156 THE SHAD STREAMS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
Every family along the river having 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 immedi- 
ately along the river were the beneficiaries, as 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, bringing cider, whisky, and the two mixed to- 
gether as cider royal, and from down the river and away to the south 
towards Philadelphia, bringing leather, iron, etc. A dweller on the 
banks of the river would go to Salina, N. Y., taking shad, and his neigh- 
bor would accompany him with whetstones, which they traded for sult. 
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. 
Miller & McCord, a firm doing business at Tunkhannock, dealt largely 
in shad, sending the cured ones up the river into New York State and 
far down the river. 
The shad 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. . 
My. Wright and his committee entered upon the duties assigned them 
very evidently as a labor of love, and their investigation seems to have 
been as thorough as it was practical to make it. They interviewed, in 
person or by letter, a large number of the old settlers, those who still 
live or formerly lived near the banks of the river and were able to give 
the desired information. These persons in nearly every instance cheer- 
fully and at no little trouble furnished the information asked. It was 
no little labor to them to write out their reminiscences of the early shad 
fisheries; necessarily they were far advanced in age, all with but one 
or two exceptions having reached their “three score years and ten.” 
Besides these interviews the records of the county, files of old newspa- 
pers, and numerous printed local histories were consulted, and from 
these various sources much information was gleaned. 
Joseph Van Kirk of Northumberland says: 
“T take pleasure in saying that my recollection of the shad fisheries 
dates back to the year 1820. In that year and the succeeding two or 
three seasons I fished at Rockafeller’s fishery near Danville. In our 
party there were six of us. We fished with a seine one hundred and 
fifty yards long, and caught something from three thousand to four 
thousand marketable shad, weighing from three to nine pounds. At 
that time there were eight fisheries between Danville and Line’s island. 
