For full functionality please enable JavaScript in your browser settings. Need Help? Text Formerly located on Boston Street in east Baltimore, Gibbs Preserving Company canned and packaged everything from oysters to jelly to candy to vegetables.
Map Skip Interactive Map. Get Directions. Subjects Industry. Colton, John C Jr. July 22, Kelly, Jacques. October 15, A survey taken of Maryland canneries in discovered that "many of these children A comparative study of fruit and vegetable canneries in seven states in discovered that children from Maryland canneries were "found to be unusually backward in school as compared with those in the other States studied" Matthews, Children did not only have to deal with the terrible living conditions and the strenuous labor of preparing the vegetables for canning, but also had to worry about the canning machinery itself.
Some children, even as young as eight, were assigned to put the tops on the cans that were then soldered by the machine next to them Photographs, The wages were better on the capping line as it was considered factory work Hindman, , but it was an extremely strenuous task, as one had to keep up with the machine, and machines do not need to sleep and replenish. The task was dangerous as well. One school girl complained that while working at capping cans she "grew so tired from the constant pressure of keeping up with the machine, and so sick from the fumes of the acid used for soldering she had to give it up" Eschenbrenner, A Maryland law in forbade the use of children younger than sixteen to work "on any machine or machinery operated by power" Matthews, , although in a survey of Maryland canneries in , there were numerous reports of machinery accidents involving children.
Many of them were serious like the "year old boy who was fatally injured when his clothing was caught and he was drawn into the machinery" and the "year old boy" who while "operating a closing machine had his third finger cut off at the first joint" Matthews, Dangerous Business.
Boy at Canning Machine. A Canning Machine and Some of the Boys. The cannery was certainly no place for a child to work in, or even grow up in, but since families came as a unit to work at the cannery, children often had no choice but to spend their formative years there. In his photographs, Hine captured the essence of this when he showed infants stowed away in boxes in the J.
Farrand Packing Company as their mothers snipped beans. The young children would often be grouped together to the side and put under the charge of children little older than they. The older children preferred babysitting the younger children in order to avoid the strenuous activity of snipping and sorting beans Hindman, Many children were left unsupervised, and would injure themselves, as few factory owners made "a systematic effort Interior of a Packing Company.
Child labor, captured in still frame by Lewis Hine, was a terrible practice. Yet by , the situation had become so dangerous that Maryland organized the Oyster Police to keep the peace on the oyster grounds. In the dark of night, dredgers were known to sneak onto tonging grounds to harvest oysters.
Dredgers could make short work of oysters in shallow tonging areas. In shallow waters, oystermen worked out of small boats, including canoes built of logs hollowed out and pinned together lengthwise. Chesapeake watermen used log canoes well into the 20th century. This model is rigged with hand tongs. The tonger lowers the baskets into the water and pulls the handles apart.
Using a raking motion, he works them back together until the baskets are filled. He then lifts the catch to the surface, hand-over-hand, and swings the baskets aboard. First built in the s, bugeyes were unique to the Chesapeake. They were large, decked-over versions of log canoes. They ranged in length from 30 to 65 feet and carried three sails on two masts. Worked by a captain and crew of six, bugeyes were used for dredging oysters in winter and hauling produce in summer.
First built in the late s, skipjacks—one-masted, V-bottom vessels—gradually replaced bugeyes in the oyster dredging fleet.
Their simple rig and hull design proved easier to build, operate, and maintain. Like other watercraft, some skipjacks were built in established shipyards, but many more were built by carpenters and watermen in small communities around the bay. This dredge boat was named for a little girl who lived in the community of Inverness. Harvests of Chesapeake oysters declined throughout the s.
Despite limits on harvests and programs to seed oyster beds, the resource never rebounded. Two diseases—MSX and Dermo—continue to decimate the small remaining oyster populations. This canvasback decoy was carved from the mast of the venerable oyster sloop Rebecca T. Ruark , built in On the Water Exhibition Collection. Baltimore lay very near the immense protein factory of Chesapeake Bay, and out of the bay it ate divinely.
Mencken, Happy Days , Oysters for Sale Oysters were for sale even at the J. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration. Oyster Shucking Knife. Oyster Knife View Object Record This oyster shucking knife was made by a blacksmith and used in the area of Crisfield, Maryland, probably in the early s. Oyster Champion The U. A Chesapeake Icon A law passed in still helps skipjacks—one-masted, sailing oyster boats—survive today.
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