 |
| Penns Grove " World Capital" of Caviar |
| The Beluga Sturgeon: Caviar in Danger |
| TED Case Studies @ http://www.american.edu/TED/STURGEON.HTM |
| Excerpt from the above written by Mark Bolourphi ........Caviar was not always as rare or as expensive as it is now. In the United States at the turn of the century, Caviar was offered at tavens and saloons for the same reason that peanuts are offered today; the saltiness incourages more drinking. According to Stein, until 1900 the United States produced 150,000 pounds of Caviar per year. most of this domestic Caviar came from the Delaware River at Penns Grove New Jersey. |
 |
| Boro once 'world capital' of Caviar by Bill Lynch There are still a few people around who remember it like it was. People like Bill Leap and Howard Dolbow, Mamie Kidd and Al Jamieson knew Penns Grove when it was just a river town: When it made its living from the ferries that linked it to Delaware, and the steamers that plied the river carring people and produce to places like Baltimore and Philadelphia and, most of all, from the fish that swarmed up the river every Spring seaching out the creeks and runs where they were born so they could reproduce their kind and complete Nature's unquestioning and unrelenting cycle. It's strange how most of the oldtimers have honed memories that go back almost a full century. They can recall people and lineage and dates-incidents that are recorded in their minds with the sharpness of fine ingravings. The Penns Grove they remember best was a tree shaded village, uncrowded and uncluttered, with it's clapboard houses and places like French's Grove with it's famous hotel where celebrities like John Philip Sousa entertained, and the neat cottages lining the shore, and the streams lacing through town on the way to the river. Most of all, they remember the river. After all, Penns Grove was a fishing town. Most people made their living from selling the supplies, catching the fish and hauling them to market. Men would sit in the pale yellow February sun shine talking politics and town gossip while the wove new nets or repaired old ones and waited. In March the fish would come; swarms of them, Shad and Herring and Sturgeon. the multitude growing with each flood tide. Then the town worked, from midnight Sunday until noon the following Saturday, harvesting the bounty of the river. In just a little over three months, until the 15th of June when the season ended, they made enough to live comfortably for the rest of the year. The river was different then, almost a century ago. No grind. no polution. You could stand in it, chest deep, and look down and count your toes. Ships filled water casks in mid-channel. and it supported life as only a prolific Nature can provide it. This is mostly how the town lived for a half a century from the early 1870's to the min-1920's until finally the fish, decimated by the annual slaughter, faced a new menace that almost doomed them to extinction. Oxygen-consuming sewage from the surging cities along it's banks flowed untreated into the river. and mushrooming industries, particularly the petroleum industry that was expanding to cope with the rising popularity of the automobile, were pouring refuse into the river that not only poisoned the fish, but destroyed their indispensible food supply. But while it lasted, the fishing industry in the Delaware covered a unique era in the history of the region that bridged the gap between the agriculturally oriented society and the emergence of industrial dominence. The story of Delaware river fishing is mostly the story of Shad . These were the fish that stove in uncountable millions each year to attain the upper reaches of the Atlantic coast rivers. It was their flesh and their roe that provided the bulk of income for Penns Grove Fisherman. Back in the 1870's, the fish were so numerous, the men used seine nets to skim off the advancing horde. The seine nets were huge meshes, 6 feet wide and often over 2 thousand yards long with weights on the bottom and doubs or float on the top. boats rowed by four men hauled the nets from sure to encircle the fish and the net was then often drawn ashore by windlass turned by a horse. Gill nets were used too, trapping the heads of the fish in their four inch mesh. One report notes that back during the 1800's in the 19 miles from Oldmans Creek south to Salem Creek there were 155 nets drifted with an average length 2400 feet. The average catch was 2500 Shad to each net for a total of 387,500. the average price at that time was $14.00 a hundred for a total of $54,250.00. and those were 19th century dollars. Auxiliary services provided thousands of dollars of additional income for Penns Grove residents. Back in 1886, John Summerill and his brother Joseph were the principal suppliers of the "Golden Irish" twine imported for weaving into nets. It sold for about a dollar a pound and that year they ordered five tons for the 1887 fishing season. While Shad was the heart of the industry, it's most unuusal facet was the Sturgeon. with the possible exception of the highly questionable Loch-Ness Monster, Sturgeon are the largest fresh water creatures known to man. The biggest ever recorded was captured in the Volga River it was 14 feet 2 inches long and weighed 2250 pounds. The largest Delaware River Sturgeon ever cought, according to one reference, was taken in 1923. It weighed 450 pounds and contained 103.5 pounds of roe. worth, at the time, $2.75 a pound. Sturgeon are enigmatic creatures. they are huge, shovel nosed with small beady eyes and have the appearance of being armor plated at the back of their bodies. Catfish-like antennas hang from their chin and are used in sensing food. A single female may produce two million eggs that are ejected from her body by rubbing against rocks and stumps. Back in the early day of commercial fishing on the Delaware the Sturgeon were considered a nuisance becasuse they fouled and tore nets. Shad fisherman slit them open with butcher knives to dispose of them and they washed up on the beaches where they lay decaying and stinking. About the only commercial use was as hog food and sold for twenty-five cents a carcass if you could get sombody to hall them. All that changed in the last quarter of the century when the markets were found for both the meat and roe, and Penns Grove became the Caviar capital of the world. Caviar's origin as a business in Penns Grove can be traced to 1869 when three Germans came to Penns Grove from New York, where strong tides made Sturgeon fishing on the Hudson unprofitable. The Sturgeon they obtained was shipped to New York where the flesh was sold as "Albany Beast" and the roe as Caviar. Caviar was made by straining the fresh Sturgeon eggs through a sieve and mixing them with the proper amount of salt. Local men, particularly, Charles Dalbow, worked for the New York men and learned the techhnique. Charles', son, Harry Dalbow developed the business to it's fullest, operating a Caviar canning factory in a building standing on Railroad Ave. next to the PRSL tracks. It was Harrry who also perfected a method of vacuum packaging the Caviar that had previously sold for $1 and $2 a pound was retailed in small jars bringing from $4 to $8 dollars a pound. It was marketed under the trade name of Romanoff Caviar, a brand still in existence. In addition to canning the local product, Harry also canned imported Caviar for the Russian Caviar Company and for a German firm, Dieckmann and Hansen. Dalbow operated the Penns Grove Factory from 1907 ontil 1925. In the year 1914, some $300,000 worth of Caviar was packed there. Harry Dalbow's activities were not restricted to canning. In 1898 there were some 240 nets drifted by some thirty companies in the Dealware Bay and river for Sturgeon. He owned twenty boats and nets. at one point he had $10,000 worth of Caviar in kegs on a schooner on Delaware Bay, being held for a price advance before being shipped to New York. Although by no means an average, one reference notes as many as 44 Sturgeon being taken in a single netting. One estimate places the value of the Sturgeon business at it's prime at $1,000,000 a year. Charles A. Dalbow's account books for 1881 show that Ovid Davis caught 163 roe Sturgeon and 87 bucks between April 25th and June 18. He got $1.25 a pound for the roe and $1 each for the bucks for a total of $428.50 . William (Reddy) Davis caught 126 roe and 82 bucks and received $241.80. Other familiar Salem County names cited in the accounts are George Johnson, Robert Mullin, William Munion, John Jones, Ezekiel Gilman, J. French, Richard Ireland, John Laws, I. Sheppard, John M. Walker, John Wallen and John Yearly. As with passenger pigeons and the buffalo, lack of efforts to preserve this natural abundance and protect it's habitat resulted in a catastrophic massacre. By the 1920's, fishing as an industry on the Delaware River was doomed. The fact that any of the once abundant species survived can only be attributed to the fact that what ever remained were so few, it was no longer commercially feasible to attempt to snare them. Their fate since then has been determined by their ability to survive the polution of civilization until such time as technology can rescue the river. There is hope. For more than a decade efforts have been underway to clean up the Delaware. Shad and Herring in depleted numbers still make the annual migration in Spring, when, fortunately, heavy rains dilute the poisons that contaminate the waters. As recently as 1965 a 175 pound roe Sturgeon was caught near Salem, raising the promise that others survive to re-populate the rejuvenated river in the decades that lie ahead. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Harry Dolbow's Railroad Avenue Cannery |