Oystering

Until the late nineteenth century, oystering was an extractive industry, like lumbering or mining, but today oysters are planted, cultivated, and harvested on defined plots of Sound bottom, and the process is known as "farming." So here is oystering in our "Agriculture" section.

The oyster industry was once a very significant activity in Connecticut, and the sad story of its decline, largely because of pollutants in Long Island Sound, is told in John M. Kochiss' Oystering from New York to Boston (Mystic: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1974). A shorter survey is Henry C. Rowe's "The Oyster Industry of Connecticut," in Norris Galpin Osborn, ed., History of Connecticut in Monographic Form (New York, 1925) IV:420-41. A contemporary picture of the business at its high point at the turn of the century is Henry H. Barroll's "Connecticut's Huge Industry Under the Sea: Nearly Seventy Thousand Acres of Land Under Long Island Sound Devoted to Oyster Farming,” in  Connecticut Magazine 7 (1902) 3:252-56. The author, a retired navy commander, lived in Norwalk, and his focus is largely on the waters between that city and Stamford.

That the oyster business made money is attested to by the fact that lawyers took an interest in it. The question arose as to whether Long Island Sound was under U.S. authority or divided between New York and Connecticut. When the latter view won out, it became necessary to establish an exact boundary line. (See above under "Boundaries," the article by Raymond Marcin.) John H. Perry, in "The Legal Status of the Oyster," Yale Law Journal 3 (October, 1893) 1:87-93, discusses the statutes and cases relating to "title or estate which an oyster planter obtains in the parcel of ground allotted to him and the legal character of the oysters which are cultivated on it." (p. 87) See also, "General Map of the Oyster Grounds of the State of Connecticut Illustrating the Report of the Commissioners of Shell Fisheries for 1881." It is about 32" x 8"; there is a good copy in the map room at Yale.