{"id":573,"date":"2025-06-09T20:18:19","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T00:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/?p=573"},"modified":"2025-06-09T20:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T00:27:09","slug":"as-ye-sow-ye-shall-reap-remembering-marylands-forgotten-1951-watermens-monument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/2025\/06\/09\/as-ye-sow-ye-shall-reap-remembering-marylands-forgotten-1951-watermens-monument\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAs Ye Sow Ye Shall Reap\u201d: Remembering Maryland\u2019s Forgotten 1951 Watermen\u2019s Monument"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A revised version of this essay was published in Chesapeake Bay Magazine<\/strong> on June 5, 2025, and can be seen here: https:\/\/www.chesapeakebaymagazine.com\/a-50-foot-oyster-shell-the-bay-bridge-watermens-monument-that-almost-was\/<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watermen monuments were all the rage in Chesapeake Bay communities during the 1990s. In places like Rock Hall, Grasonville, and Solomons Island, locals raised money to commemorate men who worked and sometimes died on the water. It was a time when Maryland\u2019s blue crab fishery, like the oyster fishery before it, had suffered precipitous declines. The ubiquity of those monuments in travel brochures and tourist itineraries\u2014even to this day\u2014shows how fully people invested in public memory as a hedge against Maryland\u2019s fickle maritime economy.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not the first time, though, that Marylanders turned to heritage tourism amid contractions in the fisheries. Beginning in the 1930s, prompted by global economic recession and slumping seafood harvests, boosters pitched the Eastern Shore\u2019s historical charms relentlessly to auto tourists and real estate investors. The<\/em> Baltimore Sun<\/em> instructed travelers on how to see \u201cThe Sho\u2019 Through a Windshield.\u201d Real estate agents hawked old plantation homes to wealthy investors from New York City. And A. Aubrey Bodine\u2019s distinctive photojournalism reimagined working watermen not as industrial laborers, but as picturesque guardians of a bygone era, men who were \u201cin our time but not of it.\u201d By the time the Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened in 1952, these were the rustic enticements that lured wealthy people east and that fixed the Eastern Shore on its path to becoming a weekend getaway for the well-heeled.[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back now it is easy to see how those 1990s watermen monuments commemorate a usable past dreamed up a generation earlier by people eager to solve their own economic problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even back then there were disagreements over how to remember. Consider the proposal, floated in 1951, to erect a fifty-foot-tall monument at the eastbound entrance to the soon-to-be-completed Bay Bridge. A plaster mockup of the monument garnered considerable attention at the Maryland Conservation Federation\u2019s Flower and Garden show held that year in Baltimore\u2019s Fifth Regiment Armory Building. It depicted an aged watermen sitting with his grandson, gesturing wistfully toward the bay. Behind them rose up a massive oyster shell inscribed with the words: \u201cas ye sow ye shall reap\u201d [see image above].[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the Eastern Shore tourism campaign, which romanticized Maryland\u2019s historic fisheries, the proposed waterman monument was more like a rap on the knuckles. The Federation intended it to remind passersby that the environmental damage done by unfettered oyster harvesting was a choice and that they could, in fact, choose otherwise. Federation president H. Lee Hoffman explained that \u201cthe purpose of the new monument will be to remind Marylanders [that the Bay] still has great resources potential for the commercial fisherman and recreational use as well.\u201d An opinion writer for the Sun<\/em> put it in sharper terms: \u201cThe bay oyster beds have been dredged to extinction \u2026 can any loyal Marylander callously neglect the memory of its most succulent aborigine?\u201d[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus was thrown yet another jab in what by then had been a decades-long fight over what to do about declines in Maryland oyster harvests. States including Rhode Island and Connecticut had already turned to the artificial cultivation techniques advocated for by conservationists concerned to rebuild depleted oyster beds. In Maryland, however, where prior to the 1960s tidewater communities enjoyed enormous power in the state legislature, watermen leveraged all of their political capital to defy the conservationists. What could science tell them about oysters that they didn\u2019t already know? And why listen to conservationists who, the oystermen insisted, were just corporate hacks looking to privatize the bay?[v]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t politics, though, that defeated the Federation\u2019s goal of pitching oyster conservation directly to bridge commuters. The bigger problem was that, well, the monument was just plain ugly. Hans Schuler, longtime director of the Maryland Institute College of Art, designed it himself, going so far as to interview \u201ca number of watermen before completing his search for one who would be typical of the trade and \u2026 suitable to pose for the [statue].\u201d But even despite Schuler\u2019s efforts, many visitors to the Flower and Garden Show agreed with Lee Lawrie of Easton that there \u201cshould be a better monument\u201d to go along with the Federation\u2019s plan. Mrs. Gay of Baltimore thought \u201cthe oyster shell is terrible.\u201d E.J. Marhsall of Westminster agreed: \u201cthe statue is hideous.\u201d[vi]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, the monument campaign never quite hit its mark. Erstwhile Federation president Hoffman was still making the case five years later, hopeful that another organization might adopt the mockup so that he would no longer have to keep it in storage. In a letter to the Maryland Board of Natural Resources, Hoffman predicated that the monument would draw visitors in \u201clarge numbers\u201d just as had Massachusetts\u2019s 1925 Gloucester Fisherman\u2019s Memorial. But if a taker could not be found, Hoffman continued, then the outsized shell should be thrown in the bay \u201cwhere oysters will soon find it an excellent deposit for their spat, thereby helping in a small way to restore oyster production.\u201d[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever actually became of Hoffman\u2019s shell is unclear. What is clear, though, is that monuments have always been poor conduits for complicated ideas. Selling conservation means making delicate arguments about marine biology, regional economics, and environmental sustainability. It is a conversation too about labor, identity, and cultural heritage. The sculptural confluence of these themes ended up being too confusing, and so Schuler tried to make it work by putting the oyster first. His is an angry oyster, large and looming, bent on biblical admonition. Is it any wonder that Marylanders balked?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, the watermen monuments that did eventually get made always put the watermen first. As if plucked straight from a Bodine photospread, they focus squarely on manhood, heroism, and the virtues of working hard on the water. But here too are problems. You\u2019d never know from the watermen monuments we have today that there ever was\u2014or still is\u2014an argument about oyster conservation. You\u2019d never know that Marylanders who work on the water have always been more diverse and never quite so rustic as the statues would have us believe. You\u2019d never know, that is, that there are other ways to remember. In the end, what we learn by remembering Maryland\u2019s forgotten 1951 watermen\u2019s monument is that monuments never were going to fix the tidewater\u2019s economic problems. Doing that means finding ways to have the hard conversations about history, power, and the environment for which monuments are always a poor substitute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[i]<\/a> See, for instance, Michaila Shahan, \u201c30th<\/sup> Anniversary of Watermen\u2019s Memorial,\u201d CBM Bay Weekly<\/em> (May 19, 2022), https:\/\/bayweekly.com\/solomons-marks-30th-anniversary-of-watermens-memorial\/; Doug Bishop, \u201cMd. Watermen’s Monument rededicated; challenges facing industry discussed,\u201d MyEasternShoreMD <\/em>(November 6, 2013), https:\/\/www.myeasternshoremd.com\/news\/queen_annes_county\/md-watermens-monument-rededicated-challenges-facing-industry-discussed\/article_089f459d-a352-589d-b4ec-482e91210ff5.html; and \u201cRock Hall\u2019s Beloved \u201cOld Salt\u201d Statue Restored,\u201d Chesapeake Bay Magazine<\/em> (July 11, 2023), https:\/\/www.chesapeakebaymagazine.com\/rock-halls-beloved-old-salt-statue-restored\/.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ii]<\/a> Gerald Griffin, \u201cThe Sho\u2019 Through a Windshield,\u201d The Baltimore Sun<\/em> (May 13, 1934). On the sale of the colonial Blakeford mansion, for instance, see \u201cOld Estate on Eastern Shore Purchased By New York Man,\u201d The Baltimore Sun<\/em> (November 22, 1934). The quote is from Franky Henry, \u201cElliott Island: In Our Time but Not of it,\u201d The Baltimore Sun<\/em> (March 28, 1954).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[iii]<\/a> Photographs of the monument, including the one pictured, are from folder \u201cEnvelope 2 flower show 1957,\u201d Box 1, Hoffman-Maryland Conservation Federation Photograph Collection (PP49), Special Collections, Maryland Center for History and Culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[iv]<\/a> H. Lee Hoffman, \u201cProposed Chesapeake Bay Resources Monument,\u201d in folder \u201c1950-51 Subject Files-Chesapeake Bay Resources Monument,\u201d Box 3, Harry Lee Hoffman, Jr. Collection (MS 2583), Special Collections, Maryland Center for History and Culture. \u201cA First Step Toward a Fitting Oyster Memorial,\u201d The Baltimore Sun<\/em> (February 9, 1951).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[v]<\/a> Christine Keiner, The Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay since 1880<\/em> (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[vi]<\/a> Deborah B. Morrison, \u201cAn Old Watermen Visits the Flower Show,\u201d The Baltimore Sun<\/em> Friday Morning (March 2, 1951). A list of responses appears in in folder \u201c1950-51 Subject Files-Chesapeake Bay Resources Monument,\u201d Box 3, Harry Lee Hoffman, Jr. Collection (MS 2583), Special Collections, Maryland Center for History and Culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[vii]<\/a> Hoffman to William Bayliff, secretary of the Maryland Board of Natural Resources, August 9, 1956, in folder \u201c1951-58 Correspondence,\u201d Box 2, Harry Lee Hoffman, Jr. Collection (MS 2583), Special Collections, Maryland Center for History and Culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watermen monuments were all the rage in Chesapeake Bay communities during the 1990s. In places like Rock Hall, Grasonville, and Solomons Island, locals raised money to commemorate men who worked and sometimes died on the water. It was a time when Maryland\u2019s blue crab fishery, like the oyster fishery before it, had suffered precipitous declines. The ubiquity of those monuments in travel broches and tourist itineraries\u2014even to this day\u2014shows how fully people invested in public memory as a hedge against Maryland\u2019s fickle maritime economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2638,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2638"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":580,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/sethbruggeman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}