COMMERCE, NAVIGATION AND FISHERIES. 73 



tanning and dressing leather, for rope making, for painting, and foi" various 

 other uses, while it was known that those fish contained oil and the process 

 of extracting it had been actually applied many years before in some 

 scattered and inconsequential way, may be said to be not yet forty years 

 old. The late Judge Osborn, of Jessup's Neck, on Peconic Bay, w-as the 

 first to put up try works for rendering menhaden by boiling the fish in 

 water in large iron pots set in masonry, and skmiming off the oil that rose 

 to the surface. Those pot works, as such estiblishments were called, were 

 put up in a lot near his house and not tar from the shore, where the fish 

 could be conveniently landed from the seine and carted to the works. 



This was in the year 1847 or 1848. The oil made in this way was 

 heavy, black and rank, and was used, by the Judge, for coarse painting 

 and other purposes on his [)remises, and some small amounts were sold to 

 other parties. Some years later he put up steam works on Jessup's Point. 

 On July 4, 1850, thirty-three years ago, the first steam factory in Suffolk 

 County, for making oil and guano from menhaden, was begun at Chequet 

 Point, Shelter Island, directly opposite Greenport, by Daniel D. Wells and 

 his oldest son lienry E. Wells, both then residents of Greenport, the 

 former since deceased, the latter yet living and one of its foremost citizens, 

 from whose lips I have received entertainnig information concerning this 

 pioneer undertaking which led the w^ay for the great enterprise that now 

 lifts itself into the fore-front of the nation's marine activities. They had 

 visited and inspected the works of Judge Osborn, and benig acute practical 

 observers and shrewd men of business, they had noted its possibilities and 

 needs. They procured a steam boiler, which not proving powerful enough 

 was exchanged for a larger and that again for a still larger. The fish were 

 procured from shore seines at Orient and East Marion. The Yaphank 

 seine, in the latter harbor, on one occasion enclosed a vast school of fish 

 and 1,000.000 were landed from it; an equally large haul was made by a 

 seine in the upper bay; and 1 believe that on Short Beach a seine once 

 landed nearly or quite i 1-4 millions of fish. Usually at first thev had 

 some two million fish in a season, afterwards three millions, and within a 

 few years the supply largely increased. The very first year of the business 

 they dried some of the scrap or refuse, as an experiment, on a small plat- 

 form, and then ground it in a large cofiee mill — this being the first dried 

 and ground scrap ever exhibited. After continuing in the business for two 

 years at Chequet Point they bought land at White iiill, a little ways west of 

 Prospect, Shelter Island, and moved the factory there in the spring of 1853, 

 but before the work of rebuilding had been completed they sold the estab- 

 lishment to Colonel Morgan, of Poquannock, near Groton, Conn., where 

 it was removed and erected, being the first factory of the sort in that State. 



The same flill they built anotht.T factory at White Hill, in connection 

 with Harmon and Maxon Tuthill and the latter's brother-in-law, Mr. 

 Strong, all of East Marion. They bought their first purse-net of Capt. 

 Benj. Tallman, of Portsmouth, R. I., who originated this mode of catch- 

 ing menhaden in deep water — an invention, not patented, but which has 

 been relatively of as great utility to this fishery as Whitney's invention was 

 to the production of cotton. The first purse-net used in Peconic Bay was 

 bought a year or two previous by Capt. David Smith and others. The 

 Wellses bought out the Tuthills' and Strongs' interest, and from 1854 till 

 now the business has been conducted under the same firm name of D. D. 

 Wells & Sons. At one time they had one seine fishir^g in Orient Harbor 



