of the softer side of hardware.”
Skippy was ready to spend a lot more time with his new friends, but we still had something of a hike before we got up to Crifield’s main business section. When most of the town as it exists today was built, the oyster houses and other seafood plants crowded around the docks, many built on pilings over the marsh that separated the land from the water so that the boats could offload directly to the plants. In time, the plants’ tons of discarded oyster shells filled in the marsh to make dry land. That left the main part of town strung out at a diagonal to the highway—and, far more importantly at the time, the railroad, which ran right down to the docks.
It was the railway that gave Crisfield its name—the one it has now—and assured its position as seafood capital of the world, because it was able to hustle fresh oysters, crabs and, for a brief time, terrapins to major markets from Baltimore to the nation beyond. John W. Crisfield, an officer with the Eastern Shore Railroad, had seen the importance of the project and had pushed for the extension of the line. The railhead was named Crisfield in his honor and, soon, so was the town. Its earliest European name had been Annemesex Neck, for the local Indian tribe, and was founded as an English town in 1666 by Benjamin Summers. Its port was called Somers Cove (spelling was an inexact science back then), and eventually, since nearly all its comings and goings were maritime, that became the town’s name—until Crisfield came along. Somers Cove lives on, of course, as the marina, and the Indian word survives in the Big and Little Anne-mesex rivers. The tribe, alas, does not.
Downtown—or would it be uptown?—Crisfield is an