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Once they lured ducks, now decoys attract collectors
Decoys only one of many attractions to lure visitors to Havre de Grace
Knowing one’s place and time key to finding one’s way
Long before there was a town at Havre de Grace, the area was flush with winged residents who knew a great location when they saw one.
The Susquehanna River emerges at this Maryland town from its crooked, rocky course through New York and Pennsylvania, unfolding into the northernmost reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. The waters course into the Bay at an average speed of 18 million gallons per minute. Then they take a deep breath, slowing and stretching into the broad expanse known as the Susquehanna flats.
The flats are quite shallow, except for the shipping channel. When the water is clear, sunlight penetrates easily. This was especially true in earlier days when there was less pollution from nutrients and sediments, and the shallow water and sunshine nurtured a dense carpet of underwater grasses throughout the 25,000-acre area.
Wild celery, sago pondweed, redhead and widgeon grass drew legendary flocks of waterfowl as they traveled the Atlantic Flyway during spring and fall migrations. At the peak of their population, waterfowl in the Susquehanna flats included more than 500,000 canvasback and redhead ducks, and more than 200,000 American wigeon.
“The grass brought the ducks, the ducks brought the hunters, and the hunters brought guides and decoys,” said Richard Flint, executive director of the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum.
Havre de Grace became known as the “decoy capital of the world” and retains those credentials even as the grasses and waterfowl have fallen into decline. Havre de Grace also became known as a communications and transportation hub, as people capitalized on its waterfront location and ideal position between several major cities.
The Havre de Grace Decoy Museum and the Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace at the Lock House, both members of the Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network, preserve and interpret these stories. The museums bookend the town, with many other attractions—like the Concord Point Lighthouse, the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum, the town’s historic district, and the skipjack Martha Lewis—situated between them.
The Decoy Museum enjoys a majestic view of the Susquehanna flats, both from the second floor balcony and the waterfront promenade that meanders the shoreline.
“The view is as important to our story as the exhibits inside,” Flint said.
The historic abundance of the flats, and the decline of the grasses, shaped both the town and the work of its skilled carvers. An exhibit called “Gunning the Flats” details the relationships between them.
In the 1800s, hunting waterfowl for market was as important to the local economy as hunting for sport.
“Duck was much more common on the table in the 19th century than it is today, almost as common as chicken,” Flint said.
Grass-fed canvasback was top of the line, and the Susquehanna flats boasted “cans” (canvasbacks) in enormous numbers. By 1870, two new railroad systems carried much of the catch from Havre de Grace to Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC.
Local market hunters also served as guides for hunting parties. Their skill, and the area’s plentiful waterfowl, made Havre de Grace a bustling sports town. Every hunting rig included a cabin boat, which carried hunters, guides and hundreds of decoys; layout boats, which readied the hunting area and collected the catch; and specially designed craft, called “sink boxes.” An example of a sink box is on display at the museum.
Outlawed in 1935, a sink box allowed the hunter to position his body below the waterline in an open, coffin-shaped depression. The depression was flanked on all sides by thin canvas “wings.” The wings floated on the water, topped with decoys to hold them down. The hunter would lay in the sink box, surrounded by hundreds of free-floating decoys. Both the hunter and the sink box went largely unnoticed by approaching ducks.
Sink boxes, combined with continually improving firearms, brought impressive results. In November 1893, The (Baltimore) Sun estimated that 5,000 ducks had been killed in the first weekend of duck season. “The number would have exceeded that figure by many thousands, but for the calm weather,” The Sun reported. The record for an individual, one-day catch—from a sink box—was 235.
Decoy carving, which flourished in Havre de Grace, first focused on “working decoys” and later on decorative ones. Havre de Grace produced many master carvers, including Daddy Holley in the mid-19th century and R. Madison Mitchell in the 20th.
“Most active carvers here today worked for Madison Mitchell when they were boys,” Flint said.
A recording allows Mitchell, himself, to narrate an astonishingly realistic scene recreated for the museum from a 1942 photograph of the carver and other local men gathered in a local grocery store. Mitchell, who passed away in 1993, shares both his passion and humor for a life immersed in decoys. His only complaint was that making “all those birds” left him no time to hunt the real ones.
Mitchell’s decoys are a prominent presence in the museum, along with scores of examples from other masters such as Lemuel and Stephen Ward, Robert McGraw, and Bill and Allan Schauber. Exhibits pay homage to the men as well as to their work.
Carving and painting techniques range widely, showcased along with innovations such as diving ducks and a more recent, animated decoy called the “flap-omatic.”
Flint attributes the variety to sportsman ingenuity. “The hunter, in his lifelong quest, will try just about anything he can to get the duck,” he said.
Upriver from the Decoy Museum, Rebecca Fitzgerald is busy demonstrating how people will try just about anything to reach a market. Fitzgerald, who directs the Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace, says that the town’s history is inseparable from the history of transportation. One place where the two histories intersect is the local lock house for the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal.
The original 1840s lock house, reclaimed from neglect and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is the showpiece of the Susquehanna Museum. The lock house is a tidy, two-story brick home where the lock keeper and his family greeted travelers on the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal. The wide, white porch faces a remainder of the lock and canal, which still holds water, along with the tow path and the river beyond.
Above the river, on either side of the lock house, a series of bridges bring modern commentary to the scene. Two railroad bridges, along with bridges for U.S. Route 40 and Interstate 95, span the Susquehanna and accent the site’s ongoing vitality as a commercial intersection.
“Isn’t it marvelous?” Fitzgerald smiled, raising her hands toward the bridges. “I like to bring third-grade classes out here and ask how many forms of transportation they can see.”
Along with trains, cargo trucks and cars, students will invariably see recreational boats, workboats, barges transporting sand from an upriver quarry, and airplanes. The students will also be standing near the site of the first ferry across the lower Susquehanna—and, of course, the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal.
The canal opened in 1839, as a private business venture that had hoped to outpace the railroads as a north-south route along the Susquehanna. It was developed because sandbars, rocks and shallow water made the Susquehanna non-
navigable for commerce. The canal followed the western shore of the river for 45 miles, from Wrightsville, PA, to Havre de Grace, where merchandise continued its journey on the open Bay.
“The only way to bring goods downriver was to ride the spring floodwaters. But it was a one-way trip. They’d deliver the cargo—mostly coal, timber, and textiles—and then dismantle the rafts,” Fitzgerald said.
The Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal was one of the most expensive canals in the United States. Construction costs hit $80,000 per mile, which equals approximately $8 million per mile in today’s terms.
The canal played a major role in mid-Atlantic commerce, but it never turned a profit as railroads began to dominate the transportation world. The canal was mostly defunct by the turn of the century. By the 1920s, it was completely closed.
“The Pennsylvania Power and Light Company bought the lock house and the grounds, and pretty much left it sit until the 1970s,” Fitzgerald said. “The lock house was rented out as two apartments, but they didn’t do much to change it. There was no electricity or running water here until it became a museum.”
Today, visitors to the lock house can explore the tools and furnishing of past centuries, as well as the history of Havre de Grace and the Susquehanna River. One engraving depicts an especially bold venture during the winter of 1852. The river ice was deemed thick enough to support a train, so tracks were laid and used to haul both people and freight across the ice.
The museum’s collection also includes the original switchboard that was the north-south link between the District of Columbia, New York and Richmond. Havre de Grace won this honor mainly because of a major racetrack that opened there in 1912. Eager gamblers wanted racing news to reach outlying areas as quickly as possible.
Outside, visitors can enjoy the waterfront view and see the canal. The restoration of the lock is under way. In the process, Fitzgerald said the restoration team had a pleasant surprise. “We found all four sets of the original gates buried on the floor of the canal,” she said. “Work stopped for a full archaeological dig.”
The vats that would were needed to properly display and preserve the gates—measuring 8 feet by 16 feet each—weren’t feasible. The best way to preserve the gates was to re-bury them in the canal. Replicas are being built by a craftsman in Easton, PA.
Visitors can see the original walls of the lock, as well as a plaque marking its end and the outlet basin to the river. A pivoting footbridge crosses the canal to the towpath, which continues a short distance upriver to a large pond. The pond was once part of a larger area used as a turning basin by canal boats.
When the canal was in full swing, the basin covered 47 acres and held up to 1,000 boats. With the exception of the pond, the basin is now an attractive wooded area, accessible by the North Park trail.
Fitzgerald and a corps of determined museum supporters hope to reconnect the remnant pond with the canal.
“What I would love to see is a canal boat that visitors could ride through the turning basin, the locks and the outlet basin, on to the other great things to see here in Havre de Grace,” she said.
Havre de Grace
Getting There: Havre de Grace is located 5 minutes from Interstate 95 (Exit 89) between Baltimore and Wilmington, DE.
Havre de Grace Decoy Museum
The museum is located at 215 Giles St., Havre de Grace, MD 21078. It is open 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday; noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. The museum is closed on major holidays.
Admission is $6 for adults; $5 for seniors; and $2 for children, ages 9-18. Children younger than 8 are admitted free.
The annual Decoy & Wildlife Art Festival will take place May 5–7, 2006.
For information, call 410-939-3739 or visit www.decoymuseum.com
Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace at the Lock House
The museum is located at 817 Conesteo St., Havre de Grace, MD 21078. It is open 1–5 p.m. Thursday through Monday.
Admission is free.
For information about the museum, its living history events or its lecture series, call 410-939-5780 or visit www.lockhousemuseum.org
