Butternut Sweet Buns

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Gertrude Bernadine Bean

Contributed by Robert Hurry, Registrar 

Calvert Marine Museum

     Gertrude Bernadine Somerville was born March 12, 1918, In Hollywood, St. Mary’s County, Maryland, and died August 24, 2000, in Calvert County. She was the daughter of Alice and John Somerville and received her education in St. Mary’s County public schools. In 1936, she married William Henry Bean of Dowell, Maryland, and they raised three children.

     During her career as an oyster shucker, she worked in four oyster houses. In 1936, she learned to shuck oysters from other shuckers at Wilson Dowell’s oyster house. It was a five-minute walk from her home on Dowell peninsula. Her first day on the job, she shucked five gallons. Dowell had a small operation with just a few shuckers, and he could not get the oysters that bigger businesses could get, so after she shucked at Dowell’s for a while, she began working at Harry Woodburn’s oyster house. She and her husband, also an oyster shucker, used a rowboat to get to Solomons Island where Woodburn’s was located. When the creeks froze, it was a three mile walk by road. She shucked there until the business closed around 1940. 

     After Woodburn’s closed, she worked at J.C. Lore & Sons at Solomons for a while before moving to Warren Denton Seafood at Broomes Island. Denton sent a bus around to collect the shuckers. She worked there 27 years but grew tired of the commute because she had to get up very early to catch the bus, so she decided to return to Lore and worked there until it closed. The most she shucked in one day was 42 gallons of oysters. 

     When she was younger, Ms. Bean worked in the field planting and cutting tobacco. She also tried her hand at working on the water harvesting and selling soft shell clams and soft crabs. Briefly, she picked crabs for Daniel Barrett, but was not very fast. She even tried being a maid for a week but did not like the work. Bernadine, as she was known , then began shucking oysters in the winter and working as a cook at the Solomons Island Yacht Club in the summer months. 

Her favorite pastimes when not working were fishing and singing. She was an active and faithful member of the St. John United Methodist Church in Lusby where she served in several capacities. She loved singing in the church choir and was president of its senior choir. 

Sources

Interview with Gertrude Bean and others, 12/09/1982, PRP-PJR079-082, Patuxent River Folklife and Oral History Project, Calvert Marine Museum 

“Going Home Celebration for Gertrude B. Bean (“Bernadine”) March 12, 1918 – August 24, 2000” [courtesy Ronald Clark Sr.]

U.S. Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 [courtesy Kirsti Uunila]

U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 [courtesy  Rebecca Morehouse]

U.S. Federal Census data, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950