[5] EARLY SHAD FISHERIES OF SUSQUEHANNA RIVER. 623 



were set on articles of sale, inter alia, as follows : Winter-fed beef, per 

 pound, Id. ; tobacco, per pound, dd. ; eggs, per dozen, 8d. ; shad, apiece, 

 6d. At one time they brought but 4^. apiece. A bushel of salt would 

 at any time bring a hundred shad. At the time the dam was built they 

 brought from 10 to 12 cents. On the day of the big haul Mr. Harvey 

 says they sold for a cent apiece (Mr. Dana says 3 coppers). Mr. Isaac 

 S. Osterhout remembers a Mr. Walter Green who gave twenty barrels 

 of shad for a good Durham cow. Mr. Eoberts says that in exchanging 

 for maple sugar one good shad was worth a pound of sugar ; when sold 

 for cash shad were worth 12 J cents apiece. Major Fassett says the 

 market price of the shad was $6 per hundred. Dr. Horton says the 

 shad, according to size, were worth from 10 to 25 cents. Mr. Hollen- 

 back, in calculating the value of the fisheries near Wyalusing, has put 

 the value of the shad at 10 cents apiece. In 1820 they were held in 

 Wilkes Barre at $18.75 per hundred. Mr. Fowler says they were worth 

 3 cents or 4 cents apiece. 



Country supply and trade. — Every family along the river hav- 

 ing some means had its half barrel, barrel, or more of shad salted away 

 each season, and some smoked shad hanging in their kitchen chimneys ; 

 but not only those living immediately along the river were the bene- 

 ficiaries, but the testimony shows that the country folk came from fifty 

 miles away to get their winter supply, camping along the river's bank, 

 and bringing in payment whatever they had of a marketable nature. 

 They came from the New York State line, and from as far east as Easton, 

 bringing maple sugar and salt, and from as far west as Milton, bring- 

 ing cider, whisky, and the two mixed together as cider royal, and from 

 down the river and away to the south towards Philadelphia, bringing 

 leather, iron, &c. 



Mr. Isaac S. Osterhout says when quite a boy (1822-'23)he went with 

 a neighbor to Salina, N. Y., after salt, he taking shad and his neighbor 

 whetstones, which they traded for salt. The teams hauling grain to 

 Easton brought back salt. In good seasons the supply of this latter 

 important item always seems to have been short of the demand. 



The shad, as far as we can learn, appear never to have gone up the 

 West Branch in such quantities as they did up the North Branch, and 

 the same may be said of the Delaware, or else the fish were of inferior 

 quality, for the dwellers from the banks of both of these streams came 

 to Wyoming for their supply of shad. 



Mr. P. M. Osterhout tells of a firm (Miller & McCord) living at Tunk- 

 hannock which did quite an extensive business in shad, sending the 

 cured ones up the river into New York Sta^e, and far down the river. 



Mr. Fowler says : " No farmer or man with a family was without his 

 barrel or barrels of shad the whole year round. Besides furnishing 

 food for the immediate inhabitants, people from Mahantango, Blue 

 Mountains, and, in fact, for fifty miles around, would bring salt in tight 

 barrels and trade it for shad." 



