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Oyster Trade 1882
(For more Norfolk geography tidbits, click here.)
"On the western side of the city, below the cotton-wharves, one sees a score or more of long, low sheds, the great heaps of white, oderiferous shells before their doors proclaiming them, in lieu of signs, the establishments of the oyster-packers. The manner in which these shells are utilized proclaims the packer a man of genius and resources. Great barges  are forever loading with them at his docks, and when loaded gliding demurely away behind an ambitious little tug, to deposit their cargoes on the made ground along the water-front, or as filling for the docks, or embankments for the railroads. On the truck-farms near the city, and on Virginia and North Carolina plantations as well, they are burned into lime for fertilizers; and spread evenly on the surface, and ground to powder by wheels and hoofs, they unite with the Virginia mud to make the beautifully hard, firm shell roads that form a pleasant feature of the city and its environs.
The oyster-packer is always a Northern man, generally a shrewd, kindly, quizzical Down-Easterner, whose mother wit and modest capital invested here are producing him quite a golden harvest. Entering his establishment, one sees long rows of colored men (called “shuckers”) standing before benches ranged along the sides and through the center of the room, employed in opening or shucking the oysters. This they do by means of a short, thin-bladed knife, with which they sever the adductor muscle; then with a dexterous twist of the wrist they pass the knife between the bivalve and the shell, and he is deposited in one of the two tubs standing before the operator...."
(from “Norfolk, Old and New,” Lippincott’s Magazine, Oct. 1882, New Series, vol. IV, pp.324-326)
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