Trade Expands

Trade Expands. Wharf Connects with New Markets. , Island ties with Bay markets. In 1868, Blackistone's (St. Clement's) Island owner, Dr. Joseph McWilliams, built a steamboat wharf with his sons. The addition opened the island's door to trade with a busy network of Chesapeake Bay ports. Dr. McWilliams raised tobacco, corn, oats, sweet and Irish potatoes, cherries and peaches for city markets in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. He also sent geese, swan, ducks, hunted by his sons, to market. According to his diary, the steamships Express and Columbia would stop regularly at his wharf to pick up these goods., After 1906, the Butterfields, the island's new owners, continued to farm on the Island. They also established the Blackistone Island Canning Co. and a machine shop that specialized in the repair of boat engines. Both were destroyed by a hurricane in 1933., [Sidebar:] , The steamship Express, pictured above, stopped at Blackistone's Island on Wednesdays and Saturdays en route to other ports along the Chesapeake Bay. During the Civil War, the Express carried federal soldiers to Newport News, VA. The steamer John W. Thompson also made stops at Blackistone's Island. These steamboats linked towns and wharves throughout the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay before the age of the automobile.,

"Steamer Express takes off about 125 Boxes of Peaches and other fruit. I shipped 2 Boxs Damsons [plums]. Jerome and family, Ada along, leaves for Wa[sh]ington. 10 Bls Oyesters shipped from W[har]f and about 8 or 9 Pasangers go off. Goods landed for Colton…" , Excerpt from the diary of Dr. Joseph McWilliams, Wednesday, August 11, 1869 transcribed by St. Mary's County Historian Edwin W. Beitzell.