties in their houses at
various times. Did you used to go to some of these parties?
AL: I don’t really think so. I know my mother and father never had parties.
Q: Tell me about the young people,
AL: Oh, the young people.
Q: You never went then?
AL: No I don’t think I did. It’s hard to remember everybody so far back.
Q: Can you tell me some of the other things that you did for entertainment when you were
young that you could maybe think of?
AL: I guess skating and having with the boys, the music, was the most that I did because my
father would let me go over where Uncle Al(?), that was Grace’s father, and his brother, he let
me go over there, he let me go over there and spend the night once in a while, but he didn’t like
me to go away from home very much. He let me go to Annapolis one time after Sydney’s father
and mother had moved up there. He let me go up to visit them, because Momma and Miss Ivy
were very good friends, and so that brought Papa in with their father, Tom Atwell. He let me go
up there for a weekend and Sydney and I had dates with midshipmen. And I, we, that was a
grand weekend because that was the first time I had ever been out with one of them. I can still
remember his name but I’d rather not say it. And um, Papa heard, that I was going around with
the midshipmen and they had dances at the Academy. He got in his car and came up there that
12
�[Type text]
very day and brought me home. I never did get to one of their dances. We took walks together
and then they’d take us down to show us the Academy and all that.
Q: When you used to play with this group and you went different places to entertain people
about how old were you then?
AL: I imagine I was 16, because I was married when I was 19 and this was some years before I
got married. And, Papa used to let me go out when, if I had a boyfriend that he liked. I could go
out if they came up to get me, in a boat sometimes, sometimes they came in a car but he always
knew those boys. He thought they were nice and they really were very nice boys. A lot of them
were boys that were just here in the summertime.
Q: Mrs. Leatherbury, were your children born at home?
AL: Yes they were.
Q: Who was the doctor?
AL: Dr. Dent was Betty Lou’s doctor, and Dr. Ward from down in Prince George County was
Carole Ann’s doctor.
Q: There was not a midwife as such?
AL: No, I didn’t have a midwife. Luther got Mrs. Grinder to come in here for one week and do
for me after Carole Ann had been born, because I took her, because the birth of her was so much
harder than Betty Lou’s, in different ways, entirely different ways, but he thought that I ought to
have somebody, so she came and stayed one week, and she kept the house and she cooked
something for us to eat.
Q: Could you tell me a little bit, something about Dr. Dent. Everybody has a story about Dr.
Dent.
AL: I tell you I think he was a marvelous person. I remember, I’ll always will remember him, I
know. And, my father and mother and I guess the two boys and I went down to Uncle Charlie
Hartge’s, who had a boarding house and was Momma’s uncle. And it was unusual for my father
to go there because he didn’t think they lived right, you know, because they had dances and all
that. But it was some kind of business deal about boats and I got in, went in, the car and I said
call Momma. Momma, I’m so sick. I said, ‘I’ve never been this sick, I’m so sick, I don’t know
what to do.” She said we will call Dr. Dent right away. So they took me home and they got the
doctor. Now how they got him, because nobody had telephones, very few people did. But,
anyway um, maybe Papa went up there in the car. Anyway, they got the doctor and he said I had
typhoid fever. And they wondered where on earth I had picked up that germ to get typhoid
fever. And we had a well, at the place where Jackie lives, and a rabbit had died in the well, and
we were drinking the water, but I was the only one that got sick. And the others were drinking
the water too. I was so ill that night and so delirious that he had to be called back to come and
get and then he put plasters on my arms and everything. I remember all that.
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�[Type text]
Q: How old were you then, Mrs. Leatherbury?
AL: Oh, I think then I was probably 12 or 13, something like that, or maybe I was younger than
that, I really don’t remember. But I knew it was odd for Papa to be going to Uncle Charlie’s. I
was old enough to realize that. And that’s where it hit me while we were down there. But that’s
the only illness I really ever had.
Q: And then you were sick with it for a very long time?
AL: Yes, I was sick with it several weeks. But the climax was right at the beginning. That’s
when I was the sickest. When they brought me home that night, Momma sat up with me putting
poultices on the pus all night long. And um, I didn’t know anybody, I couldn’t tell what I
wanted or anything. And that was the only sickness I ever had because I was considered a
healthy person.
Q: Everybody had talked about Dr. Dent, everybody had a funny story about him or something
that he did.
AL: Yeah, he was witty. He used to say a lot of things. I know he told my mother one time that
cabbage was only fit raised to feed hogs. It wasn’t fit for people to eat.
Q: Could you tell me, do you remember, when electricity came to Shady Side?
AL: I don’t know that I do. I know when it came, that Papa got it and then nearly everybody in
the community got it. And um, I don’t remember what year that was.
Q: Do you recall when they put paved roads into Shady Side?
AL: No, I remember I was a child. I remember when they had a Chautauqua out here in the
woods. (Interviewer: I’m sorry) – A Chautauqua—it’s like a picnic, a big picnic, where they sell
things and um you can play games and they have running exercises and things like that, because
my father passed out a $10 gold piece, I believe, it was for a dime and after the thing was over he
asked them if they had $10 gold piece and they said yes and he said it was his, that he had passed
it for a dime. They’re little tiny things, you know. And I remember, I won something there on
number 5 and I always thought that was my lucky number but I never did gamble very much.
Q: Is this the fair that people told me about that they raised money to put the paved roads in?
AL: It could have been because it was the only one we ever had. I was just a young girl then,
very young girl. I don’t even remember. But I remember when Papa had a good car, he never
bought a real good car until they got good roads down here because there were mud holes were
terrific. You couldn’t believe how the holes would get in the roads.
Q: People used to … people have told me on other tapes that it was mud in the winter and dust
in the summer.
14
�[Type text]
AL: that’s right, it was. That’s right. And then cars weren’t closed in and you were behind a
car, you were just got covered with dust. They used to wear regular duster coats and all. And
um, I remember Papa several times, then, when the lights would be put on the car, you had to get
out of the car and take the glass off and light the thing with a match. I remember just exactly
where we were one evening when Papa did that. We were down to Churchton, coming back to
Shady Side and Papa said it’s time to put on the lights and he stopped the car and got out and
opened those two little windows on his, the lights, side and we had lights to get home. I don’t
imagine they were very strong but they were lights.
Interviewer: It was better than nothing.
Inaudible two sentences
AL: Yes, well, he and Uncle Frank and Mr. Murray Leatherbury, I think, were the first ones to
have cars around here and they all started with the Model T Fords.
Q: Was there someone in your family that had a car dealership down here or a small garage? I
heard someone talking about it but I don’t know who it was they said had it.
AL: I don’t remember. All the cars that my father bought were from Annapolis. And he usually
bought a Buick after he stopped driving it, the small car. He bought a Buick until, and it was just
before he died, I think he had a Chevrolet.
Q: Is there anything else you can tell me about Shady Side that you think people would be
interested in hearing on this tape? Something about your family, something else about your
family?
AL: I’m not real sure that I can,
Q: Some things in particular some odd things that happened, what happened in Shady Side?
AL: No I don’t think I do.
Q: When you were growing up down here, how many people do you think lived in Shady Side
at that time, how many families, do you think lived down here?
AL: I wouldn’t have any idea. Course, it was nothing like it is now. Maybe a 100; it would be
impossible for me to say, because I don’t know, but it was nothing like it is now.
Q: Though Shady Side is still now just a village. I’m sure you have seen it grow though.
AL: Oh, yes, I have seen it grow, because I was down here until ’69 and that’s not too long ago.
Q: So you have seen a lot of changes in Shady Side?
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�[Type text]
AL: Oh yes, there had been a lot of changes. And there’s been, there was one time we were
going to get a new road cutting through up here going to Idlewilde but that never developed into
anything.
Interviewer: Mrs. Leatherbury, we are about out of tape and I thank you very much. We really
do appreciate your talking to us.
AL: I was foggy on some things but I, the ones I told you, I really knew what I was saying.
Interviewer: We thank you very much and we really do appreciate it.
AL: Well, that’s good. Thank you. Your welcome.
16
�
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Title
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Captain Avery Museum
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1985001-Leatherbury-Amy
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PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY
Wilde, Buddy
Captain Avery Museum
1985.002
Date of Interview: September 13, 1984
Interviewing: Buddy Wilde
Oak Road
Felicity Cove
Interviewer: Jennie LeFevre
JL: Mr. Wilde, could you tell me if you were born in Shady Side ?
BW: Yes, I was.
JL: Could you tell me where?
BW: No, I can’t. I guess in the hospital, I’m not sure whether it’s in Annapolis or Shady Side.
JL: But you grew up in Shady Side.
BW: Grew up in Shady Side ...
JL: You grew up in Shady Side.
BW: My mother and father, two grandparents grew up in Shady Side.
JL: Could you tell me your grandparents’ names?
BW: My grandfather was Frank Fenton, his father was William F. who was born in … was born in 1844
and came here from Germany when my grandfather was seven years old ... with a brother, Harry, and a
sister, Augusta.
JL: Where did they come to live in Shady Side?
BW: They settled on what we refer to as McKinley Point and had a boarding house there that the board
people ... tourists from Baltimore ... they’d come down on the steamboat and they’d stay there for a
couple of weeks at a time and then go back to Baltimore.
JL: Your family had the boardinghouse?
BW: My great grandfather had ...
1
�JL: Your great grandfather. Uh, was your father born in Shady Side?
BW: Yes, uh-huh.
JL: And, uh, when he was married, where did he live in Shady Side?
BW: He lived on Parrish Creek, uh, it was this house owned by Mr. Griner, my father bought on Parrish
Creek, right across from the Leatherbury Oyster House.
JL: Do you know what your grandfather did for a living down here?
BW: My grandfather bought a farm here in nineteen six and raised turkeys. He had over a hundred acres
and they raised vegetables and turkeys and dressed them and took them to Annapolis to the market and
sold what they grew on the farm.
JL: What’s size farm did he have?
BW: It was something over a hundred acres.
JL: I see. Then could you tell me what your father did for a living?
BW: My father was a paint contractor and a waterman.
JL: Did you...
BW: By the way, I’ve got a copy of a title search for that property that my grandfather bought … uh, 44
acres, $600 to pay for it. For two years, he had two years to make the payments. But the interest was
pretty odd for those days was 6%.
JL: Maybe in those days that was pretty odd.
BW: That was pretty high in those days.
JL: Is the house that your mother and father lived in still … still standing?
BW: Oh yes, my mother’s still there, living in that house ...
JL: Your mother is still living there ...
BW: They put an addition on to it, oh, I guess, back in end of 30’s, somewhere in the 30’s, they put an
addition on to it.
JL: If you say your father worked on the water, did you work on the water with him?
BW: No, only on weekends, only on the holiday or Saturday.
JL: When you did help your father, and if he … did you used to oyster with him?
BW: Yes, uh huh.
JL: Do you remember when you first started to work for him, how much you used to get for oysters?
BW: I remember we ... when we would be frozen up here in West River, everyone would go to Annapolis
so that they could follow the ferry out from the dock, break the ice so the boats could get out, and they
would get $ .15 a bushel for those oysters that ... but they could catch a boatload in two, three hours. They
could load the boat and the oysters were that deep on the bottom and they were of very poor quality, so
maybe they weren’t worth more than $ .15. (Laugh)
2
�JL: Now, I know I asked you when you helped your father and about your family, but I neglected to ask
you what year you were born, if you don’t mind telling us.
BW: I was born 1923.
JL: Okay.
BW: I’ll be 62 years old this coming March.
JL: Okay. Uh, so how many years did your father work on the water, would you say how many years he
worked on the water?
BW: Oh, my father died at age 93 and I guess he spent, well, he was in the Navy for a period of time
during World War I, I guess he spent, ah, close to 55-60 years, off and on, on the water.
JL: Did you go to school here at Shady Side?
BW: Yes, and Ms. Ethel Andrews was my teacher.
JL: Do you remember who some of your classmates were?
BW: Uh, yes, I was … Jack Nieman, Gordon A. Hallock, Betty Lou Leatherbury was close in that clique
... she was in a class behind me, and, uh, I remember a lot of the, a lot of the students but I don’t know
whether they were in my class or ahead of me or back because we had, we had six grades in the same
school and, uh, Miss Ethel taught.. .1 think Miss Ethel taught three classes and then there was Mrs. Hazel
Williams, I think her name is now, was the other teacher that taught three grades.
JL: Now, Mr. Wilde, Miss Ethel told me that some of her students used to play tricks on her in school.
Were you ever one of those students?
BW: No, indeed, no indeed. I was a very bashful little boy in school, scared to death.
JL: Okay.
BW: In fact, I wouldn’t go to school part time … they had to round me up and pretty well tie me to the
desk.
JL: Oh, but you had to walk to school?
BW: Oh yes.
JL: How far was it?
BW: About a mile and a half, I guess.
JL: Do you also have brothers and sisters?
BW: I have a younger brother still living, my older brother’s dead.
JL: But you only had ...
BW: Two brothers.
JL: Two brothers, no sisters?
BW: No.
JL: Could you tell me what you and your brothers did for entertainment down here when you were young
children?
BW: Well, during the summertime, mostly, why, uh, the Rural Home Hotel would have a boat that used
3
�to go out twice a day that would take the guests for a boat ride and then take them out for a swim, and we
used to hook a ride on the boat, go out with the boat whenever we could. And, uh, of course, there was a
lot of ball games, swimming ...
JL: Uh, where did they used to have the ball games down here?
BW: I guess they were mostly at the school grounds. We used to … we used to go down, uh, what is
Avalon Shores now, of course, in those days, it was all .. it was all grown up in woods, used to go down
there a lot, get together and go swimming. Of course, there wasn’t any houses there.
JL: Uh, huh. Did you used to go to any dances in Shady Side?
BW: Yeah, across … they had the dance pavilion, was at the Nowell’s store and that was always a
Saturday night affair.
JL: Did you ever ...
BW: Used to have the showboat, too, used to come during the summer and land over at Galesville and
we’d go there by boat, go to the show.
JL: Could you tell me what type of show they had?
BW: Oh gosh, no, but it was typical showboat shows, you know, vaudeville, all that sort of thing.
JL: I see ...
BW: ... and entertainment.
JL: Uh, did you ever used to go to the movies down here in Shady Side?
BW: Oh yeah, I remember going to the movies, yeah. In fact, my cousin, Jim, used to run the projector
upstairs. It would break down about four-five times during the show and you’d have to sit there and wait
for him to get it fixed up, turn her on again.
JL: Would you happen to remember who were the popular movie stars
at that time?
BW: Oh gosh, no, I was too young to really.
JL: Too young, you were too young ... okay. Uh, do you remember anything about the Shady Side
Beverage Company?
BW: Just barely, I remember, I remember the building out there, but it had stopped operating.
JL: Was there still an ice cream parlor there?
BW: No, I don’t remember that ...
JL: That was gone ... that was gone. Uh, when you used to go to dances down in Shady Side, who were
some of the other people who were at the dances?
BW: Oh gosh, there would be, uh, Lucretia Lee and Winnie Crandell and Billy Crandell and Jean Jones
or Jean Leatherbury then, Jean Hallock, and then there would all be girls from the hotel that would be
around ...
JL: Always ... got to meet new girls?
BW: Always got to meet new girls from the hotel, yeah. They were summertime girls.
4
�JL: Ah, but I’m sure some of them married people down here.
BW: Uh, I don’t know of any. I know of a couple that was pretty, pretty serious and pretty close, but it
didn’t ... but didn’t happen. When fall would come, where they’d go back to town, you know, and they’d
forget their summertime boyfriend.
JL: Could you tell us some of the other things, maybe, that you did for entertainment down here?
BW: No, I guess that was just about it. We … we as kids, we were trained pretty, pretty much to do our
share of the work and we ...
JL: What type of chores did you have to do then at home?
BW: Oh, you had to cut the grass, and if the house needs painting, you have to help paint, and if there’s
any money to be made crabbing, why you’d pitch in and crab, help tend to the garden and …
JL: Would you happen to remember the canning house that used to be down where Shady Side road is, or
is that long before your time?
BW: Long before my time ... I don’t remember that, now.
JL: Who were some of the gentlemen friends who you used to run around with? Who would you say was
one of your closest friends down here?
BW: Uh ...
JL: When you were a young man?
BW: Well, Gordon Hallock and I used to be pretty close and we traveled around quite a bit. Gordon was
always one of those fellows who would have a way of getting a vehicle and to get a car in those days was
really something, you know, but he had a brother that lived in Washington, or near Washington, D.C.
We’d drive around over that way and I guess to see some girls.
JL: I hear that sometimes a bunch of young men would get in one car and ladies would get in another car
and they would go to Surrattsville for a dance. Did you ever do that?
BW: That’s before my time.
JL: That’s before your time ...
BW: Yeah, uh huh.
JL: Could you tell me a little bit about your recollection of the stores that were in Shady Side?
BW: Uh, one that’s still standing now was Hopkins, George Hopkins, I believe his name was, George
Hopkins, and then there was the Siegert Store.
Q: Where was the Siegert Store?
A: The Siegert Store is now the Shady Side Market, but it started out as Siegert, and that’s one of the girls
I left out, uh, Nellie Jean Siegert was one ... in my class that we used to go around together and, uh, then
after the Siegert Store, Crandells built a store out there and that’s the building that’s next to the Shady
Side Market now, that’s a couple apartments in it. Then there was a Heinrich’s Store down at the end of
West River Road and another Crandells Store out of Shady Side, on the way toward the lumber company.
And the lumber company in those days was down on Steamboat Road, it wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t at the
present location.
5
�JL: Could you tell me a little bit about the lumber company down there, what it looked like, and ...
BW: I can remember just a long narrow shed. It was ... it was built right on the ... on the water’s edge so
they could get the lumber off of the barges and store it right there, close by, and used to bring the lumber
in by boat. And then they, later on, they moved the lumber company up to the present location.
JL: Do you recall the, uh, Emma Giles?
BW: I have a vision of the Emma Giles going up the river. It must have been one of her very last runs,
but I can picture that old steamer going up the river.
JL: How old were you, about?
BW: Oh gosh, I don’t know ... I guess seven or eight years old, something like that.
JL: I see ... I see ... so you never, ever had the opportunity to ride
on the Emma ...
BW: No, no, uh huh ...
JL: Never had the chance ...
BW: No.
JL: Getting back to the lumber company, uh, where did the lumber go? Went out of Shady Side to other
areas? Uh, from the lumber yard?
BW: I don’t ...
JL: You said it went by boat.
BW: Well, the lumber was brought in here by boat ...
JL: Oh, I see.
BW: and, uh, I guess the builders would go there and pick up the lumber and build ... most of these
houses in here were built by Captain Jimmy Atwell and Captain Frank Lee and ...
JL: The ones down here in Felicity Cove ...
BW: Right here at Felicity Cove, I imagine all these houses were built by ... by that builder because he
was about the only one at that time that would take on building a whole house. In those days, they had to
build everything ... they had to build the windows and doors, you didn’t have a mill that would build those
separate so they had to build everything. And most of the houses here were summer houses, now that are
converted to year round. My house, I built myself. I just ... this house was built in 19..., 1960.
JL: How long did it take you to build this house?
BW: I started in August and had my mother and father in for Christmas dinner. Wasn’t completed,
wasn’t finished but it was finished enough that I could have ... have them for dinner and my wife says 23
years later, that it still isn’t finished. (Laugh)
JL: Who were some of the people that helped you build this house?
BW: My brother, my father and we would get a ... when we started to do the roof, why I had a whole
bunch of fellows to come in, like Marion Nieman, Stanley Trott and those fellows were active in the
construction business and we’d get a whole gang of fellows together and put up the heavy work but when
it would come to jobs like laying the floor and putting on the sheathing, why, we’d just do that ourselves
and drive nails as hard as we could to get the job done.
6
�JL: Uh, do you recall any of the early boat builders in Shady Side?
BW: Well, my great uncle Perry Rogers was, I guess, the first one.
JL: Where did he have a boat yard here in Shady Side?
BW: Where Jerry Joyce’s yard is right now and, uh, I’m told that he designed and developed the Bay
bateau that was used to oyster. It was unique in that it had a stern that was designed so that you anchor
the boat from the stern and the seas would hit the stern and disperse, whereas the other type of square
stern boats would hit the sea too hard and you wouldn’t be able to work when it got rough, but the type of
boat he built was designed so that it would absorb that sea and could work in rough water.
JL: Have you any idea when he started building boats?
BW: No, I don’t.
JL: Do you have any idea how many boats in his lifetime he built?
BW: In the hundreds.
JL: In the hundreds.
BW: Oh, yes.
JL: Are any of them still in existence?
BW: I don’t know of any. I don’t know of any.
JL: All right, I suppose he built his boats with all hand tools, there were no power tools at all.
BW: No, no.
JL: And I suppose the plans were in his head?
BW: That’s right, there wasn’t any plans on paper, I mean, you’d build a boat and you’d build it from
memory and, uh, the most important tool in those days would be the adz, where’d they chop the keel out,
which is a big job to shape that keel from a log. . . they’d have to square it up and cut the skag in the
bottom to put the bottom planking on. It was a lot of wood that had to be chopped out of ... even later,
after the logs, even when they got lumber that was square, there still was a lot of chopping with the adz to
shake that keel to get the planking.
JL: Do you recall any other early boat builders in Shady Side?
BW: Uh, Mr. George Proctor was ... and some of his boats are still around. Uh, my father’s boat was
built by Mr. George Proctor.
JL: What was your father’s ... what was the name of your father’s boat.
BW: They weren’t named, they just had a number.
JL: Just numbers.
BW: Just straight number, uh huh. If you documented them with the Coast Guard, then you had names
for them, but with the state, was just a number.
JL: Okay. Mr. Wilde, would you please tell me ... then when you started to work, what was your
occupation?
BW: I was in the real estate brokerage business.
7
�JL And, uh …
BW: I had my office in Annapolis.
JL: You had your own real estate company.
BW Yes.
JL: … so to speak? Uh, how long was this in operation?
BW Well, I guess I’m going a little bit too … that was later on, when I first ... my first job I had out of
high school, uh, was building PT boats at the Annapolis Boat Yard and from there I went into the ... I
went into the Navy as a pilot, in a Navy Air Corps, as a pilot, training. I only went through the training
stages because the war was winding down then and they had more pilots than they knew what to do with.
And from there, I went, I went to the ... I was a fireman at the Naval Academy and that got too boring for
me, so I left there and I served eight years in county government as a commissioner and then, while I was
in county government, I was also a real estate broker, that’s when I started my real estate business.
JL: Now, a lady told me you were with the county, her name was Alice Griner ...
BW: That’s my aunt.
JL: That’s your aunt ... okay.
BW: Yeah, I spent four years ... I had four years in as commissioner, I was elected at the age of 27 then
four years out, I was the youngest commissioner ever to serve. And, uh, I was four years out, I was
defeated for re-election and then I won the next time around for four more years. And they were ... they
were tough four years. Really tough going.
JL: I imagine. And then, then, you were also part-time into real estate?
BW: In the real estate, yes, uh huh.
JL: Okay, and then, then, when you were no longer commissioner, how many years did you have your
real estate company or do you still have it now?
BW: I just give up my license this past year because I’d had enough of it and it was getting to be pretty
much of a rat race to try to keep up with all the gals getting into real estate and retired people there, the
Academy and Fort Meade ... anyone had something to sell, there was a relative waiting to pick up a listing
so I said to heck with it, and back ‘68, I started the ... started to develop my oyster growing process that
I’m still working on.
JL: Well, we gotta, we gotta fill up the whole backside of this tape about your oyster proposal. I think
it’s a very good idea. Uh, could you please tell me, are you married, Mr. Wilde?
BW: Yes, uh huh.
JL: Could you tell me where you met your wife?
A: At Carvel Hall Hotel in Annapolis and, uh, she’s from Leesburg, or near, Leesburg, Virginia. A mutual
friend of ours introduced us and, let’s see, we’ve been married since 1950. We were married in 1950.
JL: You have children?
BW No, we had no children.
JL: No children. Uh, when you brought your wife to live down in Shady Side, where did you live ... when
you were first married, did you come to Shady Side to live?
8
�BW: Yes, we did. I owned the building that was the movie house. I owned that building and I built an
upstairs apartment in that and fixed that up and then I built ... I was also in the antique restoration and
reproduction business for a while and that’s where my shop was ... was in that building and I had an
apartment up over top of the shop.
JL: Uh, how long did you and your wife live at the apartment?
BW: Uh, just about five years.
JL And then, you built the house you’re in now?
BW Then we moved here in Felicity Cove.
JL Was it enjoyable working on antiques?
BW: Very much so, I loved it, but the problem was it was all handwork and, uh, you had to charge such
high fees that people just didn’t want to have the work done. I did a lot of work for the homes in
Annapolis, like the Hammond Harwood House and the Chase House and the Ridout House and Tulip Hill
and, uh, I had most all of those houses where I did the restoration work for them.
JL: I see. That is interesting.
BW: It was something that was pretty difficult to make a good living at.
JL: I can imagine. I can imagine. Uh, now Mr. Wilde, if you like antiques that much, I’m sure you must
have a lot of nice antiques that you’ve collected yourself.
BW: Yes, we do. We have quite a few.
JL: That you’ve searched around and found. Is there any particular favorite type of things you like in
antiques?
BW: Well, I have a Pembroke table, an inlaid Pembroke table that I’ll have to tell the story about. It was
an old, old house around on the river that had pretty well fallen in ....
JL: What river?
BW: West River, down from where I live, and I went in ... this was before I left home to work in my
shop, and I found this old, old table that was piled up with grease where they had used it to cure meats ...
well, it had been painted and, uh, I scraped a little place off and I saw that it was beautiful mahogany
wood under that grease and paint. And I brought it home and I stripped all the paint off and it turned out
to be a very, very valuable and beautiful Pembroke table, inlaid Pembroke table. And I pride that more
than anything because it was just something someone had thrown away and I just found it and restored it.
JL: Oh, my goodness...
A: But my wife is a little bit tired of antiques because it takes so much work to keep them polished up.
See, they all have a waxed finish on them, they don’t have a hard varnish finish on them like your modern
furniture does today so it’s an awful lot of work keeping them dusted and polished up.
JL: I know I’m going to change the subject but, when you were a little ... I want this on the side of the
tape ... when you were a young child growing up in Shady Side, who was the oldest person you can
remember living in Shady Side?
BW: I guess I had a great aunt, her name was Mary Atwell, lived down on Cedar Point Road and she ...
whenever we would go to visit, she was sitting in a rocking chair and ... and she reminded me so much of
9
�the painting, Whistler’s Mother, and I can see her now, her features were just exactly like that in that old
rocking chair and that ... that would be the oldest person I can remember.
JL: Uh, how old do you think she was?
BW: She had to be in her 90’s.
JL: That’s the oldest person you recall in Shady Side as a young child?
BW: Yes, yes, as a real young child, yeah.
End of Side 1
JL Mr. Wilde, you have developed something for the Bay, could you tell me about it, please.
A: Uh, back in 1968, I found a biologist who was spawning oyster eggs and hatching them and growing
them until they get to the metamorphosis size and then they’d throw them out because they didn’t know
what to do with them. That’s as far as they could go with the process so when I saw that, I decided that
there should be a way to set those oysters and, and grow them, makes use of the procedure. So, in ‘68,
that’s the first, my first attempt, I got the eggs from the Solomon’s lab down at Solomon’s Island and
brought them home and grew them to metamorphosis and set them on oyster shells.
JL: Could you tell me how you grew them?
BW: Grew them in tanks of water and on shore, then I had ‘em in my garage here and I would haul the
water every morning from the bay in a wheelbarrow in tanks to the garage and change the water every day
and then haul that water back and dump it back over, then I’d do this early in the morning before the sun
came up because if anybody’d saw me hauling water back and forth, they’d send me to the nut house, so I
did it before anyone could see what I was doing. And I set those oysters on shell and I had a tank here in
the yard, and had the shell in the tank, and they were growing, I changed the water every day, I moved the
tank down closer to the bay and, at the same time, I had a tractor trailer load of piling come in for ... to
build a pier, and I wasn’t home at the time and the tractor trailer got stuck and they scooped up all these
shells there, the tank I had my oysters on them to put under the tires for traction. They thought it was just
a playbox, you see. So that was ... that was how my first year project was destroyed.
JL: It was destroyed.
BW: Destroyed completely. So, then after that, I developed the process where I could get the larvae to
grow to metamorphosis in 9-10 days, whereas, uh, ordinarily it would take anywheres from 25-30 days,
so I cut that process down considerably and, then, I developed a way of ... of the oyster going through
metamorphosis without it attaching to another shell and this has turned out to be a very valuable process
for me because I can grow many, many oysters in a very small area on a floating tray.
JL: How long, excuse me, how long did it take you to develop it?
BW: Well, I hit upon the idea almost the second year, back in ‘69, I found that method would work.
JL: I’m sorry I interrupted you.
BW: But ... that’s alright ... but, uh, no one in state government or in the universities in the laboratories
gave it any value, they said they couldn’t see where it would have any value as far as oysters were
concerned, it didn’t make any difference whether they were nice single round oysters or whether they
were a clump of oysters, it didn’t make any ... any difference. But, it does make a lot of difference as far
as the quality oyster is concerned and the way that I grow the oyster in trays because if you have these big
massive clumps on a shell, why you can’t grow the volume. So, I’ve developed the system and it has,
10
�through selected breeding, I have developed an oyster now that has three times the meat yield of a bay
wild oyster and I can grow it in one third of the time that it takes a bay oyster. I can grow an oyster to
market size in 12 months where out here, it takes, when I say out here, we’re sitting here looking out at
the bay, so, uh, 12 months and out in the bay takes 3-4 years. So, that’s quite an accomplishment in itself.
JL: So, when you presented this to people, what did they say?
BW: They didn’t think it had any application at all. They said, it’s too much labor involved and that you
couldn’t get the price for the oysters, but I get $.20 apiece for each one of them now, and that equals
$60.00 a bushel, compared to $12.00 for what the waterman are harvesting. So, I think it’s, uh ...
JL: And they’re bigger and better?
BW: They’re bigger and better and the restaurants really like them and they ... they call in for them all the
time. I can’t grow enough. I could sell more than I could grow. But I had an idea that this would ...
would snowball into a chicken production-type of operation where waterman or farmers or anyone who
had access to water would be able to get the equipment and get my seed and grow it to market size and
then send it back to … to … my company for marketing and then they’d participate in the profits but, uh,
it’s pretty hard to convince these people that there is a new way and they don’t respond to it at all.
JL: They have pretty set ways, then?
BW: Yeah, they’re pretty set in their ways, all right. Then question it.
JL: And I’m sure you keep trying to find people who are interested in it?
BW: Yeah, I had three calls this morning with people who are interested in it but they don’t seem to want
to invest the capital that’s necessary to do it. And, another thing, it’s very hard to find a secure location
where you’re protected from hurricanes, protected from freezing weather, you’re protected from pollution
of the bay and you’re protected from a lot of the predators that are always there waiting for their chance to
get in the trays. But the tray system that I have developed, it’s pretty foolproof as far as predators are
concerned. It keeps the crabs out, and the gulls and the ducks ... the only problem is it doesn’t keep those
two-legged predators - man - out. He can find a way to get in there.
JL: Do you think maybe the reason that the officials that you have talked to don’t like your idea because
they just hope that maybe you’ll just give it to them?
BW: Well, I guess. They’ve tried hard to find out what I do and, uh, I keep telling them that it’s a secret
process that I developed and I don’t want to divulge it, and never will forget, this biologist from Horn
Point was over and he kept pressing, kept pressing, to find out what I did and, finally, I told him, I said,
you know, when the oyster larvae gets ready to set, it has a little foot that comes out. Now, these animals
are only 75 microns so their invisible to the naked eye. But, I said, you know, that little foot comes out
and he finds a place to settle down on a shell. Yeah, that’s right. I said, well, what I do is I take a little
tiny, tiny hatchet and chop that foot off and, of course, that burned him up and made him pretty angry
because it would be impossible to do that without, you know, having a microscope and really getting into
fine, very fine, ... so, I told him, I cut the feet off. (Laughter)
JL: A gentlemen was telling me, uh, we’ll come back to the oysters soon ... a gentlemen was telling me
that he thought that they had really declined over the years. What is your opinion?
BW: Well, we first started losing the shad ... the shad was disappearing very fast and, now, there aren’t
any.
11
�JL: Do you know why?
BW: Yeah, because the spawning grounds’ been destroyed.
JL: What destroyed it, in your opinion?
BW: Well, the pollution in the Susquehanna River is the worst thing for shad spawning and now
pollution has gotten the shad, the herring, you can hardly catch a mess of herring anymore. I remember
we used to go out and the boats, they could get two or three boatloads of herring, take them up to
Woodfield’s and they would cut them for the herring roe which is very delicious. But you can’t find
enough herring anymore to even think about freezing a couple cans of herring roe. This past year, the
perch have disappeared; the white and yellow perch have disappeared ...
JL: The rockfish ...
BW: The rockfish are now pretty well all gone and the only thing that we really have left is crabs and eels
and they say that the catfish and the carp are pretty plentiful but when catfish and carp get pretty plentiful,
it’s because of water quality. Catfish can live in a sewer system and they’re able to survive along with the
carp and that’s about all we got left.
JL: And bluefish ...
BW: Not even too many bluefish. The blue fishing has not been too good this year. Uh, all the clams are
gone and most of the oysters are gone. This is going to be a pretty bad year for oysters because there
hadn’t been any small oysters setting naturally and here, again, is state government mismanagement, I
think, they had seed but they couldn’t move it ... didn’t have any money to move the seed. So, they still
are planting shells. I sit here in my front yard and watch the barge loads of shells go down the bay to be
planted to catch more seed and they don’t have money to move what seed they already have. Then the
next day, I sitting here and here’s the same barges or appear to be the same barges, going back up the bay.
Now, what in the world would they be doing sending barges down the bay with shells and the next day,
the barges going back up the bay with shells. Looks like a pretty funny game going on there to me. Well,
anyway, I think that’s a … that’s a management problem but, of course, it’s a pollution problem also
because there’s some reason why the oyster larvae are not surviving to set. Uh, I guess the next thing to
go will be the blue crab; that’ll be about the end of it.
JL: And that’ll be the end of the Maryland industry, almost ... the seafood industry, anyway ...
BW: Yeah. Yeah, if you have a bay working boat today and you want to sell it, you can’t even give it
away. No one wants it. No one wants a boat. Cause there’s nothing out there.
JL: Would you take a guess ... how many men in Shady Side still work on the water?
BW: I would guess, maybe, 20 to 30, somewhere in there.
JL: And in years past, everyone worked on the water.
BW: Just about, yeah, yes, a couple of hundred ... if not more. Yeah.
JL: Oh, another gentleman, told me that the bay was so dirty. He seems to think that’s one of the
reasons, he said that the net gets terrible, had to be pulled up and washed.
BW: That’s a bryozoan that grows on the ... it grows on everything, you can look down in here at the
shore on the stones and it’ll grow, it looks like a sponge, and it’s a bryozoan, and it feeds on bacteria, so
it’s so much bacteria in the water that this stuff grows so fast, that, uh, a piece of string, in a matter of
weeks, gets as big as a half to three-quarters of an inch with that stuff that grows on there.
12
�JL: That’s how junky our water is.
BW: How dirty our water is, yes. And that ... that started real bad after we had the tropical storm Agnes,
when we had the bay flooded out, that’s when it started getting real bad because when all the sewer plants
from the Susquehanna were flushed out from that storm ... all of that water ended up right here in the bay.
When that storm came through here, I found a sign out here in my front, from way up above Harrisburg,
was Mechanicsville, way up ... way up the Susquehanna where this sign had washed out of this person’s
front yard. It had the name of the house on it and the address. So that’s how far the water came from way
up there and it flushed out every septic system what was.
JL: Would you tell me a little bit more about your oyster process. I don’t want to know your secrets but I
want you to just keep talking about it because I think that’s interesting.
BW: Well, what I do, uh, um, I bring my brood stock in. And my brood stock is selected from the very
best of every year’s group that I grow. I pick out the fastest growing, the best shaped and the deepest cup
and use that for my brood stock. Well, this is in reverse as to what happens in nature because the
waterman always harvest the fastest growing oysters because they get bigger, quicker and they’re the ones
that go to market first and the runts are left for spawning for the following year. Well, you don’t do that
with anything in agriculture, you don’t do it with your race horses, you always pick the best, the fastest
and the most beautiful shape and then same thing, with even flowers, so why not with an oyster. An
oyster’s another animal and that’s what I’ve done for the last sixteen years is to pick out the best and
that’s why, I think, I have the high meat yield and the fast growth, plus the system that I use, the oyster
gets the most food that’s in the water because the most food’s in the top layer, rather than down deep in
the bottom because of the sunlight so they get more food to eat and the way the trays are tied in the
channel, they get the good flush, uh, of water so that they have plenty of food to eat. I’ve also found out
that an oyster will grow almost twice as fast in the shade than it will in the sunlight. I don’t know what
the reason for that is but I have proven that that is the case.
JL: You said 16 years. You have been trying to convince the State for 16 years?
BW: No. I give up on convincing them anything; long time ago. I just give up on convincing them
because they have the attitude if it isn’t developed by the University of Maryland, someone who has a
Ph.D., then it can’t be done, so they don’t even listen to you, so I gave up on the State a long time ago.
But what I started to tell you was I bring that selected brood stock into the building in March and I heat
the water ... heat the bay water that comes in and condition those oysters to bring them up to spawning
condition real early in the season, say like, the first of June, whereas in the wild, it’s July, August, before
they, they spawn. This way, I get a jump on most of the natural predators. There’s a lots of worms out
there, ‘specially one called the flatworm that eats oysters. And, there are other worms that eat ‘em. So, if
you. . .if you spawn them out of the natural cycle, you get rid of most of their predators and their very
small stage. So, that’s the reason for the early spawning, plus it gives you ... gives you extra weeks of
growing during the growing season, which is from, from March through November. So, after I bring
them in, I have them conditioned to spawn, I spawn ‘em and I put. . .1 have 250 gallon tanks in the
hatchery that I put as many as 100 million eggs in one tank. And as the eggs hatch and the larvae grow,
each day I screen those larvae onto a screen and each day I increase the size of the opening in the screen
so that if there are any slow-growers or any that have died, I automatically flush them out of the system,
get rid of them. So, out of the original batch that I start with, I may end up with only about a million of
the very best of that whole group, but it is the strongest of the whole group because I get rid of the slow
growers, even though they would ... they would make a good oyster, I still get rid of those because a
million is more than I can handle anyway, so why worry about having any more than that. So then, from
the hatchery, they go out into the marsh areas in trays and I grow them from there on up to market size
and then market them to the restaurants; for the half-shell trade.
13
�JL: Well, I’m glad you’re doing that. That’s great ... that is a marvelous idea, it really is.
BW: Well, I think so.
JL: I can’t uh, see why they wouldn’t listen to it.
BW: Well, there’s … they have their reasons.
JL: Well, what did your wife think about this when you discovered this thing? Did she say, you were just
the smartest man?
BW: No, she said, I’m still waiting for you to be a millionaire and she is, she’s still waiting. (Laughs)
She’s had to put up with an awful lot.
JL: Yeah. Well, when you talk to people about Shady Side ... some of the older waterman around here,
what do they think of that idea?
BW: Well, they, uh, they don’t have ... they don’t have much to say about it. I’ve asked my father to
come down here a couple of times and he wasn’t interested and, finally, I got him down here and he put
his hand down one of those trays and pulled it up, and he looked at them, and said, My God, never seen
anything like that. Finally, I got Captain George Proctor to come down here and he looked at them, said,
“Boy, you really got something there”. And I thought so, too, you see, I still haven’t made that million.
JL: And Mr. Proctor thought it was a good idea?
BW: Well, he liked the oyster and, uh, he hasn’t, he hasn’t said much about the way I grow them
because, of course, he’s ... used to going out and taking what nature provides and letting it go at that. Uh,
a lot of the waterman are concerned that a new idea like this can get in the hands of a big corporation, say,
like, Campbell Soup or, or one of the big food companies and they can out produce what nature is
providing for them to catch and it would put them out of business.
JL: Well, that’s understandable...
BW: But, ah, that isn’t the case. I don’t see how that, that could happen but that’s one of their concerns.
JL: Could you tell us. . .you said that the restaurants liked these oysters. Could you tell us what
restaurants you supply?
BW: I supply? Well, I’m not supplying any of them right now because I had the bad freeze during the
winter and my stock is very low so I’m not supplying now. But I was supplying Fox Chase and
Steamboat Landing, O’Leary’s in Annapolis and Chart House in Annapolis, and for a while I supplied
two restaurants over in Alexandria but that didn’t last too long. But there isn’t any problem in getting rid
of what you grow, they’re waiting for them.
JL: But you’re going to have to ...
BW: The quality is that great.
JL: But you’re going to have to catch up a little bit you say since the freeze?
BW: Yeah, yeah, I will have to but I have another crop coming on. I expect to get started in about two or
three more weeks.
JL: Speaking of freeze, I forgot to ask you, when you were a young man, did you used to skate out on the
bay?
BW: Oh, yeah, yeah, I can remember one winter we had a freeze, the ice was about 18 inches thick out
14
�here, right in front of this house, and my cousin, Norman, and I walked out there ... I don’t know, it
looked we must have been out there for miles and that ice was 18 inches thick, and the whole bay was
just, just frozen over solid. I tell you, I’ve never seen that again, I hope I never do.
JL: But you ... but you did skate out there, too, as a young child?
BW: Well, not too much skating here in the bay, most of it was back in the creek where the ice would be
smoother but, yes, that was ... that was a past time in those days, we’d be skating, the creek would be
filled up with people. But you get a freeze-over now and, last winter, I’d go around to my mother’s house.
I never saw anybody out there on that ice. It just wouldn’t be anybody out there, period. And when we
were kids, why the place would be filled up all day long, half the night. . . . they’d have bonfires out there.
JL: Yeah, I heard that they used to put bonfires ...
BW: Yeah, bonfires out there to keep warm, yeah, that was ... that was the past time.
JL: Uh, did you tell us about maybe some of the parties you went to in Shady Side? I hear that there
were a lot of parties going on, different people’s houses, at least one a week?
BW: During Christmas time, quite, quite a lot, yeah, but I don’t remember too many parties as a kid.
JL: What did you all used to do on Halloween?
BW: Same thing that kids … all kids do, we used to do what they call rub rosin. You know what that is?
You put a string up under the piece of weatherboarding or shingle on a house, with a spool of cotton, and
you ran way back off into the field somewhere. And you rub rosin on that string and it’d make a noise that
sound like your house was falling down and you had to be far away because most the times, the owner of
the house would come (Laugh) out with a shotgun, he would shoot; of course, would scare us to death
but, I don’t imagine he was aiming at hitting anybody because that would happen so often, they knew
exactly where it was … what the noise was from. But we weren’t destructive. I never remember
destroying anything. We’d do tricks like that but, we never destroyed anybody’s property.
JL: I heard that they had Halloween parties at the school. Did you ever go to any of them?
BW: No, no. That was later ... that was later, when kids got to the point where they were destroying
property. They tried to entertain them so that they’d keep busy and not do those kind of things.
JL: Is that ... is that about the only tricks you would play on people?
BW: Yeah, that’s about all I remember.
JL: Are there any stories that your parents, or perhaps your grandparents, told you about Shady Side, that
you might like to share with us?
BW: Nothing I can remember.
JL: Nothing like, uh, some storms coming through, or uh ....
BW: Oh well, we had bad storms ... In those days, they called them Northeasters ... they didn’t know that
they were hurricanes coming up the coast but, when we had northeasters, they were pretty bad, way back,
when I was a kid, the roads would flood out, the trees would blow down, of course, this was even before
we had electricity so current wouldn’t go off, but, um, didn’t have to worry about your freezer thawing
because we didn’t have freezers and you had your own ... your own well, where you pumped your own
water, so you didn’t have to worry about that. You had water. But, uh, uh, it’s quite different today. We
can watch the storm on television and get it’s exact location and know where it’s coming and when it’s
coming and how bad it’s going to be.
15
�JL: Well, we hope the one’s that coming now won’t come up the bay.
BW: No, it’s going inland but we know now where it is but, you see, in those days, well, we didn’t even
know that storm was there and wouldn’t anybody, wouldn’t anybody, have any time to prepare for it and
today, why, you know exactly where it is. I thought sure we was going to get some heavy winds from
that storm but it isn’t too late yet, still packing something like 75 mile an hour. It’s going inland and it’ll
slow down as long as it stays inland. But they’ve been known to go back out to sea and pick up speed and
hit again. So, uh, I worry a little bit here. I’ve got a stone bulkhead here but a real, real severe storm, that
bulkhead wouldn’t be sufficient to, uh, to take care of it.
JL: Did you put the bulkhead in there?
BW: Yes, I had ... I hauled ... I didn’t haul it, I had the stone hauled in and we had one storm here that
wasn’t a hurricane, wasn’t announced as a hurricane, it was a November storm, and those rocks that you
see there were washed way back up here to the walk.
JL: How many feet do you say that would be?
BW: At least, uh, fifty feet.
JL: Oh, my goodness ...
BW: They’re not ... they’re not huge rocks, but they’re what you call, uh, one and two man rocks.
JL: Thank you, Mr. Wilde, you’re very nice to talk to and we appreciate the information that you’ve
given us.
BW: Thank you. Very glad to help.
16
�
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Captain Avery Museum
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1985002-Wilde-Buddy
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PDF Text
Text
ORAL History
Coates, Paul Edmond
Captain Avery Museum
Interview: Paul Edmond Coates
Date of Interview: May 13, 1986
East West Shadyside Road
Shady Side, Maryland
Q:
1986.001.002
1986.001.002
Paul, could you tell me if you were born in Shady Side?
A: Yeah, I was born in Shady Side on April the 7th in 1921. Just about, oh, it was another building, it
was my mother’s home, approximately 1,000 yards just due west of here, which was still all the same
property because this was, at one time, one huge farm. And then after that, we had moved to Annapolis.
Q:
I see. . .uh, whose. . .whose... . .then your parents owned this big huge farm.
A: Oh yes, they owned this huge farm. We had horses and cows and goats and chickens, turkeys... .they
had everything here, plus the vegetables and then in the front of the building of the house it’s in back of
me right now, because this is the new home we’re sitting in now, right here in front of this one which is
on the water, there was his own private oyster grounds. He had ten acres out there. Today, here in ‘86, I
own today, I still have three acres of those oyster grounds in front of the house today.
A:
That’s interesting. . .what. . .what size farm does he have?
Q: Well, out to where you can see a road now, uh, from the seawall right here in front of the house to
the road out back is six hundred foot. That was a road at all times. But before then, back in his days, I say,
earlier part of my days, about way before then, there was six hundred foot of more property in front of this
house here that had been washed away over the period of years... .until he put a seawall right out front
which still stands there today.
Q:
Do you have brothers and sisters?
A: Yes, I have two brothers and two sisters. Uh, I have one sister passed away and one brother passed
away. I still have a brother and sister left. And they lived in Catonsville in Baltimore and I have another
sister. . and the other sister, she lives in Vicksburg, Maryland.
Q:
Would you mind telling me what your brothers and sisters name?
A: That was Ruth Coates, there was Ola Coates, Dorothy Coates, Vernon Coates and then myself, I was
the youngest of the five.
Q: Well, that was what I was going to ask you, which. . .which one were you in the family. Could you
tell me what your. . . .well, you said your father lived on a farm so.
A: No, that was my grandfather had a farm. My grandfather. . . and my father, he was, uh, a game
warden and he also drove the school bus.
Q:
Oh, your father.
A:
My father, yeah.
�[Type text]
Q:
He was a game warden down here?
A:
He was the game warden here in Shady Side, yes.
Q:
You. . . .would you know what years that was?
A: Well, that had to been just before I was born.. . that would have been probably as early as 1918.. .up
until 1921 or 1922.
Q:
Are your parents still living?
A: No, my mother and father are both passed away. My father passed away in 1922, my mother passed
away just four years ago, or maybe five years ago.. .it’d be 1980... .right, actually be six years ago ‘cause
this is ‘86. It would be this month, six years ago, my mother passed away. And then my other sister, she
passed away in, uh, December 9th of 1981. So, I’m here on this property now by myself.
Q: Uh, could you tell me. . .when I spoke to you on the telephone, you told me that one of your
grandfathers was the blacksmith down here. Could you tell me a little bit about that?
A:
Yes, he.. .uh...
Q:
What was his name?
A: His, uh, Charles Larson. Course, back in those days, they called everybody who’d be on the water,
they called them captain. So, uh, his name was Captain Charles Larson. And, he’s from Sweden. He got
his ship and, uh, him and guess just got another hundred men to come here to Baltimore and that’s where
he met my grandmother and they were married and they came here in Shady Side which in those days. . .
.well, my grandmother owned this, all this property herself. She was the original owner from the
beginning of where. . . .back in the early 1800’s, uh, she bought this place and then when she married her
husband there, they, uh, they lived here on this piece of property and got the farm for it. So, my
grandfather when he came here, the place was known then as the Great Swamp. That took in the area
called Deale. . . .Churchton.
Q:
I’ve heard that. . . I’ve heard that expression.
A: So, course, he had a blacksmith shop going, like I said, we lived here on the water. We had a beach
right here at one place, there isn’t today because the water has risen since then. The beach is all gone. It’s
actually seawall that holds back the water today. But they pulled the oyster boats right up on the beach
that came from Annapolis. They brought their oyster tongs, which were hand tongs in them days, here at
the Shady Side, my grandfather’s place at the blacksmith shop, to have repaired or maybe to have a place.
.have repair made, all the way from Annapolis.
Q:
Did you ever know your grandfather?
A:
Oh yes, yes, my grandfather passed away in ‘42, I was born in ‘21.
Q:
Okay Were you did he have do you recall him having a blacksmith shop?
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A:
Oh yes, I was in there. . .I been in that shop many a days, just. . just watching him...
Q:
Well, can you tell me exactly what he did. . .we’d be interested in hearing it.
A: Well, he’d. . .he made the horseshoes, he shoed the horses and not like. . .I was saying, maybe oyster
tongs, uh, people from all the way up as far as Lothian came down here to Shady Side by horse and
wagon to bring a wheel down off of another wagon to have a new rim put on that wheel. Oh, yes, he
repaired all the parts of the, uh, anything of metal that had to be repaired, he could do he could do he even
had hinges for barns. He made the hinges for barns.
Q:
For heaven’s sake.
A:
Yes.
Q:
And did he have.. .what did he have this big fire in...?
A: Oh, just like you see back in the western days in a movie. . . that they have, uh, a blacksmith there
and they have the hand pump to give it air to get the coals going and make real hot and all and then they
had a anvil there, where they beat on it with a hammer and shape it to what he wanted to make or how he
wanted to make it.
Q:
And did you ever help him?
A: Oh, no.. .no, I just had to get out of his way. No, no, no.. that was the.. .all I... .when the place burned
down, .. .I called it the barn but it wasn’t a barn because we had another place over there which was a barn
but this was built like a barn or like a big double car garage. It had... .and he did his work in there but that
burned down one night. .uh. . .oh, that was probably in, uh, in late ‘39 or the early... .I guess it’s late ‘39,
maybe in ‘37, something like that it burned down.
Q:
Well, what a shame.
A:
Aw, that finished him of that and, of course, he was getting up in years, too. So, uh...
Q:
Would you. . .would you have here on your property any of the tools that he used?
A:
Yes, I still have a few tools out in the shed he used.
Q:
Well, that’s nice that they.. .that you...
A: That was a. . . .one tool I have is two man saws. . .I have a some drills and, uh, one old tool where he
made himself, it’s like, um, they call it a plane, it had two little handles on it and you just dragged it back
and forth, for a. . . .like a plane.
Q:
Uh, so how many years would you say he operated the blacksmith shop?
A: Oh, I imagine... .well, I’d say from 1900, or maybe it was from, uh, 18... .say 1890... .from 1890
probably up to 1935.
3
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Q: For heaven’s sake, that’s great.. . .that’s great. Now, if you were down there watching him from time
to time, would you take a guess and would you know how much sometimes he would charge somebody.
A:
Oh, no, no. . . .far as price is concerned, I wouldn’t know anything about that.
Q:
Okay, I was just curious as to what a blacksmith would charge.
A: See, it wasn’t blacksmith or like I say, then he had his oysters. Then he had his gill nets and then, uh,
the fish. I still have the crocks for where he’d take the fish and salt them down and catch them. . . . catch
them during the summer and salt them down and he’d have fish for all that winter which would be their
food. Because he grew his own garden, where he had his vegetables, potatoes and, of course, the fish.
Q:
And. . . and, uh, which house did they live on. . .on this property. Was it in this line or.
A: Oh, no.. .it’s the house in back of us, right here, back in the middle of the property right now, this
property here is six hundred foot deep. But the old house is back out there.
Q:
But it’s still standing?
A:
Yes.
Q:
Does someone live in it?
A: No, no, nobody lives in it but, uh, my nephew when he comes down and his wife and he brings
others down with them during the summer when they go crabbing, they... .uh, that’s where they stay.
Q:
Well, it’s nice that its still used.
A:
Oh yes, it’s still useful, oh yes.
Q:
Okay. Did you go to school in Shady Side?
A: No, uh. . .my mother moved to Annapolis when I was at the age of school times. I went to school in
Germantown, they call it Germantown Schoolhouse.
Q:
And did you come back to Shady Side from time—to—time then, like on weekends or something.
A: Every weekend, all my life, I been here and every summer I stayed here all summer, from time
school let out to time school started, I was back here for the whole summer, yes.
Q: Uh, was. . .could you tell me maybe some of the things you did in the summertime for
entertainment?
A: Well, uh, they had a pier in front of the house and I was, uh, fishing, I would call it but it was
actually for minnows and then, uh, crabbing, yes, I went crabbing and even for soft crabs because the bay
water was very clear at that time, you could go around the boat and you could see the bottom.. . you stand
4
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in back of the boat and you could see the bottom, you could dip down there and just pick the crabs right
off the bottom.
Q:
Wait. . . just sitting there waiting for you?
A: Well, no, you. . .you shove around, yes, the crabs be sitting there waiting for me, but I’d be shoving
around the boat but the water was just as clear as what you get out of your spigot today, it was very clear.
Q:
Uh, do you recall any of the boarding houses that they had in Shady Side at the time?
A: Oh yes, they had Andrews Hotel and then right across the road from it, they had Nowell’s. Nowell’s
is where they had the post office, after a period of time, that was the last place that the post office until
they built a new one up on the road further but Nowell’s had a big, uh, big store. It was like a. . .general
store and the post office was in there. And Andrews was right across the road. It was a narrow road there
and the road is still narrow; of course, the automobiles were smaller back in, uh, 1930, and they parked on
both side of the road and you still had cars could get between them to maneuver around. And then right
down from the post office, they had, uh, like a garage there but actually it was the movie house. And they
had that. . .I remember going to the movies there, it was silent movies..
Q:
Solid movies...
A:
Yeah, yeah, it silent.
Q:
Oh, oh, silent...
A:
And then, uh, it was good. . . it was every Saturday night they had that, was just one night a week.
Q:
Did you ever go to any of the dances or any of the functions that they had?
A: Well, yes Nowell’s had dances there every Saturday night during the summer and they had music out
there and people’d be dancing because the place had, uh, like a big screened in porch on two sides, they
had it in the front and on the one side, there, had all screened in. And they had music out there and people.
. .where, that’s where they parked the cars, right on the road, like I was saying, and they’d be stamping
their feet and listening to the music and all.
Q: But they. . . they encouraged people from the community to come down there where they had
entertainment.
A: Oh, people came from everywhere when they had. . . yes, and they knew entertainment was going on
with dances and music. People knew that. They. . . they were there every Saturday, they waited for that.
And like I say, right across the road was Andrews Hotel and then, uh, after Saturday night dancing and
all, Sunday, they would all come to the hotel and have their Sunday dinner which they had, uh, just about
everything imagine.. . it was, uh, like they call it, country style, family dinner, on the table. . . .you took as
much as you want and it was very good. It was every Sunday, yes.
Q: Oh, my goodness. Could you tell me a little bit. . .what the store. .. .you said that there was a store
there. Could you tell me a little bit what it looked like?
5
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A: Well, like I say, inside the store, there was a few things in there you could buy, your groceries and all
and the post office was right inside and, of course, you stood there and you asked for your mail, or else
they knew who you were because the mail was kept in, like, ah, little pigeon holes. There was no such
things as, uh, your box number or anything like that, then, it was just Shady Side, Anne Arundel County,
that was the post office.
Q:
Uh, when you went to school in Annapolis, did your brothers and sisters also go to school there?
A: Yes, yes. . .they went to school there also. From there, we went to Baltimore and from there, we all
went to work and from there, all come... .well, they all got married, they... different areas right in
Baltimore and myself, I came right back down here on the same property.
Q:
And you said that you have never married?
A:
No, no, I’ve never married.
Q: Okay. Uh. . .can you tell me something about your home life growing up? Particularly, when you
would come here, uh, uh, on the weekends.
A: Well, like I said, I come down here and go in there. . .maybe during the winter times and helped my
grandfather to, uh, cut the wood out.. .he had these big woods out in back of here, he’d be cutting wood
and they getting that ready for the winter and, uh, I’d help him cut wood and haul it back down to the
house and be storing it up.
Q:
And how did you bring it to the house. . . in a wagon?
A: Oh, you carried it.. .you carried that log on your shoulder, oh, yes. And then when they got down,
then we’d take and cut it, maybe cut some up out in the woods and, uh, maybe you’d bring it down in a
wheel barrel. But, uh, oh no, I mean, you hauled that and that’s the old story today. The wood you cut
warms you twice...
Q:
That’s right...
A:
Once you cut it, you get warm and then you burn it, you get warm.
Q:
Uh, did you ever do any ice skating?
A:
Oh yes, I’ve ice skated many a time right in front of the house, right here, yes.
Q:
Uh, and who were some of the people you used to skate with... did you used to skate.. .not your....
A: Well, no, I’d say more or less like friends.. .there wasn’t many people down here then. No, uh, like I
said, it’s just a big farm all down through here and, uh, the houses you see here today, no, they weren’t
here then.
Q: Well, a lot of people were telling me that there were skating parties during the day and night and a
whole bunch of.
6
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A:
Oh, yeah, you’d have. . . . they’d have, like maybe a fire out there on the ice.
Q:
And did you ever go...
A: Oh, no, no, I was. . .never at night time, no. But, uh, I could see them out there and, uh, they were,
like I say, they come from different areas here to skate.
Q:
And were you a good skate. . .were you a good skater?
A:
Well, I mean, that’s something you never know. . . .somebody else has to tell you if you are or not.
Q:
Uh, did your brothers and sisters skate with you, too.
A: Yeah, yes.. . they, they. . . .once in a while, like I say, I was mostly here in the summertime by
myself. In the winter, I would come down, once in a great while, yes. But. . . . in the winter, at. . . . you
get the old farmhouse, there is something that is mighty cold. The air just blows right through the house. .
. .they’re not that insulated or anything like you have modern today or a furnace that just takes care of the
whole house. You only had one little room heated in that house and when it’s time to go to bed at night,
you took a iron or a brick that was heated and put it at the foot of the bed to keep your feet warm.
Q:
Your grandmother or somebody would wrap it all up.
A: Oh, yeah, they. . . the brick would be wrapped up, yeah, and then you get the heat off that to keep
your feet warm when you was in that bed.
Q:
If you skated, and your grandfather was a blacksmith, did he make your skates?
A:
Oh, no.. .no, they were all bought.
Q: Oh, okay, I was just curious. . . . [inaudible/sound disappearing on tape) Anything else. . .who were
some of your friends …
A: Didn’t have so many friends.. .you didn’t really live year around, you don’t get to know your, uh,
neighbors and besides your neighbors would be so far away that, uh, it’s not like today, you got a
neighbor, your house is maybe.. .maybe a hundred foot from you or something like that, then you knew
your neighbor and all that.. .no, it, uh, today it’s all together different. Back then, I mean, if you saw
somebody, you wave, and that’s about it but, uh, as far as like, uh, you’d say, your friends that you played
with and all that because I didn’t go to school here I did not really know anybody around.
Q:
Uh, then when you went over to the hotel and so forth, in those days, then you walked.
A: Oh yes, yes, unless, uh, your family was fortunate enough to have a car but, uh, yes, we have always
had cars.. .old touring cars, they called them, no windows, they had curtains in them for the winter or bad
weather...but....
Q:
Was that your grandfather’s car or your father’s?
7
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A:
That. . .my father’s, yes.
Q:
A big touring car.
A: Big touring car, yeah. Yeah, it’s a four—door but, uh, no windows. For the windows, they had
curtains. Course, I was still and I still remember all that, like even, uh, here on the farm, we had, like I
said, goats. We even had, uh, a goat cart. . . sit in that goat cart and run around the farm and goats pull you
around in that cart. Like I said, I just enjoyed myself all summer, later, m’ two brothers and myself and
the three of us, we just right here on the farm all the time.
Q:
You entertained yourself?
A:
Oh, yes, that’s.. .that’s about the size of it, yeah.
Q: Uh, could you tell me what you might remember, uh, something about the Shady Side Beverage
Company?
A: No. . .no, but I can say one thing about Shady Side and the booze part when that booze was brought
and Shady Side had beer, it was nice, but when they brought in alcohol, Shady Side was no longer Shady
Side.
Q:
Who. . .who brought in alcohol. . .the stores or....
A:
Well, yeah, because they voted on it and, uh....
Q:
Who voted on it?
A: The people that lived around, I guess, I don’t.. .I guess.. .uh, I guess. . . it was, it was passed, you can
put it that way. I guess some of the stores thought they could sell it and, uh, that changed things in Shady
Side a big way, yes.
Q:
It changed in a big way?
A: Yeah, because when alcohol was brought in, of course, that brought in, ah, all the your federal people
and, ah, it brought in everything, when alcohol comes in, everything comes, even your firearms, it brings
in everything, when they have. . .when just beer was here, I mean, uh, people would buy it their self. They
wanted to hunt, they’d go out and hunt and all that but soon as the alcohol brought in, that changed Shady
Side all together. It’s a big change.. .I noticed a big change in Shady Side. And now. . .and now, here it is
back in ‘86; now they’re bringing in sewerage. Shady Side isn’t like it was just five years ago.. . . it’s the
same thing, big change. They’re building up houses everywhere now because you have sewerage. No, it’s
not like the old days, no, uh. The old days, I tell you, they were nice.
Q: Now, something curious I would like to add, if they didn’t have booze down here, or whiskey, then
some people down here must have had stills.
A:
Oh, yes. . .yes.
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Q:
Now, I don’t want you to tell me who...
A:
No, no.. .I wouldn’t, no.
Q:
But some people had stills....
A: It was, see, it wasn’t that much.. .sure, they’d have just a little bit here to drink, a little bit there to
drink, but it isn’t likely we’d go out today and drive an automobile and all that. . .oh no.
Q:
But, I’ll say, some people did have stills....
A:
Oh, yeah.. .yes, there were stills here, oh yes.
Q:
That’s interesting.
A:
I knew of people that had them, yes.
Q: Oh, okay. Uh, could you tell me a little bit about the barber. Was there a barber in Shady Side for the
men to have their hair cut or.
A: No. . .I believe they. . .uh, probably their wives cut their hair for them or they cut their wives or their
friends cut each others... .I don’t have... .but I.. .no, I would say it was a barber shop. Maybe they’d go to.
. .all the way up to Annapolis, uh, maybe, uh, once a week or something like that to, uh, get their hair
fixed or cut because I knew my grandfather, he took a lot of his vegetables up to Annapolis, he’d go up
there once a week, even during the winter. I remember in the winter, when the, uh, river was frozen over
so hard that he left here, took ______beach, team of horses and a wagon and went all the way to
Annapolis on the ice.
Q:
And would he go to the city dock in Annapolis or just.
A: Well, just where he pulled in in Annapolis, I doubt it because the dock. . .where they pulled into
Annapolis, I do not know.
Q:
And I bet he sold everything he had....
A:
Oh yes, yes...
Q:
Well, that’s neat.. .that’s nice to know, that he wouldrgo like once a week, you’d say...
A: Yeah. . . that was during the summer, he’d take the vegetables up and then during the winter, they’d
be going up there and he’d take a team of horses up there, I mean, uh, maybe he was taking oysters up
there or what he was doing, I don’t know.
Q:
Did you ever go with him?
A:
Oh, no. . .oh, no, huh, huh, no, I never went up there with him, no.
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Q: That’s interesting, yes, indeed it is. Uh, could you tell me, uh, did you know any of the men down
here who were boat builders?
A: Oh yes, there was, uh, the Neimans, Rogers, yeah, they built boats right here in, uh, back of us. My
grandfather, he’s even built, uh, a few boats of his own. Yes, he had like big backtow and then he had
another, uh, sailing boat and, uh, then had another motor launch. I know the biggest boat I know of was
built down here, uh.. . . the people bought the property from my mother when the year I was born, in
1921. Their name was, uh, Park, they were from Washington. He built a boat down here and was
approximately 42 foot long and slept six people. It was a big yacht, beautiful job. But most of your boats
out here that were built were, uh, what they call deadrise. They were oyster boats.
Q:
Did you ever go down in the boatyards and see some of the men working on the boats?
A: Well, yeah, yeah. .. .why even today, there was, uh, Lees, they’re uh. . . .they were famous boat
builders. It’s, uh. . .it’s something that’s like, you might call it, passed down through the family and, uh,
they all have the know—how and they can just do it with, uh, I don’t know... .it’s. . .just had the know—
how.
Q:
It’s.. .they just have a knack for it.
A:
They do, yes, they’re very good at it.
Q:
Uh, so how many boat builders would you say was down here in your youth that you can recall?
A:
I recall three right now but, uh, I guess. . . .well, there’s Hartge’s boatyard, there’s. . .uh...
Q:
Where was Hartge’s boatyard down here?
A: That was right around Galesville, right around the port, right here. And then, uh, there was Sammy
Lee’s, right here at Parrish Creek, Neiman was right here in Parrish Creek...
Q: But you would say most of the people who lived down in Shady Side at that time, just lived and
worked right in Shady Side, not too many people went away?
A: Oh, yeah, yeah. . . .yeah, they lived right here, yes, that was their... . that was their livelihood, just
building boats, yes.
Q:
And working on the water.
A:
Yeah.
Q:
When did you.. . . at what age did you come back to Shady Side to live permanently?
A: I was, uh, 42. . .had a home built here, which we’re sitting in right now.. .had that built in 194... .19,
uh, 1965 I had it built.
Q:
And you lived here with your sister?
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A:
Q:
Yeah, my mom and my sister, yes.
Oh, your mother and your sister?
A:
My mother and sister came here ____. Well, my mother, she was born right here on this property.
Q:
Oh, she was?
A:
Yes, oh yes. And I was born right here on this property, too, because it was all one piece of property.
Q:
And you were born at home?
A:
Yeah, and then, uh. . .my brothers and sisters, they were born in Baltimore, yeah.
Q: Oh, that’s interesting. When you were growing up in Shady. . .when you were little, teeny and living
down here in Shady Side and coming here on the weekends, who do you recall as the oldest person living
in Shady Side?
A: Oh, that’s... .uh... .I guess Ethel Nowell. . .I guess Ethel Nowell being the oldest person I ever
remember.
Q:
Are you talking about Mrs. Andrews?
A:
Andrews, yes..
Q:
Mrs. Andrews. Okay, because I like to ask people that on the tape because, you know, that tells who.
A: I... .I mean, uh, because she’s still living today. I guess she’d been the oldest then, too, but then
again, now, it’s hard to say. I mean, I knew a lot of elderly people that lived here then.
Q:
Could you think of who might have been the oldest man living in Shady Side at the time?
A: Oh, no, that’s hard to say because when I’m young like that, or when anybody’s young, everybody’s
old. Yeah, it’s hard to say, then. Yeah.. .I.. .that’s a question I couldn’t say who was the oldest because to
me, everybody was up in the years, then.
[end of Side 1 of tape]
Q: Paul, uh, what can you tell me about the church down here in Shady Side? The one you were talking
about earlier.
A: Well, of course, they have two churches but one church that. . .I go to, or it was a. . . little wooden
church, Episcopal Church, it’s a little wooden, it’s where the big brick one is now. Uh, that’s, uh, what
they call founded by my grandfather and two other fellows. . .I really do not know who they were. I do
11
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believe one of them was Neiman, I’m not sure, but they was, uh, three of them that was the founder of
that church.
Q:
And, your grandfather was the one that was the blacksmith?
A:
Yes.
Q:
Uh, huh... .and you don’t know when the church started down here?
A: No, no.. .I don’t know what, uh, what year that was in. No, I don’t have any idea. Had.. .had to be
back in, uh, oh, maybe, uh, I was christened there. . . that would. . .I know it had to be there in 1921 so,
uh, it probably 1900, I guess that church was built or maybe even before then.
Q:
And if it was a wooden church then, when did it become a brick church?
A: Oh, they tore that one down, then brick church I guess was built probably in, uh...late 30’s...possibly
in the late 30’s, I guess or maybe 40’s.
Q: Now.. .now if you belong to that church, I have interviewed some ladies who said that they used to
have magnificent dinners there.
A:
Oh, yes, yes.
Q:
Remember those?
A: Oh yes, yes, well, I really didn’t go to the dinners but, uh, I would go out and get what they call like
the carryout where they had the fish fries, oh yea, yes, they had dinners all the time out there, everybody
worked there at the church.
Q:
Was that to raise money to build the new church?
A:
Yeah, yes... .to raise money for the, uh, for the new church.
Q:
Uh, could you tell me, do you recall any sawmills in Shady Side?
A: No, not any sawmills but I know, uh, for as one, uh, one lumber company, it was called Thomas’
lumber company and that was, uh, down, uh, right at the. . . that’d be at the head of the, uh, West River.. .
sailboats would come in from Baltimore and would bring the lumber in to the lumber company there. And
then later on, as it is now, you have your lumber company, well, Smith’s lumber company... .that’s the
only lumber company right here now.
Q:
Well, I had heard that there was a sawmill down here so I didn’t know....
A:
No, not that I know of, no.
Q: Okay. Could you tell me what you know about some of the doctors who serviced the area here at
Shady Side?
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A:
Doctor Dent. . . that was, uh, the one that brought me here.
Q:
Okay, what’s your recollection...
A: Doctor Dent, he lived upon Dent Road then he, uh, had house service and then he had his little old
horse and wagon and he went around in because the roads, uh, that’s all the wider there was, just for a
horse and wagon to run up and down.
Q:
And what do you recall about Doctor Dent?
A:
Well, I don’t recall anything because I didn’t know him.
Q:
Oh, you didn’t know him?
A: No. . .I say, he was the one that brought me in and then, uh, maybe a couple of years later, he
probably passed away or something. . . .I never. . .I never knew of him, no.
Q:
Okay. . . . then, what doctor took his place down here? Was there another...
A:
Oh, I wouldn’t have any idea.
Q:
You wouldn’t have any idea?
A:
No, yeah.. .they had another doctor, sure, but I don’t know who it was, no.
Q: Could you tell me some stories that maybe your grandfather or your father told you about Shady
Side. . .maybe some unusual thing that happened here or something?
A:
No, no, huh huh.
Q:
Can’t think of anything...
A:
No, I can’t think of anything off—hand now.
Q: Okay. Uh, in showing me through your very nice house here, you showed me some things on the
wall. . .could you tell me about them?
A: Oh, there was a deer. . .yeah, I got them deer but they weren’t here. I got them down in Calvert
County.
Q:
And tell me about the one that has the thing hanging around his neck.
A: Oh that’s.. .that’s just part of a... .the arrow that I shot him with, that was the bow and arrow I got
him with. . . . that was a long bow.
Q:
And. . . and do you like to hunt?
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A: Oh yeah, yeah. . . .that was, uh, one of the things in my younger days but today, I... .I don’t walk that
much anymore now.
Q:
Did you ever hunt down here in Shady Side?
A: Oh yes. . . .they’re rabbit, the squirrel, quail, yes. . . .my grandfather, he raised quail. He actually was
the first one to bring quail down this area. He. . .he actually raised them. There’s still quail around today.
Q:
Because of that?
A:
Yeah.
Q:
Well, that’s nice.
A: But he ______ three years ago, I had quail be running right here on the property. You could say,
come here baby, eleven or twelve of them running across the yard but not now. . . .all you see today is
cats. They finished the quail up. . .rabbits all gone, yeah, even had ducks, the mallard ducks they’d be
walking around the lawn here all the time but they’re all.. .they don’t come around no more either.
Nothing but cats. . .cats kill everything. They don’t need hunters no more, cats kill everything.
Q: Well, when you used to go out hunting for. . . for rabbits and squirrels and birds, you did it with a
gun?
A:
Oh, yeah, yeah... .a shotgun, yes.
Q:
Can you tell me about one of the horns that are hanging in one of your rooms.
A: Oh, they were. . . they were the horns off the last cow on this farm. Yeah, they. . . they were. . . .my
grandfather had them mounted and, of course, I still have that today.
Q:
Now, what was the poor cow’s name?
A:
Oh, that was Betsy.
Q:
Betsy.
A:
. . . . the last cow on the farm, yeah.
Q:
Betsy, my goodness. Anything else you could tell me about Shady Side?
A: No, I think. . .I think we covered pretty well everything. All I can say is I’m sorry sewerage is
coming in. Because that is the end of Shady Side, as far as country is concerned.
Q: Uh, could you tell me what you think, maybe, are some of your. . . since you’ve lived down here in
Shady Side in your younger days, except during weekends and summers, what are some of your best
memories down here?
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A: Oh, I guess.. .guess I.. .taking a seine. You’re going across the river and you haul a seine over there,
it’s a minnow seine and you catch all the grass.
Q:
Now, what is a minnow seine?
A: A minnow seine, that’s.. . .well, that’s because it’s got a very small mesh, maybe just a quarter of an
inch. And then, uh, you can catch minnows in it and you catch, uh, grass shrimp. And we’d get, maybe,
oh, six, seven, uh, coffee cans full of grass shrimp, go in the morning and then maybe around noon or
three o’clock, whenever the tide changed, we’d be out by time it was light to set and wait for the tide to
change which would be tide going out, we called that a ebb tide and that’s when we start throwing the
minnows over. . .already grass shrimp over, just a little at a time, by your hand, and then, uh, you put
them on your hook and we’d be catching a. rock fish. And we could catch all the rock fish you want but
today, that’s all gone, the water’s gone and.. .the, uh, the grass shrimp, there are no more grass shrimp
because the grass is all gone...
Q:
Grass shrimp was not edible?
A: Oh no, no, they were, uh.. . .grass shrimp was, uh, no more than maybe a half an inch long.. .I guess
they’re edible but time you cut the head off, you took the shell off, there’s nothing there.
Q:
Why do you think the bay is polluted? You want to give me your opinion? I’d like to know.
A: I would say churning up the bottom. Because the water can be clear, the first thing in the morning
and the wind comes up and the wind.. . and the water starts to get rough, the water gets muddy, just that
quick. I think there’s been too much dredging because there are areas where it’s dredged, its muddy, you
can go in another area where it hasn’t been dredged where your oysters are and the water is clear, even
though it is rough but.. .I’d. . . . I’d say that, others say no, it’s something you never know. I.. .I don’t
think its run—off from my land and all that, I really don’t, because, uh, it’s been that way for years. But
this is only been coming about, I would say, ever since there’s been mannows and that’s when dredging
first started. That was tearing up the river bottom, tearing the bottoms up, even out in the bay. And, uh,
the bottom used to be hard but today it’s ground up, it’s soft.
Q:
Uh, speaking of the bay, you say you have oyster beds out front. Do you get oysters from them?
A:
Not now.
Q:
No.
A:
No, the water’s got too polluted. Oysters all died.
Q: Oh, that’s a shame.. . . that’s a real shame. That’s terrible. Uh, could you tell me what you did when
you first started to work, what did you do as an.. .what was your occupation?
A:
Uh, first one I started with, the first job I ever had, I worked for a bookbinding company.
Q:
And where was that?
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A: That was in Baltimore. . . then there right after the bookbinding job, I went in the Navy. When I got
out of the Navy, I came out and went into refrigeration and air conditioning.
Q:
How long were you in the Navy?
A:
Two years, nine months and twenty days.
Q:
And would you mind telling me where you served?
A:
Pacific.
Q:
In the Pacific. Okay, uh, and then you went in refrigeration..
A: Refrigeration, air condition, for five years and from there, I went to work in heavy construction, that
was. . . .started that on the first Bay Bridge in 1949. And I.
Q:
What did. . .what did you do on the Bay Bridge?
A: Tending the diver. . .my brother was a diver. I was his tender. Deep see diver. He was a diver in the
Navy, too. Well, then we built the Bay Bridge and then from there, did the foundation for buildings in
Washington and worked on the Jonesport Bridge or Woodrow Wilson Bridge, whatever you want to call
it.. . .and built that one and then from there, went on, uh, Foggy Bottom, that’s the Roosevelt Island
Bridge. . .and then, uh, different bridges and different foundations and then, of course, the subway came
in Washington. . .went the subway and then I worked at that stuff, all together, was 33 years. . . just that
heavy construction and then I just retired. I retired just four years ago.
Q:
And now you’re just enjoying living on the bay, now.
A:
Oh yeah, yeah, just doing ,what I want to do...
Q:
Doing what you want to do...
A:
Go where I want to go.
Q:
Well, that’s good.
A: Yes, I. . . .I been down to Epcot and going down to the Keys. . .uh, maybe this year, I’ll get up to
Canada. I want to go up to the World’s Fair up there. Uh. . .we’ll see how things go.
Q:
Thank you, Paul.
A:
Okay. Nice talking to you.
Q:
We really appreciate it.
A:
All right, bye.
16
�
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Title
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Captain Avery Museum
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1986001-Coates PE
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/13888/archive/files/e62d6867d1d78b94bcadc49744385386.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=fJvUpXRz3UcWMjyqQwgqVwMVVguajWIUfhVYRn-Hz-muZqYaRvzg0ITxi23EswsExeN4k5B6tc%7EZ56oXmPs4qCQ-95OvPzKRfc41jpeRgJ7DGqbyn63m%7EWUsoej16RuBr9zD5XK8okvslUrA83R1RTwLkwbOnKl66nEE7PCt0b5l1dH8AXeA0yI3Qs4bLWv24rgariBhLXShS%7E4Ggv-avGRz0wN-0ExuHaoz-9MwkjM7I39LqxKmynfr00fbgDV010PN7gul7xF4jmwRUgI5ZcDftIKUCbRE434t14zibJGtLCDm6H7N-zcgwxZ4N2zJVs37fsvGIpIvcwxLm7FRqg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
f544586cd6c7ac251eaf196b83b42044
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY
Captain Avery Museum
Strong, Alma Hartge
Date of Interview: October 1, 1986
Interviewing: Alma Hartge Strong
Church Lane, Galesville, Maryland
Interviewer: Jennie LeFevre
1986.003
1986.003
JL: Mrs. Strong, would you please tell us if you were born in Galesville and in Shady Side?
AHS: I was born in Shady Side on what they say is Parrish Creek, in a house on Parrish Creek. Uh,at that
time it was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Forbes.
JL: And would you mind telling us what year you were born?
AHS: 1904, June 28th, 1904.
JL: Uh, what were your parents names?
AHS: Oscar E. Hartge and Alice W. Hartge.
JL: And did you have brothers and sisters?
AHS: Not at that time. I was the oldest, I was the first child.
JL: Oh, I see, uh huh. And uh, how long did you live in Shady Side?
AHS: Oh, probably a little over two years, because the sister next to me was born in Shady Side, but not
at the same place.
JL: Uh huh, ... would you mind telling us the names of your brothers and sisters?
AHS: All the way through?
JL: Well, how many brothers and sisters did you have?
AHS: Well, there were 11 of us.
JL: Eleven.
AHS: Nine living.
JL: Nine living?
AHS: Uh huh.
JL: Nine that are still living?
AHS: Yes, uh huh.
JL: My goodness, that’s great.
AHS: And, this is the house where we were raised.
JL: And what age were you then, when you moved to Galesville?
AHS: I was, let’s see, I was between three and four.
JL: And you said that, that you used to go back to Galesville, I mean, go back to Shady Side on weekends
and so forth, then who did you visit?
AHS: My uncle Eddie Hartge and his wife was Aunt Minnie, who was my mother’s sister, there was a
double relationship there.
�JL: And where did they live in Shady Side?
AHS: I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of where Judge Hayes had his place? That has since
burned down and ... uh ... well, it’s right straight down, you know where Preston Owings lives …
JL: No.
AHS: … if you go right straight down that way toward the river, it would be right there, it was right on
West River. Left side.
JL: And uh, uh, could you tell us ... um, what you used to do for entertainment when you were a little girl
and go down and visit them on weekends?
AHS: Climb under the house and run around the fields. Just, and then also go over to Cedar Point
because there were relatives over there, I would go over there and see them.
JL: Did your other brothers and sisters also go with you when you ...
AHS: No, just me.
JL: It was just you?
AHS: It was just me.
JL: Just you. Uh, as you grew older, like in your teenage years and you would go over to visit them,
what did you used to do in the summer for entertainment?
AHS: As a teenager I did not go over there. By that time I had started high school and, and I was 14 and
I stayed in Annapolis all during the week and came home weekends. So I stayed home.
JL: Uh, have you ever skated out on the West River?
AHS: Yes.
JL: And could you tell me a little bit about it?
AHS: I didn’t, I was not much of a skater, I wore very poor ankles, but I loved to get out on the skate and
as I understand it, my father started me up when I was six years old, bought me skates, turned a tomato
basket upside down so I could support myself and skated that way.
JL: That’s a unique way to do it, but I don’t …it probably was very easy. Did you ever skate at night
time?
AHS: No.
JL: No, no. Could you remember some of the people that you skated with?
AHS: Oh gosh yes. Well, I would say, of course my brothers who were old enough at that time and my
sister, sisters skated and a number of the village people skated. Oh, I know the Dixon’s, of course, very
good skaters and also my aunts used to like to get out on the ice and skate, three of those that I can
remember who used to skate and two of my uncles, so there were plenty of family out on the ice …
(Inject JL: Un) and my father.
JL: And your father?
AHS: And he was a very good skater.
JL: Oh. Could you tell me what you remember of the “Emma Giles”?
AHS: I remember the “Emma Giles” coming in five times a week during the summer and I went to
Baltimore to work, it was after getting through high school in Annapolis, I, in the summer time, traveled
on the “Emma Giles”, came from Baltimore to West River on Saturdays and went back on Sundays.
2
�JL: How much would it cost to go from here to Baltimore on the “Emma Giles”?
AHS: I don’t really remember but I’m sure it wasn’t very much because I didn’t make much salary.
JL: Could you please explain to me what the “Emma Giles” looked like?
AHS: Well, she was what they called a side wheeler; and let’s see, and may I get something here?
JL: Yes ma’am. Tape goes off/ then on
AHS: They have an “Emma Giles” Day, YWCA sponsors it, you know. And so I usually carry all my
things down there that have to do with the “Emma Giles” and have to do with the Bay steamers and …
JL: The book you just showed me is wonderful because it’s all about the “Emma Giles”.
AHS: Yes, uh huh, yes. And I have a few more pieces, also.
JL: Are there any stories that you could tell me about when the show boat used to come into Galesville?
AHS: I only remember going there once or twice, all … I just remembered that uh, it was a privilege, I
guess, to go and see a show, because it was … I’m sure I was young, and we just thought it was pretty
wonderful.
JL: You don’t recollect what type of shows they had?
AHS: No I don’t.
JL: No you don’t.
AHS: It was too far back.
JL: Could you tell me about some of the people who lived in Galesville at the time that you used to go
down and visit on the weekends?
AHS: Oh yes. The Woodfield’s, of course, and one of those girls was just my age and we were very
good friends. The Smith’s, who run the ... well the pile driving company now, there was a daughter there,
Agnes and she and I were the same age. And, of course, there were the Dixon’s and there were no girls
my age, but some of the boys were and, of course the Kolb family and one of those boys was about my
age. And then, not right in the village, but there were others who came to the school ... I remember the
Hunt’s, Robert Hunt was about my age. Also, the Hopkins’, Randolph Hopkins was about my age, so…
um ... I’m sure I’m leaving out some.
JL: Yeah I know, it’s, it’s difficult sometimes when I ask questions.
AHS: Yes, right, uh huh.
JL: Did you ever go to the Andrews Hotel?
AHS: I never did.
JL: You never, never went to the hotel?
AHS: No. Well, I knew Mrs. Andrews and, of course I knew the Nowell family and like … uh … Mrs.
Mary Nowell, who kept the … who had the post office there for a while and her, her daughter and my
sister were very good, very close friends. And, of course, relatives also. Mrs. Mary Nowell had been a
Hartge and ...
JL: I won’t ask you anymore questions, I’ll just let you talk because they said that you have lots of neat
stories to tell us, so ... uh …
AHS: Well, you better give me a few hints as to what ...
3
�JL: Give you a few hints ... uh ... could you tell me something about, um , um, well what did your father
do for a living? We’ll start with that.
AHS: In later years he was a yacht captain, previous to that he was an oyster buyer, he also caught
oysters and sold them. And then, uh, later years he started the, the Hartge Yacht Yard. And ...
JL: Do you know what year he did start the Yacht Yard?
AHS: Either ‘33 or ‘34. And, of course, he had a number of his family employed there, he had a lot of
boys, that gave us an opportunity for them to work and not have to go away from home.
JL: Well, you said you had brothers and sisters, how many sisters did you have and how many brothers?
AHS: I had three sisters, and so there were seven brothers.
JL: Oh my goodness, no wonder he had lots of young men to help him. And ... uh ... uh ... did he build
boats down there or did people ...
AHS: No, he did not. He ... uh ... kept boats there for people at piers (insert JL: I see) and did some repair
work. My grandfather had started the Hartge Yacht Yard, he built boats and then one of his sons joined
him, he also built boats, but then my father came along and he did not, it was not a partnership, but it was
all together as far as the land and shops went and ... uh ... so he kept boats there, indoors and also had
railways and they hauled and repaired and ...
JL: Uh huh, uh huh. And could you, um, recall some of the people who came down there, were there
people from the city who left their boats down here or just … was it local people?
AHS: No, they were people from the city, mainly from Washington.
JL: Mainly from Washington?
AHS: Yes. Since I was not associated with the yard at that age, I did not know too many of them, later,
later years, I was. But to go back a little bit, after I got through school here in Galesville, I went to high
school in Annapolis, that was the only white high school in Anne Arundel County at that time. So, I had
to stay, during the week, and just come home weekends.
JL: And you stay with was it relatives?
AHS: I stayed with a relative the first year, after that I stayed at the Y for two years. And then with ... uh
… an older lady, and there were several of us stayed with these people and by the way, one of them was
Liza. Zimmerman, whose husband wrote Anchors Away.
JL: Is that right? Well how interesting. How interesting.
AHS: So, when I got through high school I went to Baltimore to work.
JL: And what did you do?
AHS: I was a dental assistant and I was there for three years and then I was married then we moved to
Pennsylvania. We lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania for three years.
JL: Excuse me, what year were you married?
AHS: 1925.
JL: And what was your husband’s name?
AHS: Herbert Strong. After living there three years, we moved to Washington, D. C., and lived there 16
years and came home practically every weekend.
4
�JL: Came home, came home to Galesville?
AHS: Yes, yes
JL: I see, I see.
AHS: And then I moved back here in 1945 because my father asked me, if I would please come and help
him out at the boat yard … that they did not have a bookkeeper at that time because my sister, who had
been bookkeeper for a long time was getting ready to raise her family. So, I reluctantly, at first, because I
liked my other kind of work.
JL: And do you and your husband have children?
AHS: No we do not.
JL: You do not have children. So when you moved, then, back to Galesville, did you move to this house
or was it some other house.
AHS: We moved with my mother and father and my husband commuted for, let’s see, ten … (under her
breath counted years), for 20 years, he commuted.
JL: And so, you stayed with your mother and father, your husband and yourself stayed with your mother
and father and then later on …
AHS: For seven, for seven years and then we bought the little cottage next to the boat yard and lived
there for 21 years and then built this house.
JL: Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
AHS: We fortunately had bought this piece of property from my father when we first came home to live
and later the boat yard wanted the cottage, where we were living, as an office so we had this house built.
JL: Now, we know that the Hartge family is a very important family in this area and a very, a very
prominent family. Could you tell us a little bit about the Hartge family history?
AHS: Well ...
JL: Who was the first Hartge who came into this area?
AHS: Henry Hartge.
JL: And ... uh ... uh ... and what area did he settle in?
AHS: Shady Side.
JL: In Shady Side?
AHS: The whole, no, let’s see, it was the other book …
JL: Is it this one?
AHS: No, no. This is the one.
JL: Oh ... I see, oh, I’m … And he settled in Shady Side, exactly where in Shady Side did he settle?
AHS: That they called Mill Point.
JL: Mill Point?
AHS: Uh huh. And later, uh, they had, well of course ... uh ... all the children were born in Germany
except the youngest daughter and she was born in America.
5
�JL: Now, now what; do you know what year he came to Shady Side?
AHS: Approximately 1850.
JL: Uh huh. And he was … the, this gentlemen was the one who was the piano manufacturer?
AHS: Yes, and then, of course, his sons worked with him.
JL: And how many sons did he have?
AHS: One, two, three.
JL: He had three sons? And ... uh ... uh …
AHS: See the name?
JL: Oh yes indeed. Now, he made all these pianos by hand ...
AHS: Well, that I would not know.
JL: You don’t know the history of it.
AHS: No, not exactly, um.
JL: Now is, are, are any of these pianos still in existence?
AHS: Oh yes.
JL: How many would you say?
AHS: We have three in the family.
JL: Three that he actually built?
AHS: Yes. This one is ... Henry Hartge, belongs to my sister who lives over on Chalk Point, there’s one
at the boat yard and I believe that has Hartge Brothers on it, so apparently the sons, by that time must
have taken over.
JL: Uh huh ... and where is the third one?
AHS: The third one is in Washington at the time, it’s in storage because my niece does not have a large
enough place to keep it.
JL: I see.
AHS: And so that’s … and I’m not sure of the name that’s on that one.
JL: And how many years did he build pianos?
AHS: After he came to West River he did not build as a manufacturer, he built on order.
JL: I see, I see. And does your family history say how many pianos he actually built?
AHS: No, I’m afraid not.
JL: Well, that’s a shame.
AHS: Yes. Uh huh.
JL: That’s a real shame. And so this, this was like his main occupation?
AHS: Yes, yes.
6
�JL: And he had learned his trade in Germany?
AHS: Yes. He had learned, I must say, he had learned piano manufacturing. When he came to America
he came alone ...
JL: How old was he?
AHS: Let me see … He was born in 1794, (insert JL: He was born in 1794) so he was, and he came to
America about 1830 … (actually Mrs. Strong said 1930 but obviously a misstatement).
JL: I see, ok, ok. So he came alone … I’m sorry, I interrupted you.
AHS: He came alone and sent for his family later. His wife and, let’s see, one, two, three, four, and his
four children ... this, this girl ...
JL: Mathilda?
AHS: Yes, she was married in America … I mean she was born in America. The rest were born in
Germany.
JL: I see. And ... uh ... uh ... so you don’t really, actually know how many years that he actually built
pianos?
AHS: Well, as I said, he moved out of Baltimore approximately 1850 and came to West River.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: As I understand, from what has been told me, he came to West River to tune pianos, at that time
they had what they called the Hundreds, you know, people were given property by the English people,
very large estates and at that time, let’s see, Murray’s and the Cheston’s and the Elsey’s and people like
that and would ask him to come down and tune the pianos. They also would more or less entertain, as I
also understand they had their large properties stocked with deer and other game and he liked that and
would be invited to stay down to do those kinds of things. That’s when he decided that West River was a
very lovely place. And that is why he decided to come here to live.
JL: And, uh, then what year did this gentleman pass away?
AHS: (Inaudible) (Tape was cut off and then cut back on picking up conversation in mid-sentence)
-Oh, wait a minute, no, her father was finally Heinrich Christian ______.
JL: Oh, ok.
AHS: And was born there and died there so I do not, I’m sure my sister would know. I’m sorry.
JL: Then when he passed away, did his family stay in the West River area?
AHS: Yes, yes. His wife … I have a piece of paper there that I have to return to a relative and she divided
the property among her sons and daughters, with the proviso that she could live with them at different
times if they did not find that advisable, they were to pay her so much ...
[Tape was once again cut off and then cut back on picking up conversation in mid—sentence.] … Mary,
his wife, Neil O. and his wife, Margaret, Pauline Door (maybe Dore), Clement Siegert, and Mathilda
Siegert. These were Emily and Henry’s children.
JL: I see.
AHS: And she divided the property among them, so Henry Hartge died …
JL: And it was with the understanding that she could go live with them from time to time?
AHS: Yes. Uh huh, and I think she lived with Neil 0. Hartge … inaudible …
7
�JL: Uh, could you tell us what his sons later did for an occupation?
AHS: I can only tell you definitely about Levine, who was a musician and was head of a girl’s school
down in the south, in Mississippi, I believe, and I think that the others, of course, stayed and helped with
the manufacture of the pianos. What they did later, I don’t know.
JL: What generation of Hartge are you?
AHS: Fifth, the fifth generation.
JL: The fifth generation. And many, many books have been written about the Hartge family ...
AHS: Well, I don’t know about books ...
JL: The family history ...
AHS; But, there have been articles, yes. The only book is the one that my sister wrote, this one.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: The reason she was able to get the information, I was told that a lot of the family correspondence
between the ones in Germany and the ones in America were in the safe of my father’s cousin, so I asked
one of their granddaughters if she would ask her brother if we could borrow them. And he very graciously
said yes. My sister attempted to have them deciphered from the German, but there were not many people
in this area who knew the old German and she moved to Florida, she found two professors who knew the
old German and that is where she got her stuff.
JL: How interesting. That is interesting.
AHS: And you see this is ...
JL: Oh yes, I see, in 1976 she started, in 1976 she started this or she got it completed.
AHS: Uh huh, it was completed.
JL: It was completed in ‘76.
AHS: Yes, because it’s been 10 years.
JL: It was ten years being completed?
AHS: Oh no, it was ten years ago it was completed.
JL: Oh yeah, but how many years did it take her to actually complete?
AHS: I don’t know. A long time, probably, and without her husband I don’t think she could have done it,
he was a tremendous help to her. You see now, here’s the fourth generation.
JL: And you are the fifth, you said.
AHS: I am the fifth generation, yes ... (inaudible).
JL: And is the
AHS: There’s my father …
JL: OK.
AHS: The fourth generation ...
JL: Ok. Is the, is the first Hartge, the gentleman who came here to this country from Germany and his
wife buried in this area?
8
�AHS: Yes. And that is something we would like very much to be able to do is to have that old cemetery
cleaned up. It’s over at Shady Side, but it is terribly grown up and any, there are several of us who said
well we would certainly like to see it cleaned up. We hope that maybe we can get it done because I’m
sure that there are trees in there now and, of course, it is terribly over grown with weeds.
JL: Are there, are there actually headstones in there?
AHS: Yes, yes.
JL: There are?
AHS: Yes.
JL: With, with writing on it..
AHS: And Henry’s, I’m sure Henry’s is in there.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: And he’s the one who came to the country.
JL: Why, that’s a pity that it’s overgrown like that.
AHS: Yes, well you see nobody has been living in that place.
JL: It was back on a family property?
AHS: Yes, it was on the property.
JL: I see, I see. So no one has lived there for a long time …
AHS: No.
JL: … so that’s why it has gone to the ...
AHS: The property was sold to a Judge Hayes and ... uh ... I’m sure they lived there for a while and then
I believe the son lived there but it seemed as though while he was living there the place burned. I do not
know who owns the property now cause there’s no house there.
JL: I see, I see, well. I, I hope that it will be taken care of.
AHS: Well, we certainly hope so and I think that, you know (Nellie: inserted later) Chicks Nowell, well I
think she mentioned something to my sister about it and to see, and there are enough of us if each one
would pitch in with a little bit, we could have it done.
JL: I see, I think so, yes. That would be great, well, that would be nice, that would be like a nice old land
mark.
AHS: Yes.
JL: It really would be.
AHS: Yes, it would.
JL: Uh, can you tell us some other things about your family?
AHS: Such as?
JL: Such as ... uh …
AHS: Well, as I said, we lived over, I lived over here with my mother and father, they lived here from
about 1907 or 08 until my father died in 1955, my mother died in 1961, but that was their home for their
duration, their life time. So my mother lived with my husband and I for two years before she died, but
that was because of her health.
9
�JL: I see.
AHS: But it was still her home.
JL: But she would go back to her house once in a while?
AHS: Uh, once in a while, but she had gotten so that we would have to take her back.
JL: Uh huh, uh huh.
AHS: Know, of course, like a lot of elderly people she could remember the old things better than she
could the more recent things.
JL: Over all her life that’s a fact, they’re all like that at some times.
AHS: Uh huh.
JL: Mrs. Strong, you have all kinds of wonderful books here about your family and you have ... uh, uh,
uh ... your family history and you have poems written by some lady in your family and perhaps on the
other side of the tape you’ll tell me who this lady was and ... uh ...
AHS: My aunt, my father’s sister.
JL: Your father’s sister?
AHS: Uh huh.
JL: And she ... uh ... that’s what she liked to do is write poetry.
AHS: Yes, of course, she worked in Baltimore at ... uh ... at a hospital, I think Dr. Kelly, Dr. Harley
Kelly, who was well known even in Johns Hopkins, in medical circles, in Baltimore and all over the
world. And she worked with him for a good many years.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: And, but, she, like the rest of us, came home weekends, we’re all, just had to get home weekends.
JL: Well, certainly, certainly. Well, let me turn the tape over and we’ll talk more about her on the other
side here.
[End of Side 1 of tape]
JL: Now, would you like to read, would you like to pick out one of her poems, which ever one you
think’s your favorite or which ever and read us one of them, it’s a lovely book.
AHS: One to my brother, so if I can find that.
JL: OK. (Long pause)
AHS: Why don’t I read the one to Dr. Kelly, for whom she worked many years.
“To Dr. Kelly on his 75th birthday”.
I’ve tried and tried but all in vain
To think of a new and sweet refrain,
To let you know I think of you
And wish you all that’s good and true
On this, another year’s milestone
Of a life well spent and duties done,
10
�But this is all I can write or say,
May you live for many a new birthday.
JL: Ha, ha, and what, and what ...
AHS: That was in 1933 that she wrote that.
JL: How delightful, how delightful.
AHS: We thought she was an exceptional person. We knew that she was very well read, she liked to read,
we used to even say that she studied the dictionary. But ... um … and she had the welfare of the family at
heart, I think that nobody would hesitate about going to her for advice and she always thought about her
brothers and sisters and especially her mother and father.
JL: When you all used to come home on weekends, could you tell us what you all did?
AHS: Talk.
JL: Talk?
AHS: And laugh and carry on and kid each other and, well ... uh ... a number of them, the older ones used
to sail every weekend, of course they always had sails here, sailing here. And, when I can remember a lot
of the boys on Sunday morning hauling the boats over on the side, cleaning off the bottom and then it
would be dinner time, everyone, everyone would pile into dinner, then everyone would go sailing, I very
seldom went sailing, I used to stay home and help my mother with the dishes.
JL: Because you didn’t like to sail, or ...
AHS: Oh no, oh no.
JL: was it because you had to stay home and help your mother?
AHS: Well, I didn’t have to, but I’m sure I felt it was my duty.
JL: I see, I see.
AHS: I’d sail once in a while, once in a while they would relieve me of the duties, but the sister, the
youngest sister, she sailed quite a bit, in fact she had her own boat.
JL: Uh, what was her name?
AHS: Elsie.
JL: Elsie?
AHS: Uh huh. And ... uh ... Florence, the sister next to me, she wasn’t, wasn’t that much of a sailor
either, although we both loved to sail, when we had the opportunity.
JL: Could you tell me a little bit what the area, Galesville and Shady Side, looked like in those days? I
mean, did you ...
AHS: In those days, when we were youngsters, my grandfather’s house was over on what we called “this
point”, Whitestake Point. There was no other house between that and my grandfather’s, my father’s
house, right here. And, my grandfather’s brother had a house right across the road which went from the
road down to the creek. When I was a child, those were the three houses I remember on this point. Later,
other pieces of property were sold and not always to the family, outsiders.
JL: And could you tell me a little bit what Shady Side looked like that you remember?
AHS: Well, of course, I didn’t do much ...
11
�JL: When you would go there on weekends?
AHS: No, well, as I said, I stayed right there at my uncle’s and aunt’s house as a rule, then I would walk
over to what we call Cedar Point or West Shady Side I think they call it now, where a number of the
Linton’s lived. They were related, also, on my grandmother’s side, so I would go over and visit with some
of them. I very seldom went out into Shady Side.
JL: So you don’t recall even any of the stores that might have existed then?
AHS: Oh ... not really. Oh, the thing I remember mostly was the post office when Mrs. Andrews did not
have, it was later, it was Mrs. Andrews’ brother’s wife who ran the post office, Mrs. Mary Nowell. There
was a store right near there, but I cannot remember the name of it now. Oh, Owings.
JL: Owings?
AHS: Yes. They had a store close by the post office.
JL: And were, I imagine, then the roads were not paved?
AHS: Oh no. Oh no indeed.
JL: They were not paved at all?
AHS: No, uh huh. I remember riding out with my uncle one time, he had to go up to his wife’s sister to
get eggs. He had a boarding house.
JL: In Shady Side?
AHS: Yes.
JL: And ... uh ... excuse me, what was this gentleman’s name?
AHS: “Eddie” Hartge we called him, Edmond Hartge.
JL: OK.
AHS: And I remember riding with him to go get the eggs and that was quite an event, I wasn’t used to
horses.
JL: Uh, where did he have his boarding house in Shady Side?
AHS: Right as I told you, you know where the cemetery is? And that was one of the home places.
JL: And how many boarders could he take in?
AHS: Oh I don’t think, not too many I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say more than eight or ten, maybe.
JL: What age were you during that time, do you know?
AHS: Well, it was before I was, before I went to high school. So it would have to of been, I would say,
maybe eight to 12, approximately.
JL: I see, I see. So you would, the reason I’m asking this is, you wouldn’t remember even what he would
have charged a guest.
AHS: Oh no, no.
JL: And he had a boarding house and there was the Andrews’ hotel, do you recall any other boarding
houses that were there at the time?
AHS: Yes, cause Charlie Hartge, which was farther up the road, which was next to Mill Point. Mill Point
was the original piece of Hartge property. And next to it was, what we called Cousin Charlie Hartge, who
was my grandfather’s cousin, that was a boarding house.
12
�JL: That was a boarding house also, did he take in ... uh, uh ... large amount of guests then, then
AHS: I think he probably did. When you turn it off, I’ll tell you something else.
JL: You said that you and your husband were ...
AHS: Yes, my husband and I were on a senior citizen’s bus trip up in the Poconos. While we were
sitting out in the lobby after one of the meals, a gentleman came over to me and he said are you a member
of the Galesville senior citizens group? And I said, “yes”. He said, “ I remember as a child, going to
Galesville We stayed at a boarding house in Shady Side and my father would row us over to Galesville,
there was what they called an ice cream parlor; there and I always, will always remember that.” He said,
“ where we stayed was old Captain Charlie Hartge.” He said, “I bet you wouldn’t remember that.” I said,
“I just happen to be a Hartge.”
JL: And he was so excited, I bet ...
AHS: He was so excited he called his wife over, she’s, and she’s, he said oh, come over here, I want you
to meet somebody.
JL: That’s wonderful, that’s a wonderful story. So it’s ... uh ... really a small world after all.
AHS: Oh yes. Right, uh huh.
JL: Oh I like that, that’s wonderful.
AHS: And he was so excited.
JL: And did he correspond with you and your husband later or ...
AHS: No, really no, it was just one of those casual things.
JL: Oh, but how nice. I bet he just wanted to talk about a lot of things.
AHS: Well, he was so young, cause he was just a child.
JL: Yeah but … I mean if, but it must of impressed him cause you remembered.
AHS: Oh yes, the name, yes.
JL: Well, my goodness ... (inaudible) to meet somebody. Well, that’s great. Is there anything else you
can tell us about Shady Side or Galesville that … uh ... maybe a little bit about some of the stores that
were in Galesville at the time.
AHS: The store I remember best was Kolb’s store. That was a very old store as I remember, was the post
office at one time and the owner, Mr. Kolb, used to run it and the store. Two of his sons were on the
Emma Giles, later on.
JL: They were ...
AHS: Two of Mr. Kolb’s sons.
JL: Oh, I see, what did they do on the Emma Giles, do you know?
AHS: Oh, I swear by, if I just had that piece of paper.
JL: Would you like to read this letter?
AHS: Yes. “ Dear Alma, Thank you so much for the picture of the Emma Giles. It is good write-up of
the old days but the thing I remember best is the way black Mary was mobbed when she stepped aboard
with her baskets of deviled crabs at the stop in Annapolis. She ran out, always, in short order.
13
�Another thing I remember is standing or leaning against the thick glass in front of the brightly polished
brass parts of the steam engine and warming our tummys during the winter trips. (JL interjects: Ohhh)
Another thing I remember is friends and relatives getting off at Galesville, brought to the house for a
visit.”
(My grandmother’s house.) (Evidently not part of the letter ... I’m alright was it let’ see, was it captain.
.oh)
(Starts up again) “Sarah Wilson used to bring Doughbrines or Doughbriners delicious ice cream and put
aboard at Chalk Point. I thought the Emma stopped at Captain Ed Leatherbury’s pier at Shady Side, but I
supposed she would stop at other places if there were many summer boarders to get off. I don’t know
where Nowell’s pier is or was ...”
JL: This was an aunt who sent you this ...
AHS: Yes, uh huh.
JL: Well, how nice. Interesting, yes. Probably brought … really brought back lots of memories, too.
AHS: Oh yes. (evidently continuation of letter) “Is Avalon Shores behind the front of the old Lerch
place?”
Insert: The Lerch place is where the Chesapeake Yacht Club is now.
“The Yacht Club is on the water front. Cousin Tommy’s place, where there was a wind mill and a big
white house. I went there several times with Papa and later with Edmond.”
Then she wanted to know about some of the different people who now lived in Shady Side. … same
time. She was my youngest aunt so she was not many years older than I am, than I was.
JL: Could you tell me what the Emma Giles looked like on the inside? I understand it was very plush
and …
AHS: I wouldn’t say it was so plush. I usually spent a good bit of my time when back and forth down
around what was the dance floor and that was where they had places where you could sit, but not real
comfortable chairs. Just a place for people sitting together. Also, when the weather was good, I did like
to be out on deck and sit there, but they were just benches along there and it was not that plush.
JL: How long would it take it, I mean what, how long would it take it to go from Baltimore to Galesville?
How long of a trip was it?
AHS: Of course it stopped in Annapolis, as a rule. I don’t really remember. Gosh, that’s been too many
years ago.
JL: Well, that’s ok, I ...
AHS: I would say a couple of hours or more.
JL: A couple of hours, my goodness..
AHS: Oh, yeah ...
JL: Oh my goodness…
AHS: So, I think we used to leave at 1:00, I believe, and probably got here around three, that’s just a
guess.
14
�JL: But you would come home every weekend?
AHS: During the summer, because the Emma Giles only ran on Saturday’s and Sunday’s during the
summer months. She just ran three times a week when she was bringing freight back and forth, Monday,
Wednesday and Friday.
JL: So I imagine when she came into Galesville here, she did come into Galesville?
AHS: Yes.
JL: She would bring some things, maybe, for your father’s boat yard?
AHS: Uh, probably, I wouldn’t say there was too much. You see, she came into Shady Side first, there
were three stops in West River.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: And so they stopped at Shady Side first, then they stopped at Galesville and then they went to
Chalk Point. And then from there out they went on back, and stopping in Annapolis, and then on to
Baltimore.
JL: But I imagine it was a very nice trip, though.
AHS: It was, I always enjoyed it. I also traveled on the Tolchester Line going to eastern shore. My
husband and I used to spend some weekends over there and sometimes we would go from Baltimore on
the Tolchester boat.
JL: And where did it land?
AHS: Tolchester, Maryland.
JL: Oh, in Tolchester, I see, OK.
AHS: So, I saw a lot of the Tolchester. It died?
JL: They tell me that there used to be ice breakers, in the winter, that, do you remember any of that?
AHS: The “Annapolis”. Well, the “Annapolis” was one of the Tolchester boats. She was equipped to
break ice and winter time she would be the one to come in here to ... uh ... into the different …, into West
River ...
JL: To bring different things?
AHS: Yes, uh huh. Well she did the same thing that the “Emma Giles” would have done if the weather
had been better.
JL: Well, I’m glad I asked you that then cause ... really, you know, I don’t know anything about this area
so I’m, I’m really learning a lot.
AHS: Then the “Louise” was another one of the Tolchester boats. She was, to me, the largest one. She
was the one that would come in and take the people over to Tolchester for the day. And then there was the
“Tolchester”, and the “Annapolis”, and the “Louise”, and the “Emma Giles”. Those are the ones I can
remember.
JL: Uh huh. Interesting. But, it sounds like if you were on quite a few of the boats that you did like the
water?
AHS: Oh yes. I lived right on the river.
15
�JL: But, now, you were telling me that ... uh ... you liked, sometimes you went sailing, I imagine you
went swimming a lot too.
AHS: I did. Yes, we could, those days we had good, clear water.
JL: Had sparkle to it?
AHS: Yeah. And we would, would run down the wharf and jump overboard and swim around and
mother wouldn’t let us stay in too long though, and during blackberry season we would very often go to
pick blackberries over at the place across from, from the boat yard, which is known as Belle Groves.
When we got back, we would be allowed to go swimming the second day, the second time that day,
because you got chiggers on you. Otherwise, we were only allowed to go swimming once a day.
JL: And did you, did you and your brothers and sisters do crabbing and fishing, too?
AHS: Crabbing, yes. That was my middle name.
JL: Well, tell me about it, we would like to hear about that.
AHS: Well, I loved to crab and I used to stand up in the bow of a boat and push along the shores and look
for crabs, catch them whenever I could get, whenever I could. Soft crabs especially.
JL: Would you go alone or ...
AHS: Alone.
JL: You went alone?
AHS: Sometimes I would take one of the younger ones, but they always had to keep still, so they didn’t
like to go.
JL: Uh huh, but you, you really liked to do ...
AHS: Oh, I loved it. I loved it.
JL: And you’d bring them home, then, to your parents?
AHS: Yes, and I sold em, that was how I made some of my spending money.
JL: Oh,well, where did you used to sell them?
AHS: Right here in the village, I mean a lot of people would like to buy soft crabs.
JL: And how much would you sell them …
AHS: Thirty-five cents a dozen.
JL: Oh, thirty-five cents a dozen?
AHS: I always remember that.
JL: But I imagine you could sell as ..., every one you had.
AHS: Well, of course, we also, there were a lot of them kept for the house.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: But there were some few people who knew that I crabbed and they would buy crabs from us.
JL: And if you didn’t come to their door, I imagine they would come to your door?
AHS: Right. Yes, I didn’t go around and peddle them.
16
�JL: But they knew that you had them so they came directly to you.
AHS: Yes.
JL: Well, that’s interesting.
AHS: I still have that reputation. In fact, I have a letter over there that was written to me by my father in
1911, so I was seven years old, and he … evidently my mother must have written to him, because he
asked me in the letter, did you sell enough crabs to buy your new crab net? (laughter)
JL: Well you were young when you were doing it?
AHS: Yes, I was. And weekends, after I, after I went to work or after I went to school and came home,
the first thing I wanted to do. But, my father always made me clean out that boat afterwards. He was a
stickler for keeping the boat clean.
JL: Uh. .was it your boat or was it his?
AHS: His. It was a row boat.
JL: His, oh, I see, uh huh, Insert AHS: a rowboat. JL: And did it have a name, this little boat?
AHS: The last one, the one that I used for many years was called The “Little Alice” after my mother.
JL: Oh, how nice, how nice.
AHS: And I had that boat after he died, until about two years ago and I gave it to my brother.
JL: Uh huh. Now if you like to crab, what did your brothers and sisters like to do you said ... (inaudible).
AHS: I had a couple of those that liked to crab, also.
JL: But you wouldn’t let them go with you, they had to go alone?
AHS: Oh, I had to go alone. Sometimes the two of us would go together, now the one brother, who lives
close by now, he and I very often went together. Of course, I could only do it weekends.
JL: Yes
AHS: As I got older.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: And, when I was doing it younger, they were not old enough to do it.
JL: Alright, now how many years would you say you did this, a lot of years?
AHS: A lot of years, as I told you, well the letter I have from 1911 when I was seven, so I had been doing
it then, for at least a year in order to buy a crab net and I still like to crab. Not on the bow of a boat cause
I, I’ve given my boat away. But I like to put the traps over and crab in those traps everyday.
JL: And how often do you do it now?
AHS: Every day.
JL: Every day?
AHS: During crab season.
JL: Yeah, oh yeah. Oh, that’s great, that’s great, yes indeed. Did, did and did you ever do crabbing in the
times you went over to Shady Side?
AHS: No.
17
�JL: No, you never did, just here in Galesville.
AHS: Uh huh.
JL: But, I, I’m sure since you were little here in Galesville, you’ve really seen Galesville grow?
AHS: Sure have.
JL: Really
JL: Could you tell me a little bit about it?
AHS: As I think I mentioned a little while ago that the, my early childhood was just the three houses on
this point. As you went up the road, one, two, three, four, five houses on the left hand side going up. On
the right hand side one, two, two houses, the school house and the church next to it and then another
house on the corner. And that was in this immediate neighborhood. Oh, since then, there have been
many houses that have been built on the waterfront down here that ... uh … the entrance is from this road,
but I remember, I was collecting for the leukemia fund and I made a list of all the places I would have to
call on, in this, I had only Church Lane and there were 40- some places I had to call. That shows the …,
how much, the growth.
JL: Indeed, indeed. When you were little, were there churches in Galesville here?
AHS: Yes, there was a Methodist Church in Galesville and as a small child I went there. Later on we
went to the Episcopal Church in Owensville. Reverend Mayo, who was the rector at the church in
Owensville, was also the rector of St. John’s Church in Shady Side. He kept his boat here at my father’s
and my father, on Sunday afternoon, late, would take him over and I very often went with him. We would
walk from the landing at Shady Side out to St. John’s Church and that was for a few years, I don’t
remember how many. But anyway, my father and mother were confirmed at St. John’s Church. I was
confirmed at St. Ann’s Church in Annapolis, while I was going to high school. My sister was confirmed
at St. Mary’s Church down in Leonardtown, she was going to school there.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: So that, of course, is our introduction, really, to becoming Episcopalians.
JL: Uh huh, uh huh. So there were only two churches in Galesville, two, did you say?
AHS: White and black.
JL: White and black?
AHS: Yeah, it was just the Methodist church.
JL: Uh huh, I see. And Kolb’s store was the only store that was in Galesville at the time?
AHS: No, uh, Harvey Leatherbury’s store and later Harry Glover’s store and then Mr. Louis Siegert had
a store next to what we call the ice cream parlor.
JL: Tell me a little bit about this ice cream parlor.
AHS: It was owned by my mother’s great uncle.
JL: Her uncle?
AHS: And, there … it was a counter like you see in the drug store and you just sat on the stool and, of
course, as children we usually got cones. But, uh, that was about it.
JL: Was the ice cream made right there, or was it ... uh.
AHS: I am inclined to think that it probably was, but I don’t know, I’m not sure.
18
�JL: But it was a big treat to go there?
AHS: Oh yes. Yes, indeed.
JL: And there was usually lots of people in there?
AHS: Uh, only when the excursions came down on the Tolchester boat.
JL: Oh really? Uh huh.
AHS: Then they would come, they would have enough time, you know, to walk up into the village for a
while because they had, they used to carry cattle, the boats and the steamers did.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: And so they’d have to load the … uh … cattle on the steamer from there. They had, at the pier
they had a regular pen where the cattle were kept until it was time to load them on the boat.
JL: Were they put on the front of the boat, the back of the boat or down in a hold? I’d just be curious
since they carried passengers.
AHS: No, I think that they had a certain area in which they kept them. I don’t remember exactly just
where it was, I didn’t go down there as a rule.
JL: Oh, that’s interesting. Is there some other, we have maybe about five minutes left, some other things
that you think that we, you might like people to know about this area that you can tell us about?
AHS: Not that I can think of at the present time. I can always think of it after, after this is all over. But,
uh, you were asking about the boarding houses ... besides boarding houses in Shady Side, as I said there
was the two, the Eddie Hartge and the Charlie Hartge one. Up in the creek there was a sister of Eddie
Hartge, who was Mrs. Weems, that was a boarding house, and as you came out the river and right
opposite us was the Placid boarding house.
JL: Placid?
AHS: Yes.
JL: And who ran that one?
AHS: Placid’s.
JL: The Placid’s, ok. I don’t know if that was the name of it or whether it was the family that ran it.
AHS: Un huh, it was the family. So, then as you came out of the river and went up into this creek, there
was the Will Smith boarding house.
JL: That was in Galesville?
AHS: Yes, that was in Galesville. Then as you came out the river, right next to us was the Hazard
boarding house. So, see, there were a number of boarding houses here in this area.
JL: Now, of the houses that were boarding houses in Galesville, are the houses still in existence, do
people live in them or is … ?
AHS: Yes, but not as a boarding house.
JL: Oh no, no, no.
AHS: They’re private houses, private homes.
JL: Uh huh.
AHS: And the Placid one is now what we call the Y camp. The Methodist church.
19
�JL: Oh, oh, I know about that, yes.
AHS: Well, that was the Placid boarding house.
JL: Well, I am, I am learning history. Really, that’s terrific. Mrs. Strong, we’re almost to the end of the
tape and I thank you very much, and we really do appreciate it.
AHS: Oh, you’re sure welcome, I’m sorry that I just don’t have everything in mind, tip of my tongue.
JL: Well, it’s hard sometimes, but I ask questions like I do, it’s hard, but we do thank you very much and
we appreciate it.
AHS: You’re certainly welcome.
(End of tape)
20
�
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
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Captain Avery Museum
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1986003-STRONG-Alma
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Text
ORAL HISTORY
Shenton Howard
Captain Avery Museum
SHENTON, Howard
1986.002.002
1986.002.002
Date of Interview: September 30, 1986
Interview of Howard Shenton
West Shadyside Road
Shady Side, Maryland
Interviewer: Jennie LeFevre
HS: Yeah. Now, am I supposed to start talking?
JL: Yes, I would like for you to talk about the Princess and any other sea stories you could tell us.
HS: Well the uh, the boat Princess, this interview is about the boat Princess, that was owned by Captain
Bernard Hallock. Captain Bernard Hallock was a pound net fisherman here in Shady Side. And I would
say that Captain Bernard was probably, maybe what you might say, a genuine, a genuine waterman, in
that, I think that he made his living entirely out of Chesapeake Bay. He was a year round, you know, a lot
of these watermen worked the season, they oystered in the oyster season or they crabbed in the crabbing
season, but Captain Bernard was a year round waterman. Now the Princess was built in 1904 by Captain
Perry Rogers, here, right here in Parrish Creek at Shady Side. And uh, she was what we call a dead rise
boat and when they say dead rise, they mean that she has a V bottom. She’s a frame boat and has a “V”
bottom, that’s where you get the name. Dead rise is derived from and ... uh ... she was approximately 40
feet, or maybe 41 or 42 feet long and the reason that they built the boats that length was because of the
length of the seas that uh usually run in Chesapeake Bay. Out in Chesapeake Bay you uh, you usually ...
the seas run in series of three and they … I’m talking about when the wind is probably blowing say 15
knots or more ... and the three seas; the first sea is smaller than the other two, they build up consecutively
and the third sea is ah higher or, higher or you would say- bigger than the other two, so they usually built
these boats 40 feet in length to so that they would ride these three seas more comfortably and have a little
bit more stability. The Princess, as far as I know, was the first boat that was built with what I call a tuck
stern.
Now this stern, instead of being blunt or as they say today a box stern, which would be ... that it would be
straight up and down ... uh, it had a slight what you would say- a slight- well it was at a slight angle and
then it also had the dead rise. In other words it came down to “V” from the sides, from the side of the
boat. It came down to a ‘V” down to the middle of the stern and ... uh ... so instead of having a box or a
square stern you had this sort of like a blunt bow so that … the reason for that was that you could anchor
1
�the boat when you were tonging oysters; you could anchor boat stern to and it gave you … the boat
would lay better that way and you didn’t have to worry about the spray so much hitting the stern. Of
course, if it was real rough you would get some spray, but it was uh much better than having that blunt
bow or blunt stern with the wave action hitting it and so the boat would not only ride it better, when I say
ride better you wouldn’t get ... she would take- go into the sea better, but also it was more stable and that
the boat didn’t bounce around, she didn’t shear, as they called it and uh, so- I think that from this
beginning, most in fact all of the boats that were built for oystering had this type of stern and ... uh ...
which was really peculiar to the Shady Side area.
2
Of course, if you go around the Bay, you will find that a certain type boat has taken in this area and it’s
been adopted and the watermen in that area seem to, to follow and keep using that type boat. And here in
West River we had this dead rise type boat and another feature of the Princess, that was peculiar to the,
especially to the Eastern shore boats, was that she had wide … what we call washboards. Now, wide
washboards are simply the decking of the boat that run from the bow to the stern and the... uh but ... didn’t
cover the complete hull. It just ran down each side and of course it covered the hull and the bow and the
stern and this was to give you a good wide solid footing while you’re standing up tonging oysters.
JL: OK.
HS: OK. Oh is it plugged in?
JL: Yeah, oh yeah.
HS: The microphone is …
JL: It’s going ... go ahead.
HS: Oh is it? Now, I became familiar with the Princess in the year 1947 when I went to work for the
State as a marine policeman and at that time the Princess was used probably exclusively for pound net
fishing. And uh Captain Bernard was fishing at uh … then … fishing about 10 to 12 pound nets and he
covered the area from, I would say from Cedarhurst up to Tolly’s Point, up as far as the mouth of the
Severn River. And uh, he had two boats that, he had another boat that he used in conjunction with the
Princess and that was an open, I call it bateau, it was a big bateau, that uh was named the Liz and uh, uh
Liz and the Princess, of course, were used to fish these pound nets.
And uh, the the I had a, on the patrol boat with me and I guess it was around 1949 or 50 and I had a boy
that was from western Maryland as a mate and every time that we used to go along side the Princess while
they were out there fishing the pound nets, this boy would get sick. (Laughter) He really got sick from
the odor, I think, of the dead eels and all that had crawled down in the bilge of the Princess and was
creating a terrible odor. But of course the fellows that worked on the boat, they were accustomed to it and
it didn’t bother them and it didn’t bother me, but the … this mate of mine used to get sick every time we
went along side the Princess.
But, another good feature of the Princess, which really, I would say would put her above most of that type
boat that was built after, after she was built, is that when she was loaded, and of course I saw her loaded
many times with herring and shad that, when Captain Bernard would fish those nets in the spring of the
year and ... uh ... is that she didn’t, she didn’t load down at the head, she loaded on- on an even keel. And
uh, most of these uh uh, tonging boats, if you put a heavy load in them would load at the head, and when I
say head, I guess the real nautical term for head as far as the navy is concerned, you know a head on a
boat is a bathroom, but in this instance we use the term head as the bow of the boat and so … but the
Princess wouldn’t load at the bow, she would really ride the water nice and if you’d see her going up the
river here with uh, I’ve seen her with those washboards almost awash, loaded with herring and shad and
that old bow was sticking up there just as, you know, real proud like. She really road the water very
�nicely. But I ... uh ... now that’s about all I can- I can say about the design and the use of the Princess, I
don’t know what else I could say about her.
3
JL: Do you know who it was named? I mean it was called the Princess, but what was it named for? Do
you know ... or ....
HS: The only inkling that I have is that the Princess was built the same year that Amy, that Amy Rogers
Leatherbury was born. Now Amy Rogers Leatherbury is Captain Perry Rogers’ daughter and she married
Luther Leatherbury and I don’t know whether Captain Perry named, sort of ah nickname Amy “Princess”
or what and then of course named the boat Princess. But as far as I know she was always named, this boat
was always named Princess.
JL: And once had Princess on the side of it.
HS: Yeah, she had Princess on …
JL: Did it also have numbers ... or ...
HS: Oh yeah, she was registered with the Coast Guard. Back when she was built, you had to register your
boats with the Coast Guard, she had a Coast Guard Number.
JL: And how many years would you say he used that boat?
HS: Good golly, I don’t, I would say that uh, Captain Bernard used it up ‘till, now Bruce Cornwall could
give you that information because he inherited the boat from Captain Bernard. That’s Captain Bernard’s
grandson, but I would say up until ... good golly ... ‘68 or ‘70, ‘til 1968 or ‘70. Now she was rebuilt I
think, I know of at least twice and maybe three times.
JL: Would you know who rebuilt her?
HS: Well the last time that she was rebuilt, Robbie Atwell, Robert Atwell rebuilt her and he not only
rebuilt her he rebuilt several other boats around this area and uh, but I know that the Princess was rebuilt
at least twice and probably three times.
JL: Would there be anyone around here that would have a small model of the Princess?
HS: No
JL: You know a little carved model of her.
HS: I doubt very much that they would, there’s a lot of pictures of her, around in the Rogers family, they
have, I’m sure that they have quite a few pictures of her. I do recall another, a couple incidents involving
the Princess, is … that they used to bring their fish in, up at Woodfield’s and they would unload their
catch and it would take them quite some time to do that ‘cause, as I say back in those days, they would,
they would catch tons of herring and they would catch … I’ve seen them land three thousand pound of roe
shad in one day and maybe 2500 or 3000 pound of buck shad. This was back in the late ‘50’s and early
‘60’s and of course today, you don’t see any of that, they don’t see, you don’t see any shad or herring
landed in the … at least not at West River. I don’t know about other parts of the bay, but what I started to
say, when they would unload, after they would unload the catch, they would gas the boat up at
Woodfield’s. That’s where they …
One of the crewmen, I had seen him do it many, many times, would, as soon as they would unload the
catch, he’d light a cigarette, and then he’d go and grab the gas hose and go down to the Princess and her
gas tank was right inside of the entrance way to the aft cabin and he’d stick that, stick the gas nozzle in, of
course, in the gas tank, and fill her up. And as I say, I have seen him do it many, many times. But one
day he did it and evidently a spark ignited that gasoline and blew him overboard and of course it created a
little bit of fire, which they put out, it didn’t, so it didn’t really do any damage to the Princess, but it really
didn’t injure the crewman so much, it singed his hair and just gave him a slight burn, but he was very
�fortunate that it did blow him overboard and I think that ... because he got in the water and it put the fire
out right away.
4
Then another incident involving the Princess, I left the West River in the patrol boat one nasty, rainy
morning, the wind was blowing northeast, blowing a gale and none of the oystermen were out and, uh, so
I thought that while I was cruising around I would slip on into Annapolis and fuel up. At that time there
weren’t very many places around here, in the off season where you could buy a hundred gallons of
gasoline or a hundred and fifty gallons of gasoline and I carried three hundred gallons of gas on the patrol
boa,t so I was uh, went into Annapolis to fuel up and uh, as I was proceeding up the Bay, I saw Captain
Bernard was down on ... off the mouth of West River fishing one of his nets. And so I, but any, I kept on
in Annapolis and when I came out of Annapolis, I happened to look over at the mouth of Fishing Creek
which is right there just above Thomas Point Lighthouse. I saw the scow that Captain Bernard used to
tow with the Princess to fish the nets. They’d get down in this scow after they got to the net. And they’d
go around and slack the corner lines up and close the muzzle and then fish the net over to the Princess.
And then I saw the scow there, but I didn’t see the Princess and I said something must be wrong. So, I
really was holding out in the middle of the Bay because of the wind being northeast. It’s pretty rough
there at times, where it shoals up, and … uh ... but anyhow, I headed over towards Fishing Creek and I
told the mate; I said, “now stick your head around the side of the cabin there and ask Captain Bernard if
there’s anything wrong”. Here was the Captain Bernard and 3 or 4 members of the crew standing in this
scow but no power boats, no Princess and no Liz. So the mate stuck his head around and he said, “Captain
Bernard, is there anything wrong?” Captain Bernard said, “You’re damn right there’s something wrong!”
Well what had happened was that they went to fish one of the nets there off Thomas Point and they got
down in the scow to go around and slack the corners up in the net. Of course leaving the Princess, and uh,
theyuh, the boat hook broke and they went adrift. So they drifted up there and they caught a hold this
other pound net that Captain Bernard had up the Bay there. And so the Princess was laying down there to
this other pound net and with nobody aboard.
Well the Coast uh the uh, the lighthouse tender on the Thomas Point light, he had called for help, but he
had to call Baltimore, and that was the closest place where they had a boat and of course they were going
to send a boat from Baltimore, but then, of course, he saw me go there and uh, to Captain Bernard and the
crew. So I picked two of the crew members up and took them out to the Princess and put them aboard so
they could continue … and it was very rough that day. I mean the seas were, I would say, four or five …
maybe four or five feet high. It was really bad. And another thing I would like to say is that Captain
Bernard and his crew went out there and fished those pound nets in some awful bad weather. I mean, I,
it’s, I mean, you know it was almost unbelievable that he could go out there and fish those nets …
JL: About how many crew would he have?
HS: He would have at least three ... uh ... three, most of the time, I would say, there would be from four,
counting him it would be, probably be, six men in the crew.
JL: And were these men from Shady Side or …
HS: Shady Side and Galesville.
JL: Would you remember what the gentlemen’s names were?
HS: Well, they had, uh they had nicknames. They had “Baby Jack” and “Black Jack” uh let’s see, Baby
Jack and Boo Jack, that’s right, they had Baby Jack and Boo Jack and, I’m trying to think of some of the
other names that they had, all these fellows had nicknames ...
JL: Well, what were their real names? I mean ...
HS: Well, Baby Jack is ... uh ... He’s a Fountain, I’m trying to think of his first name but he’s a Fountain
from down Churchton. And Boo Jack was a …, let’s see wasn’t a Matthews ..., I’d have to think about it
�Jennie. [Editor’s Note: Holland] I have to think about the names because I know them by nicknames
more than I do their real names, see? And Boo Jack was uh ... It kind of escapes me now the family
names.
5
JL: That’s ok ... but that would be interesting to know that they were fellows. I guess that they worked in
Shady Side all the ones that helped him.
HS: And … uh … Captain Bernard also had a man working for him, Zachariah, now that’s a …, I believe
that’s a Biblical name, but … uh ... they called him Zach, so (laughter) ... now I don’t know what else I
can tell you, Jennie.
JL: Could you tell me what Captain Bernard looked like?
HS: Captain Bernard was ... uh ... I would say probably about 5 foot 8 or 9 and a real husky fellow and
And uh. . .he had powerful arms, shoulders, and hands. You know, being a waterman ... I guess pulling
and hauling on nets all of his life and his hands were huge and … uh ... he uh, he was a ____man. In
later years he was rather stout, he had gotten kind of stout, but he certainly did put a beautiful pound net
out in the Bay and when I say beautiful, I mean that the stakes were in line, straight you know, and he
kept, he maintained it, he maintained the nets in very fine condition, kept them lighted and so forth.
JL: That’s what I was going to ask you, whether he mended the nets himself.
HS: Oh yeah ... well they would take the nets up, they had to take these nets up after, they set them in the
spring and after the spring fishing was over, they would take and exchange the net. They’d take the old
net off and put a clean net on and when they brought the old nets in they would take them up on shore and
… uh ... clean them and mend them. Now they did a lot of mending also while the net, like say for
example, a boat ran into the net while it was set out in the bay, they would ... uh ... have to mend, patch
the holes it created. And uh, I’ve gone out in the Bay and seen where somebody probably had engine
trouble, got caught in a storm and had engine trouble and drifted into one of Captain Bernard’s nets. The
anchor would be on one side the net and the boat would be on the other side of the net and Captain
Bernard went there to fish it and he would be anything but happy when he saw an incident like that.
Because he knew the boat or the anchor one had gone through his net and of course that meant that they
had to repair it.
JL: Could you tell me exactly where he lived down here in Shady Side?
HS: Captain Bernard lived ... uh ... on the road down towards Idlewilde ... uh ... I believe that his place
has a name, I believe it’s in the history of Shady Side, Shady Side history. He was. . .uh. . .of the Parrish
family on his mother’s side. And, of course, I think that the Parrish family had received … , which of
course Parrish Creek was named after, and ... uh ... Captain Bernard’s family had, I believe, had received
an original grant from the King of England or from Lord Calvert, whoever it was, and uh, when they
settled here.
JL: When he talked about the Princess, did he talk about her with affection or did he scold her sometimes
if she didn’t do just what he wanted or didn’t he say too much about the boat.
HS: No, no I don’t think that um, I think he was very proud of her, I think that because she was a, a, very
nice boat. I say for the utility that he wanted to use the boat for, she’s was ideal for it and ... I uh ... I think
that he was very proud of her.
JL: Did he ever tell anybody what gave him the inspiration to build her? You don’t know, or ...
HS: No, I don’t know whether it was Captain Bernard’s. I really believe that Perry Rogers, was the man
that designed her and I think that maybe I should have mentioned this before, now I understand, from the
boat builders around in this area that the Princess was one of the first boats that was built with precut
lumber. Now when I say precut lumber, most of the boats that were built they would ... they would uh ...
�I guess they would have to do a lot of planning and ... uh ... they’d have to use the adz and all to cut the
boards down to whatever they wanted and ... uh, it was, they had to do a lot of manual work on the
material in order to build the boat. But I think that Captain Perry Rogers designed this boat so that he
could buy the lumber right from the lumber company and uh, or even the saw mill and ... uh ... that it
would he didn’t have to ... uh ... shape it or do anything like that. He would, just like you would … build
a house, almost.
6
JL: And what type of wood was she made from?
HS: Well back in those days, the keel mostly was oak and, I guess the keel was oak all the time, and the,
usually the bottom was cypress and the sides were fir. And, of course, the keel and the sides would be uh
would be full length boards, in other words the keel, what ever the length of the boat was, the keel would
be full length and the sides of the boat would be the full length, in other words ... they were going to build
a 42 foot boat, the sides would probably be 46 or 48 feet long allowing for the curvature of the hull, see?
JL: And you said he took very good care of his nets so I’m sure he also took very good care of the
Princess.
HS: Oh yeah.
JL: Brought her up and cleaned her and ...
HS: Oh yeah ...
JL: Paint her and put her back. How often did he used to do that?
HS: At least once a year. At least once a year she would ... he would, he had to, he had to take care of
those and keep those boats in tip top shape and … uh ... not only the hulls of the boat, but also the
engines, I mean when I knew the Princess she had a ... uh ... 6-cylinder Chrysler marine engine in her and
I think that prior to that she had had a double cylinder, I don’t know whether it was a Palmer, but anyhow
a slow turning type of engine. And the Liz had a 2-cylinder Palmer engine in her when I knew her. Those
one and two cylinder engines were very hard on the boat, because of vibration. They had, you had a lot of
motion from the action of the engine and where as the four and six and eight cylinder engine were much
smoother ... and didn’t vibrate or shake the boat to pieces.
JL: Is the Liz still in existence?
HS: No, I think the Liz has uh, fallen to pieces, cause I think they just pulled her up on shore and I don’t
know what year, but maybe 15 and more years ago and I think, she’s fallen to pieces.
JL: Is there anything else you could tell us about the Princess? Maybe some stories that maybe Captain
Bernard told you about her.
HS: No, I really can’t think of any about the Princess ... uh ... I could tell you maybe a few, another story
about Captain Bernard ...
JL: I’d love to hear it, oh, I’d love to hear it.
HS: Yeah, we ... uh ... we used fish the rock fish with shrimp and chum, we used to chum with grass
shrimp and ...
JL: Was that also, but, there weren’t shrimp in the Bay, must of got them ....
HS: No, these small grass shrimp that you see around the shore, and so my brother-in-law and I, we
would get out, get up real early in the morning right about first light and we had a little seine that we used
to haul. So we would go down around the shore where we thought the shrimp might be and of course
you’d get overboard and wade around to catch these shrimp and you’d tow a live box with you to keep the
shrimp alive. Then after you got in, before you went fishing, you’d sort of ice them down a little bit. So
we were, we would, be hauling the seine around Captain Bernard’s shore there. And as I’d said, it would
�be even before sunrise and ... uh ... uh ... a couple times I said, Captain Bernard came to the door and
would yell out come on up and have some breakfast! So we’d slip up and would have a cup of coffee,
you know, and with him. And we’d sit down and he would be by himself there, I guess he had gotten up
and cooked his own breakfast. And you’d look in the middle of the table and he would have about 5
pounds of sausage cooked up there and maybe a dozen eggs. So you’d have to sit down and you’d eat
some breakfast with him, but I often wondered to myself if we hadn’t come along, I wondered who was
going to eat all that breakfast?
7
JL: It’s possible that he was a hearty eater himself.
HS: It’s possible that … may have eaten all that, but I’m sure if he did, he didn’t take any lunch with him
when he went out into the Bay. But he really had a huge breakfast there.
JL: But he would get up and make it all for you ... he’d have it made.
HS: He’d like to have some company. I’m sure he’d like to just have some company come in and eat
with him, you know. That’s the kind of fellow he was, he was just very friendly and he liked to talk to
you and see what, find out what was going on and ... uh …,very enjoyable fellow.
JL: Did he ever say anything about the prices of the different things that as he sold them, whether he
thought whether it was good or it was bad ... or ...
HS: No uh un, I never, well, I never discussed any of that with him, but I know he caught a lot of fish and
of course, I understand that during World War II, that Captain Bernard caught an awful lot of trout. We
call them sea trout, a lot of people call them weakfish and I believe that the reason that they had so many
of that type of fish, maybe hardhead, too, was due to the fact that the trawlers couldn’t operate out in the
ocean due to the submarine scare during World War II, and uh, which made that many more fish to come
in to the Chesapeake Bay. But I understand that he really caught a lot of trout during World War II, and
of course the fish were needed, to … for food, you know.
That’s about all, Jennie, that’s about all I can tell you about the Princess, I don’t know of anything else. I
do know that even after, after, he would take the pound nets up in the late fall, maybe one or a couple of
the crewmen ... uh ... who really didn’t have anything to do. Some of the other crew would be mending
nets and so forth, they would evidently hire the Princess from Captain Bernard and then use her to tong
oysters in for maybe just a short period of time, maybe for three or four weeks or a month or something
like that. So she was used for; she was used for what she was originally designed for.
JL: OK. I was going to ask you whether she was used for something else.
HS: So they did, in the off season of the pound net fishing, they’d use her for tonging. I can’t think of
anything else, though.
JL: Well can you tell us ... we’ll stop it on this side and we’ll turn it over.
(End of Side 1 of Tape)
JL: Now, Howard, I would like if you would tell us some stories about when you were working on the
Bay yourself, some experiences or ….
HS: (Interposes) Is that George, hey baby!
Good golly, Jennie, I wouldn’t know where to start.
JL: Would you tell us what year you started ...
HS: Yeah, I started working for the Marine Police in September 1947 and I went aboard the patrol boat
�as a mate and really as a cook. Cook and mate, and because when, I say “cook” because at that time we
used to spend quite a bit of time aboard the patrol boat. I mean we didn’t come home, come in every
night like they do now. We stayed out there for two or three nights and as much as a week at a time .
And, of course, I ... uh … the boats that we had back in 1947 were, were … the one that I was on was
built in 1917 and ... uh ... the name of the boat was Somerset, and she did about 7 1/2 knots at full speed,
which meant, of course, she was built during the sail boat time, primarily that was the main method of
propulsion was sail, and you didn’t need too much speed.
8
JL: I didn’t ask you if you were born down here?
HS: Down where?
JL: On Shady Side.
HS: No, I was born in Baltimore. My folks are from Dorchester County over on the Eastern Shore and
I’ve been here in Shady Side since I was 10 years old.
JL: I see.
HS: And I was really raised by the Hartge’s, Hartge, Captain Charley Hartge’s family down here on
West River shore.
JL: Oh, I didn’t know that.
HS: Yeah. So I started out in ‘47 and then I ... uh ... finally worked my way up to become captain of the
patrol boat and I worked the area primarily from, from Tolly’s Point to uh, down towards Herring Bay.
Which meant both sides of the Bay, that included the Eastern shore. And ... uh ... after we got faster
patrol boats, I was assigned one of the new patrol boats that was built in 1949. The State built four of
these boats, supposedly real fast patrol boats that were real modern, and they uh: the Anne Arundel, the
Dorchester, the St. Mary’s and the Culvert or Calvert and ... uh ... I was assigned to the Anne Arundel.
And at that time.. .uh ... the governor was ... uh ... uh ... darn, I’m trying to think of the governor’s name
now ... let’s see, we go back, Tawes, who was the governor in 1949?
JL: Agnew?
HS: No, it was before Agnew.
Other Person: This was before McKeldin, oh ... um … good Lord.
HS: It’s funny how your mind works ...
JL: Well, well, it doesn’t matter ...
HS: Yeah, but it was the same guy that was ... uh ... was responsible for putting the Bay Bridge over.
[Editor’s Note: The Governor was Preston Lane.]
JL: OK. (Laughter) That’s all right.
HS: __________ cut it off.
JL: OK, I’m sorry. Would you like to tell me about some of the light houses that were on the bay that are
no longer there, that you recall.
HS: Well, there’s only a few of them that are no longer there, even though that most of the light houses
are still there, but there uh ... there’s no personnel aboard them, they are all been placed on automatic.
But, most of those old light houses are still in place. I know that the Hooper’s Straight Lighthouse is the
one that’s over at the St. Michael’s Marine Museum and the Drum Point lighthouse is the one that’s down
at the Calvert County Maritime, uh, Marine Museum. I never been aboard the Hooper’s Straight light, but
I used to spend quite a bit of time, not quite a bit of time … I used to go aboard the Thomas Point
lighthouse quite a bit when I was on the patrol boat, if if it was calm or it was moderate ... uh ...
sometimes I’d go aboard and have a cup of coffee with the lighthouse keeper. There was always, at that
�9
time, there was always, two men on the light, on Thomas Point Light, they had three people on there
they had a three man crew and of course one guy was always on leave. And uh but the light house keeper
... uh ... the head man at Thomas Point light was a civil service employee of the government.
JL: So their families didn’t live there with them at all.
HS: No, I think they did in some instances in, at some places they may have, but not here on Thomas
Point Light and the other two members of the crew were Coast Guard personnel ... but, uh ... the old
lighthouse keeper ( Inserted by the Editor: was Earl Harrison) as we called him, was a civil service
employee.
JL: Well, you were thinking earlier that you had been given a special boat and you were starting to tell
me about this boat.
HS: Yeah, and I was trying to think of the governor’s name at that time and I still can’t ... I still can’t ...
uh ... think of his name, but anyhow, this ... so I was assigned this new patrol boat, the Anne Arundel, and
she was equipped with two Packard engines and she would do maybe 20 ... 20 knots. She was supposed to
do 25 but I think that 20 would about let her out and she was a very nice patrol boat. Had a lot of
mahogany wood on in and a lot of varnish, bright work to keep up and ... uh ... kind of fancy so ... uh ...
uh ... I was also assigned quite a few times to follow the governor’s yacht, to take the governor ashore and
to ... uh ... to even take him fishing sometimes.
JL: And beside you, were there other crew members on the boat that you were assigned to?
HS: Oh yeah, I always had a mate, there was always just one personnel, one extra personnel. And uh, so
then also after getting this new patrol boat that meant that I was sent around the Bay to different trouble
spots because she was fairly fast for that time, and uh, if they had trouble with illegal dredging or
operations were going on where speed was used. Why then they would send one of these four boats to the
area, see if they couldn’t calm the situation a little bit, so I was sent in the Potomac River. In fact, I was
sent quite a few places around the Bay in that way I got to know the Bay and ... uh ... I rather enjoyed it.
Tell the truth, I really did enjoy the work, especially the boating part of it.
JL: Were there ever any fighting or feuds about “this is my fishing ground or so forth?”
HS: Only in the Potomac River did you really have a problem of that nature. You had a so-called, you
had so called friction between the Marylander’s and the Virginia people. And so I always said that the
Potomac River really was a “no-mans land” and the reason that I had named it that was that the the
Virginia people, the Virginia waterman, he felt that if he didn’t go out there and steal and take what was
there that the Maryland man were going to get it and the Maryland man thought the same thing. That if
he didn’t get it then the Virginia person was going to get it. So they really didn’t have any respect for it,
and when I said respect I meant that as far as the conservation was concerned. They just went there and
they took all they could take and get away with and ... uh ... they really weren’t so interested in conserving
the resource. Whereas; I do believe that in the county waters or their own home waters, these people are
more apt to consider and think about the conservation. And because it feels like … it felt like it belonged
to them, that’s the way I looked at it.
JL: Well, the men that worked on the Bay did they feel as if they really had to protect the Bay and watch
after it and take good care of it?
HS: I think that a very small percentage of them. I think that probably, maybe 10 or 12 percent, I don’t
think it was any more than that. I think that most of the watermen really went out there to get what he
could get and ... uh ... take what he could take and I don’t think that uh he really was interested in
conservation. It’s sort of a … I always said, it’s sort of a pirate instinct and here again the watermen felt
like that, they do feel like -- “if I don’t get it somebody else will, see?” And then again, they also think
that God put the resource there for them to harvest and ... uh ... God’s going to take care of it, they, uh,
don’t so that relieves them of the responsibility.
�10
JL: Could you tell me how many years you worked on the water then? You know, that you ...
HS: Well, I actually worked on the water I guess about, in my career, I really was assigned to a boat for
about 12 years, 10 or 12 years. Then I worked in an automobile for quite some time on the western shore
and in conjunction with the patrol boats and then the rest of the time I spent in the office. But I had quite
a career, I liked it, I really liked the boating of all the things that I did during the time I was, were working
with the State, I think being on the patrol boat was the most enjoyable.
JL: Could you tell me, maybe, of um ... maybe a storm that came up on the Bay and maybe something
that might of happened, that might be something unusual that you could tell us about.
HS: Well, I uh I was; in 1954, when we had the hurricane Hazel. I was working Eastern bay. The State,
that year, was trying a new system of transplanting the seed oysters and ... uh ... this is uh ... this is the
oyster propagation program that was carried on by the State. They would put oyster shells, which they
got from the shucking houses, into areas where they were most likely to get a high spat count. I say that
I’m talking about oyster spat and uh, this uh. they had this bar over Mill Hill, in Eastern bay where the
State had planted shells. They were going to move the spat or the, that had caught on the shells out in the
bay or out in the rivers to the growing, so called growing bars, in the Fall of the year. Now these were
spat that had caught during the summer, and move them in the Fall instead of waiting until the following
spring after oyster season, which was what they usually did. So this was a new experiment, so we were
over in Eastern bay moving the seed and on October the 15th, Hurricane Hazel came along. This was
1954 and I had I think it was 20 - 23 dredge boats that were working on Mill Hill and catching these seed
oysters. And then they would, after they’d load, they would run them to where ever they were to be
planted and um … so this was on a Friday morning, that the storm ... I figured the wind had been
increasing and I knew that we were going to have bad weather and I was trying to get a hold of some of
the “powers to be” in the office to see if I couldn’t close the operation down because it was looking so
bad, the weather was looking so bad. Friday’s a pretty hard time, it’s a bad time to try to get a hold of the
“wheels”, you know, they take that long weekend. They find some way, some reason to get away from the
office, you know, and a fellow said it’s an “early release.”
But anyhow, I couldn’t get ahold of anybody and the wind kept picking up. So I, along about 2:00, I
closed the operation down myself. And some of the dredgers, especially the ones that were working there
in the big power boats, they ... uh ... they asked me what they were going to do with the oysters that they
had because they didn’t have a load to take to the growing area. I told them I didn’t care what they did
with them, I thought the best thing to do was to go looking for a harbor and so I came on across the Bay
that afternoon, I would say … it was after 2:00 and ... uh ... it was really rough. It was really bad and after
I got in, I got in Parrish Creek here and tied the boat up and really came on home, then I heard about the
“Marvel” sinking. Now the “Marvel” was an old, what we called a what, was known as a ram. She was
an old three mast boat that was built to haul lumber and fertilizer and stuff up and down the Bay. This
“Marvel” was being operated as, I guess you’d say, an excursion boat, uh ... or ... anyhow, she would take
parties on board at Annapolis and they’d go out and stay for a week. They’d sail all around the Bay and
this particular week they had ... uh ... gone, I think they had gone to Cambridge and gone to different
places on the Bay. They were headed back because they were due in Annapolis Saturday morning to
either to unload and then probably take on the next load Sunday and she would uh, had been anchored
down off of Deale, off of Herring Bay when the storm really struck in. She was right there on the lower
(leaward?) shore and I don’t know exactly what happened, but anyhow, I believe that what happened was
that she had taken on some water and she was “shearing” on her anchor chain and I think that she
probably got a little bit broad side or side to it, to the sea I’m talking about, and uh, I think with water in
the hold. She tripped and she capsized.
Now I believe that all the people on her or aboard her did have life preservers on, but the people that were
on deck survived because they uh, even though they got in the water, the wind carried them right ashore
�11
there at in Herring Bay or up at Fairhaven. But I think there were 14 people who were down inside the
cabin when she capsized and, of course, I guess they couldn’t get out after she went over. They couldn’t
find a companionway to get out and 14 people drowned. So they called me to ... uh ... to see if I couldn’t
go down there and do something, but it was no use for me to go but, the wind was blowing then about 98
or 100 miles an hour and even if, See I would have had to have gone to the Eastern shore with the wind
from the east. I would have had to “beat over” to the Eastern shore in the motor boat. And then sort of
scut on down towards Herring Bay. But after I got there, you couldn’t ... you can’t do anything in 98 mile
an hour wind.
JL: I don’t imagine you could.
HS: So 14 people lost their lives that day.
JL: Well, what is one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen happen on the Bay?
HS: Oh, I don’t know, uh, (laughter)
JL: You’re laughing, it must of been something.
HS: I don’t know ... I do know that we had an officer who had a slight impediment in his speech and he
was checking oysters over in, I believe it was in the Miles River. And it so happened that this particular
boat that was checking these oysters, that one of the crew on there, the Captain of the boat also had a
slight impediment of speech. They got to talking to one another and I think each one thought the other
was imitating the other. They both got angry …
JL: That’s funny.
HS: It was quite a … it was quite a confrontation.
JL: But they both finally decided that they really ...
HS: Well, I think they finally got it settled but they, after they realized that they weren’t trying to imitate
one another and that it was ... uh ... you know, was just one of those handicaps ...
JL: That’s funny ... Now I’m going to ask you a question and I know everybody that lives around here
has an answer. Why do you think the Bay has gotten the way it is now?
HS: Well, I look at the Bay of course as far, more as a, as a source of natural resources, I’m talking about
the oysters and the fish and clams and so forth. And, I don’t think that there’s any question that pollution
has played a part in the downfall, if you want to call it that, of the bay.
JL: And where do you think the pollution has come from?
HS: Well, I think it’s primarily industrial, it’s industrial pollution and then of course I think it’s also from
... uh, well, what would you call it ... uh ... bacteria, I guess you’d say it was bacteria. But as far as
resources are concerned, I believe that the Bay has been over-fished and the reason I say that is because
man ... uh ... especially the American man is a pretty efficient fellow. And ... uh ... the more he works at
something, the more, he, he realizes, he tries to do it as easy and most, as efficient as possible. Then you
look at the progress that has been made in the so-called technical end of it and then when I’m talking
about technical, I’m talking about the boats and the boats and their equipment. Especially the ... uh ... the
boats are larger, they have ... uh ... they’re faster, they can go out in the Bay and they can stay there and ...
uh ... in stormy or rough weather. There is the ... uh ... watermen back when I was a kid if the weather was
halfway bad, you know, they wouldn’t go out. But today, the weather hardly ever stops them unless it is a
hurricane.
Then the method of harvesting, ... uh the ... everybody talks about the dredge boats being the only
working crew, uh working boat, I wouldn’t say crew, but working boat outfit that uses sail and of course
the reason they use sail is because it’s inefficient. And then when the wind ... you don’t have much wind,
they can’t work or they don’t catch as many oysters and ... uh now they allow them to dredge with power
�two days a week. And ... uh ... even though they put a limit on the catch, to me the limit doesn’t mean
too much, because they probably can’t catch any more than what the limit. They couldn’t catch many
more than what the limit prescribes and ... uh ... so ... uh ... you ... uh ... their just operating more
efficiently.
12
Now as far as the fish are concerned, the uh … they start with the nets, back when I was a kid they had
cotton gill nets, I’m just thinking about gill net fishermen now ... and uh ... believe me the gill net
fishermen land an awful lot of fish. Used to land an awful lot of fish, particularly the rock fish and ... uh
... especially in the winter months when the drift netters get out here in the Bay and operate in weather
that’s really not fit for anybody to go out there in the Bay. But that’s when they catch, when it’s cold and
rough and all, that’s when they catch, the drift netters catch the fish. And so they started out with the
cotton nets, gill nets, and after the cotton, the cotton and the cotton nets would get a little bit wet and
they’d swell up and they wouldn’t catch as well, they wouldn’t catch the fish as well. Then you got the so
- called linen gill net, which was a finer, a finer thread and ... uh ... this was better than the cotton net as
far as catching fish was concerned. Then, of course, you got the nylon net, which is more and much more
efficient and now they have the monofilament net which is outlawed in Maryland except over in ... uh ...
Sinepuxent Bay, I believe over on the ocean side in Worcester County, I believe it’s legal to use the
monofilament net. Now it is legal to use a monofilament net in Virginia.
JL: Now what is it about that … that makes it illegal to use?
HS: You can use the monofilament net even in the summer time when the crabs are around, the crabs
can’t hurt it. Now crabs, of course, if you catch a fish in there, if the fish stays there any length of time,
the crabs going to get on the fish and disfigure him or tear him up a little bit, so his market value or
quality wouldn’t be as good, but uh, then, in addition to the net you have, as far as the fish are concerned,
you have the depth finder which helps to locate the fish and when I think of … I mentioned talking about
the Princess, about the shad and herring that was landed here, up here at Woodfield’s, I had been down at
Solomons in January, mostly in January and seen the drift netters come in and these drift netters, of
course they could go all over the Bay, they could go from ... as long as they stayed out in State waters,
they could go anywhere and fish. And um … see them come in with those boats loaded with rock fish,
where the fish, of course are dormant. These drift netters would spot them with their depth finders and ...
uh ... put the nets overboard and really, really load it up. I mean it’s a fabulous catches.
And then another thing, as far as the … being over fished is concerned, I can’t exactly remember the year,
but I think it was round about 1968. When the so-called residency requirement was eliminated from the
seafood industry, or from our laws in the State of Maryland, now the residency requirements pertained to
the waters of Maryland as the county waters of Maryland. See the waters out here in the tidewater were
divided into State waters, which really was the Bay waters. And county waters, which were the tributary
waters, and ... uh ... of course the charts defined these waters. Which really meant that anybody in the
State of Maryland could go anywhere in the State waters and fish, crab or oyster, but only those residents
of the county in which the county waters lied could go and uh fish in those county waters. And so you
say, well that sounds good, but that’s not bad. I mean, it gives everybody in the State of Maryland the
right to go fishing or do what they want to do, as far as the seafood business is concerned, but, what
happens is, in these county waters. If they, say if they, have a nice, they’ve got plenty of clams or they
have plenty of oysters to be harvested, so everybody in the State of Maryland goes in there and harvests
them and they kill it, they overfish it, they really kill it. And it, so your resources is practically depleted
and ... uh ... that’s really what’s wrong with, doing away with this so-called residency requirements, and
uh, which really boils down to being over-fished.
Now the crabs, of course, they move up and down the bay and ... uh ... it doesn’t seem to affect them too
much because they, they, of course, the crab potters catch most of your crabs.
�13
JL: Now Captain Proctor told me he thought the reason it was polluted was when they opened up the
Delaware Bay. He said, let all the nasty blue fish into the Bay. That was his opinion.
HS: Yeah, well, everybody has their opinion and I.. .they get the idea the blue fish chase the rock fish
around and so they run all the rock fish away. And I don’t, I don’t think that’s true ‘cause I have caught
blue fish and rock fish together out here trolling and uh, I won’t, I really don’t believe that that has
anything to do with it. Now I’ve heard a lot of talk about the uh ... about opening the canal up. They used
to have locks in the canal.
JL: That’s what he uh…
HS: And of course, they let the water flow through there now, but, I don’t know as to the salinity, as far
as the salinity is concerned, how the salinity in the head waters of the Chesapeake Bay differ from the
salinity of the waters of Delaware Bay or Delaware River wherever the canal empties into over in
Delaware, I don’t know as it differs so much that it would really affect the marine life.
JL: What would be your idea of how to actually clean up the Bay?
HS: Ump, it would be a gigantic task.
JL: What would people have to do?
HS: Well, the ... uh ... of course you’d just have to, I don’t know what you would do with waste. I don’t
know, I’m talking about industrial waste. I don’t know. They’re trying to overcome the sewerage waste
by with the treatment plants. I don’t know is how effective that is, it, sometimes, you know, the treatment
is worse than the disease and but, it uh, I’m talking about probably the chemicals that they use. I don’t
know just what they do, whether they use, they may not even use any chemicals, but I’m sure that they
must use some in these treatment plants. But then the industrial people, you just have to find another way
of getting rid of their waste and their acids and all these other chemicals that are coming out in … that
they’re dumping into the Bay. To me, the water out here off of West River doesn’t look like it did 20
years ago, I mean it doesn’t sparkle like it used to, it’s sort of dead like, it just doesn’t have the, have the
pep, that it used to have, but I really don’t … It’s a tough proposition, I don’t know to clean the Bay up. I
mean to get it back and of course as the fellow says, you know, if you really want the Chesapeake Bay
back where it was 25 or 30 or 50 or 100 years ago, then everybody that lives on Chesapeake Bay ought to
move to Chicago. So that probably, so, so, so the real problem is that we got too many people and too
much activity going on in Chesapeake Bay.
JL: Maybe so, maybe so. Howard we thank you …
HS: Is that enough?
JL: Howard, thank you very much, that was very nice of you, we really enjoyed it, thank you again.
HS: OK Jennie.
�
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Oral Histories - Voices of Shady Side
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Captain Avery Museum
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1986002a-Shenton-Howard