Phil Langley
Captain Phil Langley has acquired a lifetime of knowledge about the Chesapeake Bay, its ecology, and the practice of charter fishing. Growing up in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, crabbing, oystering, fishing, and hunting went hand in hand with life on the Chesapeake. In his early 20s, Langley acquired his captain’s license and purchased a boat so he could start charter...
Newell Quinton
Newell Quinton prepares homemade scrapple, continuing a family tradition that was passed down to him from his father and grandfather. In the past, most of the families in his hometown of San Domingo, Maryland, would slaughter a hog and make sausage, scrapple, and hams to last through the winter. Today participants in the annual affair have dwindled. Quinton, however, is...
Michael Whidbee
Michael Whidbee is a champion oyster shucker from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He was born and raised in Crisfield and continues to reside in the bayside town. Like many of the people who grew up in the Crisfield area, he learned to pick crabs at an early age - in his case, by watching his mother and observing the...
Mary Ada Marshall
Mary Ada Marshall is a lifelong resident of Smith Island and a standardbearer for the island, the region, and one of its most famous products: Smith Island cake. Marshall remembers her mother and grandmother making the dessert; no social event on the island would be complete without it. Marshall has been making Smith Island cakes for decades and both sells...
Kermit Travers
Captain Kermit Travers has had a far-reaching impact on life along the Eastern Shore of Maryland and throughout the Chesapeake region as a notable African American waterman and skipjack captain. Working with community scholars, Captain Travers co-created a rich photographic essay book about his personal history, titled Captain Kermit Travers, Skipjack Captain: Last but Not Least... Skipjacks became the state boat...
Joyce Fitchett
Since the age of five, Joyce Fitchett has been picking crabs and working in the seafood industry. Joyce is an eight-time crab-picking champion at the National Hard Crab Derby in Crisfield. She has worked, also in Crisfield, at Byrd’s Seafood and the Maryland Crab Meat Company, and now works for the Eastern Shore Correctional Institution. Fitchett has a strong memory...
Jay Martin
Jay Martin began gardening organically in 1973 in upstate New York. In 1980 he moved with his family to Bivalve, Maryland, where he worked as a waterman. He and his wife, Kathy, later started Silver Seed Greenhouses, a major supplier of organic transplants for the Mid-Atlantic region. Silver Seed was the first and only certified organic, wholesale greenhouse operation in...
Janice Marshall
Janice Laird Marshall, a sixth-generation Smith Islander, was born in the community of Tylerton on Smith Island. Like all islanders of her day, Marshall boarded on the mainland to attend high school, and came home at age 15 to marry Bobby Marshall, a waterman who, like generations before him, harvested fish, crabs, and oysters from Tangier Sound and the Chesapeake...
James Lane
A native of Crisfield, James Lane has, for much of his life, doggedly pursued an interest in the history and traditions of African Americans and their work in the seafood industry. Over the years, he has focused on the occupational culture of seafood workers in the Chesapeake. Currently he is involved in oral history fieldwork, heritage tourism, and museum development....
Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum
A Smith Island-style skiff is a small fishing boat, primarily used for crabbing, that is modeled after skiffs imported from Europe. These small, light boats have a pointed bow, flat stern, and flat bottom, which makes them well suited to the relatively calm waters of the Chesapeake. Originally designed to be powered by rowing, they have since been adapted for...
