At that time, you didn’t buy the oysters.  You bought the man and the boat.  Now, the white man got from five to ten cents more on a bushel than the colored person got.  Same oysters, but that’s the way they worked the system.

John "Tucker" Brown, born on July 25, 1938, is a lifelong resident of Avenue, Maryland, a small fishing village. He comes from a lineage of watermen, with both his father, Frank Brown, and grandfather, Sam Brown, being watermen. Brown began earning his own money at the age of eight, crabbing in the creek. He worked with his father until his father fell ill, after which he briefly worked for American Airlines before returning home to care for his family. Brown took over his father's fishing crew and has spent his life oystering and clamming up and down the bay.

Interview with John Lee Callis 

John Norwood McCarty (1916-2012) was born to a farming family outside of Lively in Lancaster County, Virginia. His boyhood interplay with steamboats involved raising produce that he and his family then delivered to the bustling steamboat wharf to board the vessels for sale. McCarty provided vivid accounts of a rural steamboat wharf community, from a cooperative grower’s packinghouse to the local Speakeasy.

A local newspaper reporter, Haynes is owner of historic Hudgins House adjacent to the Crickett Hill Steamboat Wharf on the Piankitank River near the Gwynn’s Island bridge. She discusses the handwritten boarding house ledger dating from 1916 and overnight guests who came from far and wide.

Julie Archer was born on January 31, 1971, and is a native of West Virginia. She grew up near Parkersburg, in a suburb called Vienna. Her father, Gary Archer, worked in a heating and insulating plant and was involved in union organizing, which influenced Julie's early exposure to activism. Her mother, Karen Carpenter Archer, originally from Iowa, met Gary while working at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War. Julie pursued a degree in biology and developed an interest in environmental issues during college.

The first part of Mrs. Olivia Mariam Williams Haynie's (1917-2006) interview is spent in bitter recollection of the atrocities committed by the Yankees during the Civil War, tales of great incivility passed down from her grandparents who witnessed affairs firsthand. From here Miriam Haynie takes listeners from her Reedville home to and through the Baltimore. Steamboats occasioned close relations between the Northern Neck and this cosmopolitan city.

At 100 years old Mrs. Morgan, with the help of her son, legislator Harvey Morgan, recalled her honeymoon voyage aboard a side-wheeler in the 1920s. The Morgan family has operated a pharmacy in Gloucester Court House for generations. 

Mary Ridgeway is a lifelong resident of Tompkinsville, a location situated between Newburg and Rock Point. She is the daughter of Emma M. Jackson and Sankston Walter Jackson, and she grew up in a family of six children, with three brothers and two sisters. Her father was a farmer and a skilled carpenter who also worked the river, while her mother was a homemaker. Ridgeway graduated from high school at the age of sixteen and soon after began working at an oyster house at Rock Point, which was established by Mr. Coulby.

Michael O’Brien was born on October 2, 1944, and currently resides in Doddridge County, West Virginia. Raised by a government meat inspector, O’Brien moved frequently between southern Florida and Virginia, finishing high school in the latter. After high school, he moved to Baltimore to live with his grandmother, hoping to find better opportunities. He spent ten years in Baltimore but ultimately sought a simpler life. O’Brien met his wife, Nancy, during his time in Baltimore.