Chesapeake Bay Traditions
odd: label: Introduction
content: The Chesapeake Bay has long been appreciated as one of the Middle Atlantic's prizes of nature - an area both beautiful to the tourist's eye and bountiful to the waterman's nets. The Bay has served to define the geographical and historical identity of the region - a place from which the lines of culture have traditionally been drawn. The Bay occupies a special place in the minds of Marylanders, who have come to define themselves, their foodways, and their ambivalence toward modern times in terms of the Bay and its people.

The waterman works alone in a world where silence prevails, and the heroics - real and fictive - exist chiefly in the stories told outside work. These stories, of bad weather, good captains, and great catches, serve to define the way of life the watermen share, and maintain the line between insiders and outsiders that circumscribes the folk group. Chesapeake Bay Traditions were presented in the Hall of Sea Life of the National Museum of Natural History and included storytelling and oral history, as well as demonstrations of sail making, boat building, tool making, decoy carving, bird painting, blacksmithing, net making, and model boat building.
label: Participants
content: Henry Brown, 1912-1990, sailmaker, Wenona, Maryland

Frank B. Daniels, 1901-1990, boat builder, Chincoteague, Virginia

Ben Evans, 1909-1987, storyteller, Baltimore, Maryland

Jennings Evans, 1930-, waterman, Smith Island, Maryland

Alex Kellman, 1908-1986, storyteller, Crisfield, Maryland

Ernest Kitching, 1916-2001, waterman, Smith Island, Maryland

Frances Kitching, 1918-2003, seafood cook, Smith Island, Maryland

Morris Goodwin Marsh, 1940-, crab scape maker, Smith Island, Maryland

Paul Nock, 1914-2007, bird painter, Salisbury, Maryland

Corbet Reed, 1897-1987, decoy carver, Chincoteague, Virginia

Corp. Fred Sherbert, Natural Resources Police, Annapolis, Maryland

Herman Stine, 1927-, model boat builder, Wenona, Maryland

David Lee Swift, 1929-2004, blacksmith, Crisfield, Maryland

Harrison Tyler, 1915-1999, net maker, Crisfield, Maryland
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Smithsonian Institution. Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
setName: label: See more items in
content: Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 1978 Festival of American Folklife
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
identifier: label: Identifier
content: CFCH.SFF.1978, Series 2
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials