Entrepreneurship on the Water

Undesirable Land, Entrepreneurship on the Water

While many Black families successfully gained land in this period, much of the land they were able to obtain was undesirable, compared to that of their white counterparts. Land in the Reservation community included marshy land on the edges of old plantations and near creeks and rivers. The land had also been degraded by 200 years of plantation agriculture, especially the soil-depleting cultivation of crops like tobacco.

According to the 1880 Agricultural Census, the average African American farm was slightly over 9 acres. The average white farm was 35.5 acres.

Despite these difficulties, families successfully worked the land.
Scroll through these images to read Ms. Beulah Christian Scott's recollections of life on the farm with her parents, Edgar E. and Sarah (Waller) Christian, and brother:

Jacob Holmes Sr. also worked the land. By 1870, Jacob had secured 13 acres of land valued at $130, according to the Agricultural Census of that year. He also owned farm implements and machinery valued at $35 and livestock valued at $180, including two milk cows, three working oxen, and fourteen swine. In that year, he reported producing 350 bushels of Indian corn on his farm and paying $15 in wages.

Jacob Holmes Sr. recorded on the 1870 Agricultural Census
Courtesy: Bernie Vaughan
Source: 1870 Non-Population Agricultural Census, Ancestry.com

However, the depleted state of the land limited farming. Many Black families pieced together a variety of income sources to make a living, the most lucrative of which was oystering and fishing. Families in the Reservation benefited from access to several creeks feeding into the York River.

Oystering was a family-oriented trade. Some families constructed the equipment needed to work on the water, such as brothers David and James Monroe Lee, who made boats. A U.S. Census report from 1881 suggests that the canoes used for oystering in Virginia had a value, on average, of $50. Harris Lee Sr. recalled that his grandfather James Monroe Lee built such canoes for Humphrey Lee and his brothers (Harris Lee’s father and uncles) to take onto the water and build careers as oystermen.

Listen to Harris Lee recall these memories:

Source: Harris Lee (circa 1984)

Learning to oyster in these narrow canoes was not easy.

Oystering was a skilled trade.

The men who worked the river were highly skilled in their work. For example, a correspondent from the New York Times visited oysterers working in the James River in the early 1880s and described their skill:

“To see the oysterman balancing themselves in one of their canoes, and working with so much energy at the same time, was quite a novelty. Many of these canoes are so narrow that should a novice step into one it would most probably be overturned; yet the oystermen work in them all day long in smooth weather, and sometimes in pretty stormy weather, and apparently keep them properly balanced without any effort. To propel them through the water they use a long paddle, and, balancing it over the stern (the canoes, of course, are sharp at both ends, having no row-locks and no indentation to aid them in keeping their paddle in place), they move them swiftly.”

Source: Ingersoll (1881: 181)

Oystering was also a risky trade.
Reservation families took risks to earn a livelihood, as an 1881 report from the U.S. Census Bureau explained:

“The business of oyster-tonging is one involving great exposure, hard labor, and some risk, and the men engaged in it are mostly adult males in the vigor of health. The injury to health from exposure is so great, that few ever reach old age. The death-rate among oystermen, as compared with other trades, is very great. Nor does oyster-tonging give returns in proportion to labor expended. The element of chance is a large one. A clear, smooth water, with its opportunities for coving, permits the fisherman to gather in one day what he may not realize by a week’s exertion in stormy and tempestuous weather.”

Source: Ingersoll (1881:181)

Several Reservation residents may have lost their lives due to the dangerous nature of oystering. Family documents and estate records suggest that John R. Lee was captain and part owner (with Billy Payne) of the schooner, "Homer." He drowned in the York River in the sight of his home on March 17, 1903, perhaps while working the water. Records from his estate note that he owned a boat and oyster tongs, indicating that he was an oysterman.

Estate papers of John R. Lee
Courtesy: The Lee family

James Wallace, death certificate
Courtesy: Bernie Vaughan, Source: Ancestry.com

Similary, James Wallace, an oysterman, died of accidental drowning on May 30, 1913. According to family oral history passed down to descendant Sydni Palmer Washington, James Wallace was working the water with his son, Howard, during a storm when he died.

Despite the risks, Reservation families who worked the water could find a means for
not only survival but also prosperity.
Families invested their profits from oystering to secure opportunities for the next generation.

John Allen describes the success of his grandparents, William Henry and Lucy Hundley, and their investment in their children's education:

Source: John Allen (2018)

Listen to Mary Lassiter describe her great-grandfather, John Henry Lee's, work as an oysterer and his success in securing a considerable landholding:

Source: Mary Lassiter (2022)

Mr. James Payne similarly recalls the livelihoods and prosperity that his ancestors, the Hundleys and Paynes, gained from oystering. Like other families, they were able to upgrade from canoes to motorboats by the turn of the century:

Quotation from James Payne: “They had, from what I can remember, they had motorboats. My uncle also worked the river. He was an oysterman. He used to take his produce to Richmond, and sell them there…And I had an uncle Payne, Humphrey Payne, he was self-employed, he had his own oyster grounds, he worked the water, he made a pretty good living there. But most people were happy or nicely taken care of, but they owned their property. So everybody fared pretty well, I think.”

Source: James Payne (1991)

Small-Scale, Sustainable Oystering

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Black oystering families operated at a disadvantage in comparison to the broader, white-dominated oyster industry that had mechanized to harvest oysters at an industrial scale. In this industry, millions of bushels of Chesapeake oysters were collected through steam-powered dredging and then packed and carried inland on newly completed railroads.

Black families in the Reservation did not have access to the extensive capital required for industrial oystering. The act of hand-tonging to retrieve oysters from shallow estuarine environments required a relatively small investment: in 1880 Maryland, the average tonger made $225 over an eight-month season, and a pair of tongs cost between $3.50 and $5.00. In a 1984 oral history, Harris Lee reported that the canoes built by his grandfather could hold about 50 to 55 bushels, whereas larger motorboats operated in the James and York Rivers by white oysterers could carry approximately 150 bushels.

Photo: Oyster tongers fishing from side of boat, Chesapeake Bay, Md., U.S.A., ca. 1905. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, Lot 13936, https://www.loc.gov/search/?fa=partof:lot+13936

However, the small-scale oystering practiced by Reservation families was more ecologically sustainable.

Listen to Harris Lee Sr. describe how his father, Humphrey Lee, and his uncle, John Henry Lee, supported the renewal of local oyster populations by planting them in the wintertime:

Source: Harris Lee (circa 1984)

Like other families in the Reservation, the Lees’ oystering business was seasonal, respecting the life cycles and reproductive potential of local oyster populations. This contrasts sharply with the industrial-scale dredging efforts that had depleted oyster populations in New England by the turn of the twentieth century and ultimately became subject to restrictions.

Listen to brothers, Knox Ratcliffe and Harold Radcliffe, who grew up in the Reservation, discuss planting and harvesting oysters:

Source: Knox Ratcliffe and Harold Radcliffe (1984)

1921 USGS map depicting Felgates Creek, a Lee-family oystering location. Reproduced from Mahoney (2013)

For oystering families, autonomy and self-sufficiency were hallmarks of the trade. Archeological studies uncovered kettles, buttons, stoves, and bottles from places such as Lynchburg, New York, and Baltimore also indicate that residents were deeply embedded in the socioeconomic networks across the state and coast which transmitted goods and information. Further, due to the railway and road systems running through one neighborhood in the Reservation, Charles Corner, Black farmers and oystermen were able to travel to neighboring counties or cities to sell products and support other Black-owned businesses.

Scroll through these slides to read Mr. Howard Wallace's recollections of oystering and farming with his parents as a child in the Reservation:

Howard Wallace

Source: Howard Wallace (1976)
Photo courtesy: Jet Magazine.

Next: Forging Livelihoods and Self-Sufficiency

Sources:

1870 Non-Population Agricultural Census, York County, page 4, Available: Ancestry.com.
Allen, John. 2018. Oral History collected for the Hundley Family Reunion. January 25.
Ingersoll, Ernest. 1881. "History & Present Conditions of Fishery Industries - The Oyster Industry." Department of the Interior, Tenth Census of the United States. Washington: Government Printing Office.
Keiner. 2009. The Oyster Question : Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay Since 1880. The University of Georgia Press.
Lassiter, Mary 2022. Oral History with Curtis Lassiter, Mary Lassiter, and Christine Lee. Conducted by Amy Quark and Molly Robinson. The Village Initiative Collection. April 24.
Lee Family Reunion Booklet, 1998. Souvenir Booklet, Williamsburg, VA, August 7-9.
Lee, Harris. circa 1984. Oral History. James City County Oral History Collection, Special Collections Research Center, William & Mary Libraries.
Mahoney, Shannon. 2013. Community Building After Emancipation: An Anthropological Study of Charles’ Corner, Virginia, 1862-1922. Doctoral Dissertation, College of William & Mary.
McDonald, Bradley M. 1994. African-American Family and Society on the Lands of the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, 1862-1880. Master’s Thesis, College of William & Mary.
McDonald, Bradley M., Kenneth Stuck, and Kathleen J. Bragdon. 1992. "Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are": An Ethnohistorical Study of the African American Community on the Lands of the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, 1865-1918. Williamsburg: William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research.
Payne, James. 1991. Oral History. In McDonald, Bradley M., Kenneth Stuck, and Kathleen J. Bragdon, “Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are”: An Ethnohistorical Study of the African American Community on the Lands of the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, 1865-1918. Williamsburg: William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research.
Ratcliffe, Knox and Harold Radcliffe. November 2, 1984. Oral History. James City County Oral History Collection, Special Collections Research Center, William & Mary Libraries.

Wallace, Howard. 1976. Grove Festival: A Bicentennial Event, Roberts District, James City County, Virginia, July 31. Festival booklet.

Page updated

Report abuse