Somerset skipjack museum gets state funding
Iconic oyster rigs that skimmed the Chesapeake Bay were noticeably vanishing a half-century ago or longer, when Jack Willing Sr. was a teenager in the waterman's hamlet of Chance and grown folks were on a mission to preserve the history of the most popular rig: The skipjack.
Finally, last summer, the Skipjack Museum and Heritage Center opened in the former Corbett Store on Deal Island Road in Chance. It was a makeshift center in dire need of renovation, but the single-story, wooden structure would make do until funds were raised to create a bona fide center of the Lower Shore's maritime history.
Last week, Skipjack Heritage Inc., was notified by the Maryland Historical Trust that it had been approved for a Maryland Heritage Areas Authority grant for up to $72,045 to develop the museum and heritage center. Now, work can begin to extensively overhaul the old general store that will house the history of the region's heyday on the water.
"We are trying to capture the history of the area and preserve it," said Thomas Dietz, a nearby Wenona resident and vice president of Skipjack Heritage Inc.. He called the grant "one of the largest" in its category by the Historical Trust.
"A lot of old timers used to work the waters and are getting older and dying off," Dietz said.
"A miracle"
By 1966, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels was built to preserve the maritime history of the tidewater region of the bay, and had purchased the Hooper Strait Lighthouse, a wooden screwpile structure that locals in Deal Island and Chance had hoped to acquire for a museum of their own.
"The state of Maryland was going to give us the lighthouse," Willing said. "We couldn't accept it" because there was no organized nonprofit recipient of the gift. Several years ago, the Deal Island-Chance Lions Club formed the Skipjack Heritage, Inc., the 401 3c non-profit organization with hope that funding for the project would eventually come.
The group's tenacity paid off.
"It's a miracle we got a grant and a place," Willing said. "They started working on it 60 years ago, when I was a teenager. They wanted a skipjack museum — it was going to be a museum in the Deal Island Harbor, and we had the dibs on a lighthouse; they wanted a lighthouse for the centerpiece."
The heritage center has no lighthouse, Willing says, but it has the George W. Collier, a skipjack acquired from an owner on Virginia's Eastern Shore, in Northampton County. The fragile rig in need of repair was hauled recently to the heritage center from Scott's Cove Marina for restoration.
"We've got more stuff than can actually be on display," said Willing, who owns the marina.
Creating a heritage museum in the Chance region is fitting, as the Chesapeake region in the northwest corner of Somerset County is home to almost a third of the remaining historic skipjacks, Dietz said.
"We have the largest concentration of skipjacks in Maryland, and most of these are working boats," he said. "At the turn of the centery, there were hundreds of skipjacks. Now, there are about 30 skipjacks still afloat."
Corbett's store
In the Chance-Deal Island region alone, Dietz counts the City of Crisfield and the Fannie Daughtery in Wenona; the Somerset and the Helen Virginia in Deal Island; and the recently renovated Kathryn, the Sigsbee, the Ida Mae and the newly acquired George W. Collier, all in Chance.
Until major renovations are complete, the Skipjack Museum and Heritage Center is open Labor Day weekend with plans for weekend hours other times through a partnership with the Somerset Tourism, said Willing.
Returning to the Corbett store takes him back to his childhood.
"I got my hair cut there, too," he said, recalling that Willie Corbett doubled as a store operator and barber. Willing purchased the old store for safe keeping until the nonprofit group could buy it. "He sold what a normal country store would sell. And he cut my hair."
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