There were two prominent seafood canneries in Bay St. Louis in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. G. W. Dunbar Sons established an oyster and shrimp canning company on North Beach Blvd. at the north end of present-day Dunbar Ave. The Peerless Oyster Company was located on North Beach Blvd., where North Second Street intersects with Beach near the site of the Bay-Waveland Yacht Club.
G. W. Dunbar Sons Canning Factory was opened in the early 1880’s to process oysters and shrimp from the Mississippi Sound. It was operated by two New Orleans brothers, George W. and Frank B. Dunbar. To process the seafood, workers were brought in from Baltimore, MD. Many of them were Austrians and Slavs. To attend to the spiritual needs of these workers and local residents, Father Henry LeDuc of Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church built St. Joseph’s Chapel on the corner of Dunbar Avenue and Blakemore Streets. He also established a school which opened in the community on July 15, 1896.
The Dunbar Sons Canning Company was virtually destroyed in 1893 by a hurricane which hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast. However, it was completely rebuilt and in full operation by 1896 when H.S. Evans, a reporter for the New Orleans Daily Picayune, passed through Bay St. Louis traveling by rail from the Pearl River to the Alabama line.
The Dunbar Sons also had at least one other seafood processing plant on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, this one in Biloxi. By the time of its closing sometime after 1912, but before 1917, the Dunbar plant in Bay St. Louis was known as the Dunbar-Lopez Dukate Co. The plant was dismantled in Bay St. Louis and moved to Violet, Louisiana.
The second prominent seafood cannery in Bay St. Louis was the Peerless Oyster Company, which began operations on October 31, 1904. The president of the company was Charles H. Torsch of Baltimore, MD, who also had a cannery in that city.
The main building of the factory was constructed in a very short time with Henry Widener, owner of Standard Electric Company of New Orleans, building and wiring its electrical plant. It also had its own fire department and shipyard with “marine ways capable of raising any size boat up to 85 feet in length” (ATG).
In its heyday the factory consisted of five buildings with the main factory containing shucking rooms, shrimp rooms, and warehouses. The seafood moved from the boat at one end of the plant through each processing room until the product reached the last building and was ready for shipping throughout the United States and Canada.
In addition to the main factory, Peerless Oyster Company furnished lodgings for its workers. These barracks were built on Felicity St. across North Beach Blvd. from the factory. At 3:00 A. M. factory workers (and many city residents) were awakened by a shrill whistle calling them to work. Thus began the long day for the shrimp pickers and oyster shuckers who stood for hours doing their work. Such harsh working conditions were difficult enough for adults, but not all of the workers were adults. This was the time before national child labor laws had been enacted, and some of the workers were as young as age three! According to Carole D. Bos, J. D., in an article entitled “In the Canneries,” “Maude Daly (age 5) and her sister Grace (age 3) each picked about one pot of shrimp a day (in 1911) for the Peerless Oyster Company in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi.”
During the off season when seafood was not harvested, the Peerless factory canned vegetables. In 1922 farmers in Hancock County were encouraged to plant larger crops to sell to Peerless for canning, for which they received top prices. In addition to seafood, vegetables, and fruit, the factory canned turtle meat which was harvested from the turtles kept in pens at the factory. In fact, several members of the society remember that as children they delighted in seeing the turtles in their pens on the property.
The Peerless Oyster Company remained in operation until it was destroyed by the Hurricane of 1947. Nonetheless remnants of its existence can be found on the small peninsular where it once stood. Oyster shells which were discarded in the processing of the seafood can be found in abundance around the Bay-Waveland Yacht Club.
SOURCES:
Bos, J. D. Carole D. “In the Canneries.” Awesome Stories 24 Feb. 2011 <www.awesomestories.com/history/child-labor/in-the-canneries>
Dyer, Charles Lawrence. Along the Gulf. New Orleans: William E. Myers, Pub., 1894; Gulf- port, MS: The Dixie Press, 1971.
Scharff, Robert G. Louisiana’s Loss, Mississippi’s Gain. Lawrenceville, VA: Brunswick Publishing Corp., 1999.
Sullivan, Charles L. and Murella Hebert Powell. The Mississippi Gulf Coast: Portrait of a People. Sun Valley, CA: American Historical Press, 1999.