Marker #2

5. Oysters were counted into bushel baskets.

6. Bushels were consolidated into sacks or barrels.

7. Sacks or barrels were wheeled on hand trucks through the alley way and were loaded into the awaiting boxcars.

Shucking
The practice of floating oysters (step #2) was banned around 1927 after an outbreak of typhoid fever was blamed on the Delaware Bay oysters. Later the true source of the epidemic was identifies as milk from Chicago, but by then the practice of shucking (removing oyster from shell) was in place. An almost exclusively African American migrant work force was imported from the Chesapeake Bay to work as shuckers in the packinghouses. The workers lived in deplorable conditions in company towns such as Shellpile. They were seasonal workers and returned to their homes along the Chesapeake. Eventually, many workers and their families settled permanently in the Bayshore Region.

Funding for this interpretive exhibit is made possible in part by a grant from the Garden State Historic Preservation Trust administrated by the New Jersey Historic Trust.

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