6.3^) REPORT OF fM-tMMIBSTONER OF FIRH AND FISHERIES. [12] 



7. Statement of Hon. P. M. Osterhoitt, in the Tunkhannovk Republican, 



April 15, 1881. 



The first shad fishing in the SusqnehaimaEiver was by the early set- 

 tlers of the Wyoming Valley, who emigrated thither from Connecticut. 

 The food of the early emigrants was, in the main, the fish of the streams 

 and the game on the mountains. The first seiue in the valley was 

 brought from Connecticut, and upon the first trial, in the spring of the 

 year, the river was found to be full of shad. These emigrants had 

 settlements along the Susquehanna from Wyoming to Tioga Point, now 

 called Athens, and each neighborhood would establish a fishery for 

 their own accommodation. It was generally done in this way: Say ten 

 men (and it took about that number to man a seine) would form them- 

 selves into a company for the purpose of a shad fishery. They raised 

 the flax, their wives would spin and make the twine, and the men would 

 knit the seine. The river being on an average forty rods wide, tlie seine 

 would be from sixty to eighty rods long. The shad congregated mostly 

 on shoals or the point of some island for spawning, and there the fish- 

 eries were generally established. Shad fishing was mostly done in the 

 night, commencing soon after dark and continuing until daylight in 

 the morning, when the shad caught would be made into as many pil«s 

 as there were rights in the seine. One of their number would then turn 

 his back and another would touch them ofi", saying, pointing to a pile, 

 "Who shall have this ?" and "Who shall have that? -'and so on until all 

 were disposed of, when the happy fishermen would go to tlieir homes well 

 laden with the spoils of the night. Between the times of drawing the 

 net, which would be generally about an hour, the time was spent in the 

 recital of fish stories, hair-breadth escapes from the beasts of the forests, 

 the wily Indian, or the Yankee production, the ghosts and witches of 

 New England. 



As early as 1800 George Miller and John McCord moved from Coxes- 

 town — a small town on the Susquehanna about five miles above Harris- 

 burgh — up the river in a Durham boat, and, bringing with them a stock 

 of goods, located at Tunkhannock, where they opened a store. They 

 were both young men and unmarried. In the spring of the year they 

 dealt quite largely in shad, the different fisheries of the neighborhood 

 furnishing them with large quantities for curing and barreling. Shad 

 were plenty but salt scarce. There was no salt except what was wag- 

 oned from the cities or from the salt works at Onondaga, N. Y.,and it was 

 not unusual that a bushel of salt would purchase one hundred shad — 

 in fact, it was difficult to procure salt to cure them. At this time the 

 German population in the lower counties of the State had not learned 

 the art of taking shad by means of the seine. 



There were then no dams or other obstructions to the ascent of the 

 fish up the river, and large quantities of the finest shad in the world 

 annually ascended the Susquehanna, many of them when taken weighing 

 from six to eight pounds each. The distance being so long (about 200 



