Bivalve, NJ


When I was living in Philly in 1999, I visited my hometown, Millville, NJ, a  few times to do research at the local library about the oyster industry and the lives of black oyster shuckers in South Jersey. Most of the shuckers migrated up from Virginia and Maryland in the nineteen twenties when the shucking houses opened in Bivalve and Shellpile. It has always been a very segregated scene, occupationally and socially, from what I can tell. Previous to this, there were hundreds of oyster schooners based out of the Maurice River Cove. With the modernization of the fleet, the days of oyster schooners were gone, sails were replaced with diesel engines and dredging was mechanized. Many (mostly white) workers lost their jobs at the same time that the oyster packing industry grew, requiring shuckers to prepare the oysters for packing. From what I have read this contributed to racial tension, and the Klan was supposedly quite active in South Jersey in the 20's and 30's, allegedly donating a stained glass window to a local white, I believe, Baptist church in Port Norris.
My partner at the time, and I, rented a car and drove around south Jersey. A depressed agricultural and industrial area. Lots of migrant workers come in during the growing season and work the farms. Poor mexicans and central americans in cowboy hats standing outside run down migrant housing next to weathered pick-up trucks. Lots of old gray weather-beaten houses, old gas stations with rusted pumps, weeds breaking through concrete. I took my camera and tripod and took some photos by the mouth of the Maurice River where there was once a thriving oyster industry: dark and slimy shucking houses cramped with black workers. Nothing left but a couple of canning houses now. Old docks, nothing but pilings in the river mud; a few old processing houses with paint peeling off, complete with sail lofts, now converted to other uses. Took photos of that, and the ice on the marsh; an old blue house, now a repository for cage-like crab pots; a abandon and decrepit church, it's asbestos shingles peeling off, with a sign, ..OCCASIONAL SERVICES BY DEACON WILLIAM WALL. ALL WELCOME.., next to a door flaking off faded red paint.

I am in the process of preparing a longer historical piece on the oyster industry based out of Bivalve and Shellpile, with both my photos and some historical photos as well, so stay tuned.

Shellpile, NJ, 1938. Oyster Shuckers Housing.  Photo by Arthur Rothstein,

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