CONNECTICUT: COAST TOWNS WEST OF NEW HAVEN. 333 



111. ORIGIN AND PEESENT IMPORTANCE OF THE OYSTEK INDUSTRY. 



MILFORD. Concerning the oyster industry of Milford, Mr. Ingersoll says: 



"Leaving New Haven, the first stoppage for oyster studies is at Milford, one of the most inter- 

 esting and beautiful places in the State. It was settled in 1639, and long ago had an extensive 

 West India trade and ship-building industry. The business in that line declined forty years ago. 

 The gulf, harbor, and estuaries have always been more or less prolific of shell-fish. Milford long- 

 clams have a good reputation. Milford Point, at the mouth of the Housatonic River, was a famous 

 oystering place many years ago. Old citizens remember a row of huts, built of wreckage and 

 covered with banks and thatching of seaweed, which used to border this wild beach. In these 

 huts lived fifty or sixty men, who made here their home during the greater or less part of the year, 

 and devoted themselves to clam-digging and oyster-raking. Many of these men, who were utterly 

 poor, thus got together the beginnings of a fortune, which, invested in active agriculture, placed 

 them among the most influential inhabitants. But for the last thirty or forty years such sea 

 industries as these have been declining, until nothing whatever was done on the water by Milford 

 people, except the catching of menhaden, for the utilization of which two large factories have 

 been built. 



"About eight years ago, however, Mr. William H. Merwin, knowing what had been done about 

 New Haven, began his valuable experiments in cultivating native oysters. He and some others 

 had once before started an enterprise of raising oysters in the 'Gulf Pond' at the mouth of the 

 Indian River. But the other stockholders, being older men, disregarded his advice, though he 

 had always lived by the shore, and the effort failed. They insisted upon damming the river, so 

 that the sediment brought down by the stream was deposited upon and smothered the oysters. 

 It is this episode that gave rise to section 10 of the oyster statute. 



"Eight years ago Mr. Merwin resolved to try oyster-planting for himself. He took up a few 

 acres oft' the shore in water 8 feet deep at low tide. He had just got his oysters well planted and 

 had high hopes of success, when a storm destroyed them all. His labor and money got no return 

 but costly experience. He then tried again, further out toward the sea, in 18 feet depth of water, near 

 the Government buoy. He got so heavy a set, and his young stock grew so well, that he estimated 

 his crop at 10,000 bushels. Cultivators from Providence and Boston came down and bargained with 

 him to take it all about the middle of April, but the last of March there came a gale which drifted so 

 much sand upon the oysters that they had not strength, after the severe winter, to 'spit it out,' 

 and before they could be taken up so many died that only 3,000 bushels were sold. There had 

 been an immense excitement over the seeming success of oyster culture; a joint-stock company 

 had been formed and the whole harbor taken up; but this storm put an end to the enthusiasm, 

 and everybody, except Mr. Merwin and his two sons, retreated. Mr. Merwin, however, saw that 

 the trouble lay in the shallowness of the water. He therefore went down to Pond Point, eastward 

 of the harbor, and buoyed off 200 acres in water from 25 to 40 feet deep, upon a hard gravelly 

 and sandy bottom. He placed upon this ground a quantity of full-grown oysters and shells and 

 secured a large set, which has been augmented each year since, until he now has 100 acres under 

 cultivation. In 1877 there was a very heavy set hereabouts; in 1878 less, and in 1879 least of all. 



"Having thus got assurance of a profitable farm, for storms no longer seemed able to affect 

 him, Mr. Merwin saw that he needed more rapid and sure means of harvesting his crop than 

 the row-boats and skiffs afforded. He therefore employed the firm of Lockwood & Co., of Nor- 

 walk, to build him a steamer for the express purpose of dredging, and introduced the proper 



