Little Oyster and Big Oyster - Ellis and Liberty Islands and the Story of Wells Fargo

Many people outside of New York City look at Ellis Island and Liberty Island thinking that they were always there. But that wasnt always true. In the 1600's when Hudson first arrived they were just mud flats created by the accumulated silt from the Southward flow of the Hudson River to the Harbor at the tip of Manhattan Island.

They were the oyster beds where the Lenape Indians got their oysters. At that time the oysters were 10 inches long. They were also the source of the wampum used as money by the Lenape and other tribes in the surrounding area.

As late as 1800 these 2 areas were called Liitle Oyster, which became Ellis Island; and Big Oyster, which became Bedloe's and then Liberty Island. But until then they were really just mud shoals and a hazard to navigation.But they were a great source of food; namely the Oyster. At that time the area was considered the largest oyster bed in the world.

A great book on the subject is "The Big Oyster" by Mark Kurlansky. A wonderful h in story of both the delicacy and New York's harbor of the time. Yet another good book on the subject is "The Oyster Pirates."

The photo above is from 1937 and shows a pile of the shells left from lunch. Although the size of the oyster had shrunk, the pollution and over harvesting had not yet decimated the oyster beds. But it had diminished them in both quantity and size.

And lets not forget the role these oysters played in uniting the East and West in developing America.

In 1841 a man named William Harnden, considered by many to be America's the nation's first "expressman", hired Henry Wells to figure out how to deliver things quickly between New York City and Albany. The Post Office was too slow, and personal couriers too expensive. That left only a few stagecoach companies to fill the gap. But Henry Wells had him beat by offering a unique idea; delivering for multiple customers at a time laid out logistically.

Wells, along with Will Fargo, who partnered up in the 1840's, had to prove their worth to get an investor to enlarge their business westward from Buffalo. And this is where the Oyster enters the picture.

One of their best known achievements was in bringing fresh oysters up to Buffalo, the jumping off point westward on the Erie Canal, from NewYork City's oyster beds to show case their ability to deliver.

Until then overland travel was considered too slow to deliver fresh seafood far inland. The Erie Canal was the best means of East West transportation, but the Southern route to New York was still mostly rutted, muddy roads.

If they could pull this off they would be able to secure the necessary funding to go Westward to St. Louis, and from there to the later Comstock Lode of Silver and the the gold of San Francisco. In the 1840's the train was still in the stage of proving it's worth. So the timing was just right.

Here is Mr. Well's account of that event, 75 years afterwards;

"It may amuse you to hear that the oyster was a powerful agent in expediting our progress.

That very delicious shell fish was fully appreciated by the Buffalonians — and deeply they felt the sad fact that there was one occasion toward spring, no oysters in Buffalo. James Leidley, the tavern keeper, asked me why the express could not bring them.

“Bring oysters by coach over such roads!” was my astonished exclamation.

His answer was the keystone to all success in enterprise.

“If I pay for them — charge just what you will.” They were brought — opened in Albany and brought to Buffalo at the cost of $3 the hundred — and the arrival of those oysters by express at Buffalo created a sensation as great as would today the coming hither of a section of the Atlantic Telegraph."

Later, in the 1870's, after trains were well proven, Wells Fargo still had routes not yet  covered by the trains. And in 1849 the stagecoach transported much of the gold from Sutter's Hill to San Fransico.

For the names of more books on this subject you can just hit the link below to the NY Public library.  Since there are no real photos of the old mud flats which became Ellis and Liberty Islands, that is where I got the photo of the oyster shells.

So remember, the next time you shuck an oyster, or eat one fried, it's not just an oyster you're holding. It's a piece of history.

https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/01/history-half-shell-intertwined-story-new-york-city-and-its-oysters

"The Immigrant" with Jeremy Renner and Joaquin Phoenix (2014)

When Ewa Cybulska; played by Marion Cotillard; arrives in America with her sister Magda ; played by Angela Sarafyan; she expects to be greeted by her family and become acquainted with her new homeland. Instead, her sister is denied entry due to tuberculosis and she is set to be deported because her relatives never showed up. This is the beginning if an ethereal film which takes you on Ewa’s journey in the America of the 1920’s and Prohibition.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Bruno Weiss, who first meets Ewa at Ellis Island. He spots her in the line of persons to be interred before deportation and offers to help her out. He slips the guard a bribe to let him take her back to Manhattan with her on the boat.

Ewa’s first days are marked by getting to know the other women who seem to all know Bruno. With her limited English Ewa is hard pressed to find out what these girls do and how they all know Bruno, who presents himself as a promoter of some sort. In reality he runs a string of prostitutes and intends to make Ewa one of them.

Bruno’s cousin Orlando; played by Jeremy Renner; is a magician at the nightclub which features “shows” performed by Bruno’s girls. When Bruno puts her onstage for the first time she is savaged by the audience with verbal abuse and erotic suggestions. As a devout Catholic she withdraws within herself to fend off the fear and confusion she feels; not to mention the betrayal by Bruno.

As Bruno draws Ewa more deeply into his world of degradation we see the effect it has upon him. He begins to love her without knowing how to express it. In reality; although she is the one being degraded, Bruno is the one who suffers for it. The irony is that he basically suffers the consequences of his own decisions. While she has her religion to fall back upon; he has nothing.

Meantime, Ewa forms a bond of sorts with Orlando which allows her to transcend the terrible things happening to her as she awaits a chance to get her sister out of quarantine and begin her life without Bruno.

This is a much nuanced film, with beautiful cinematography. It is a bit slow paced; perhaps deliberately so; to let the viewer feel the uncertainty of the events being experienced by Ewa. Real life is like that; things which are unfamiliar seem to drag by until you get used to the routine. The film is directed by James Gray from a script he co-write with Ric Menello .

"How the Other Half Lives" by Jacob A. Riis (1901)

Through his remarkable series of photographs, documenting life in the tenements of old New York at the turn of the 19^th Century, Jacob A. Riis has become an icon of compassionate liberalism to many folks. That’s because they haven’t read his book. This landmark classic of sociology is often spoken of as if it were a plea for compassion and sympathy for the poor. If that is your opinion of this highly vaunted work, then you have probably not read it either.

The book is somewhat akin to D.W. Griffith’s epic motion picture “Birth of a Nation” in that it stereotypes every minority then in existence in New York City. Jews are clever and suspicious; Chinese are opium pushers and white slave traders; the Italians are happy people except when pushed too far and their passionate nature gets the better of them; while the Irish are just plain filthy and would rather drink than work. And all are criminals of one sort or another.

While quoting from the crime statistics available at the time he notes that the majority of the criminals come from the slums. Crime itself is the result of unclean living and poor habits, as well as the choice of lifestyles made by the individual. When the well to do come down to the slums for entertainment, they are sometimes unwittingly dragged into these lifestyles themselves; making them victims of the poor.

As a kid I used to go to Riis Park in the borough of Queens. Riis Park is the beach which sits next door to the Breezy Point Section, which gained widespread fame this past year in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Riis Park was the brainchild of Robert Moses, who oversaw the building of most of the bridges and tunnels, as well as countless parks throughout the 5 boroughs. He named Riis Park for the author of this book, who is often considered to be a champion of the poor, and presumably would have wanted poor people to have a sunny, open place to go for fresh air. But, I wonder if Mr. Moses ever read this book.

Perhaps I am being too harsh upon the author; after all, those were different times. And he did expose the horrid conditions of the city’s slum dwellings through his photographs. It was just somewhat of a shock to read the author’s views on the predicament of the people he was trying to help.

For better, or worse, we are all products of the environment in which we live. For all the flaws in the way he has expressed himself in this book, he did lead a crusade that helped, in some way, to draw attention to the plight of the poor. Though most of the social ills which he decries in this narrative still exist today, he does deserve credit for being among the first of the moral crusaders who attempted to do something about the conditions he saw to be unfit.

And, then there are also those remarkable photographs he took, leaving us a window into our past, which might not always be so pretty, but represent who we once were. May it be that we never go that far backwards again.