“When diamondback terrapins thrived in the Bay, an enterprising man came to Crisfield and made a bundle on turtle soup. Like most booms it went bust.”
Easy Come, Easy Go - Eugene L. Meyer; Chesapeake Bay Magazine; April 2005 (reprinted with authors permission)
Long before the University of Maryland basketball team made the “Terps” a household name, and a century before the diamondback terrapin became Maryland’s official state reptile in 1994, there was the Terrapin King of Crisfield, MD.
In 1887, Albert T. LaVallette Jr. of Philadelphia, armed with family money, a winning way and a Caribbean recipe for turtle soup, breezing into Crisfield and, to the puzzlement of local watermen, began buying up all the diamondback terrapins he could find. This was indeed odd behavior on the Eastern Shore, where terrapins had long been regarded as nuisances, unwelcome incidental catches, and hardly a culinary delicacy. Indeed, terrapins still had the reputation from pre-emancipation days of being mere “slave food.” So it was little wonder that watermen were happy to sell their inadvertently caught terrapins to LaVallette at any price—not knowing, of course, that he was making an obscene profit by selling the turtle meat to high-end East Coast restaurants—where he himself had created a market for Maryland terrapin soup. No doubt the watermen soon caught on. Perhaps they even reaped a small share of the profits as LaVallette amassed his fortune over he next two decades, built a waterfront home just outside of Crisfield—and yes, contributed more than any other person to the decimation of the diamondback population on the Eastern Shore. But, while the terrapin’s decline at first seemed to have little effect on his business—no doubt because prices rose accordingly, and also perhaps because LaVallette was a master of what we now call “spin” —the bubble eventually burst. By 1908, all that remained of LaVallette’s turtle kingdom were the house he had built on Hammock Point and the empty terrapin pounds nearby.
I first learned of LaVallette and his exploits from Steve Liberatore, a Washington, D.C. stockbroker who bought the LaVallette homestead in 1999. Liberatore was intrigued by the man whose fortune rose and fell by the banks of Jenkins Creek, and I decided to see what I could find out.
In Crisfield, nobody seemed to know much. The J. Millard Taws Museum contains displays on oystering, crabbing, picking and packing. It chronicles Carvel Hall, the classic cutlery business that once thrived there. It celebrates the famous Ward brothers and their fabulous decoys. But I found nothing about terrapins. In a small pizza shop in town, I spotted a small painting of LaVallette’s home, which he had named “Ruthelie” after two of his children. It was a detail on a mural depicting notable landmarks of Crisfield and Somerset County, and the shop’s owner told me that she had a dinner bell of uncertain vintage from the house.
Digging into historical sources, I had no problem unearthing information about LaVallette’s ancestors, dating all the way back to 16th century France. The family moved to Philadelphia in 1796. One ancestory, Elie LaVallette II, who lived on a Severn River plantation near Annapolis, had been Register of Wills in colonial Maryland. Another, Elie IV, a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, had once commanded “Old Ironsides,” as the iconic U.S.S. Constitution was known; in fact, two 20th-century Navy destroyers, as well as the seaside resort of Lavallette in New Jersey, were named after him. I tracked down Barbara Vallette, the historian of the New Jersey-Philadelphia branch of the family, but she could shed no light on the Terrapin King.
And then I hit pay dirt—a book by the late Crisfield historian Woodrow T. Wilson (no relation to the 28th President) contained the names of LaVallette’s son and two daughters, including their married surnames and their dates of birth and death. Eventually, with help from the 1930 census, I picked up the trail of daughter Ruth LaVallette Bluhm, who had lived in Vienna, MD. That led to the widow of one of her sons in Elkton, MD. She knew a little about my elusive quarry but said that her late husband’s sister, Elsie, knew more. I reached Elsie Bluhm, now in her late 70s, at her home in Ocala, Fla. I must admit, her reaction to my questions surprised me.
“Terrapin King, indeed!” said his sole surviving grandchild with a snort. “He left my grandma. He was a cad.” LaVallete, it turns out, made a clean break of it when he left Crisfield. At about the same time his terrapin business fell apart, he ran off with the family governess.
With the help of Elsie Bluhm and a wide assortment of historical sources, I was able to piece together LaVallette’s story. In some places, we can only speculate, but one thing is for sure—Albert LaVallette was a memorable character. He was the son of Albert Tallmadge LaVallette Sr., who was the son of the rear admiral of “Old Ironsides” fame and the vice-president of the Barnegat Land Improvement Company. When LaVallette Sr. laid out Lavallette, N.J., in 1887, he named the resort town in honor of his father. That same year, he established a toehold in Maryland’s Somerset County, when he purchased oyster grounds on a tributary of the Manokin River. The following year he and eight others—a mixture of Philadelphians and Somerset County locals—formed the Manokin River Oyster Company. The 1880 census for Dames Quarter (a village on Monie Bay, a northeast arm of Tangier Sound) includes LaVallette Sr. (occupation: Gentleman), his wife Sarah and their six children, including Albert Jr., 16.
From 1880 to 1882, Albert Jr. was attending prep school in Pennsylvania, although he earned no degree. For at least two years thereafter, he worked as a schooner pilot “in coastal waters.” Then, in March 1887, he married Amy K. Ricketts—born in England, she had grown up in Philadelphia, where she had known Albert nearly all her life. The couple then moved to Crisfield in southern Somerset County, where they had three children: Amy in 1888, Elie in 1893 and Ruth in 1896.
Crisfield was already booming when LaVallette and his new wife moved there. The arrival of the railroad in 1967, bringing with it fast, refrigerated shipping to big East Coast cities, had opened up a huge market for crabs and oysters. And LaVallette’s father—with his social and business connections in Philadelphia and Somerset County, and his stake in Eastern Shore oysters—had already paved the way for his son to participate in the seafood boom. But it was the diamondback terrapin—a turtle that thrived in the shallow brackish water of the marsh-hugged Eastern Shore—that attracted Albert Jr. He saw that, unlike crabs and oysters, the terrapin was still a largely unexploited resource.
So what exactly was this resource that caught LaVallette’s interest? Of the seven subspecies of diamondback terrapin, it was the northern diamondback that was ubiquitous in the Bay’s salt-marsh country. Today, as then, this variety is found in coastal waters from Cape Cod down to Cape Hatteras, while the other six subspecies occur as far south as Texas. The reclusive reptile gets its name from the scales on its shell, which have deep, diamond-shaped growth rings. Females mature at 12 years, weight about 7 pounds and reach about 9 inches in length; males mature at 7 years old, weigh only a pound and are about two thirds the length of the female. Fast swimmers with their webbed feet, they prey on fish, crabs and snails as well as worms and plant roots. On May nights, the turtles mate in the water, and for two months afterward the females move up marshy creeks and crawl to just above the high tide line, where they lay their eggs and bury them in six-inch deep sand nests; remarkably, a female can also store male sperm for up to four years before she produces her eggs. Although she may lay up to 18 eggs, only about 1 to 3 percent of the eggs hatch. Those that do hatch, an inch in length, make their way to the water late summer or early fall. Until the late 19th century, those hatchlings that made it to the water and got a little growth under their shells had a pretty good chance of survival. Until, that is, a new predator came along—man.
According to Crisfield writer Glenn Lawson, LaVallette’s first structure on Hammock Point was a shanty, where he established his operation by purchasing terrapins from passing watermen. It’s said that the watermen at first thought LaVallette was mad, but it turned out he knew exactly what he was doing. Armed with his recipe (it is now lost, but it probably included sherry and heavy cream and was undoubtedly delicious), the savvy salesman cornered the market. First, he persuaded restaurants in Philadelphia to serve the “exclusive” dish at high prices, and then he did the same thing in Baltimore and New York. Holding agreements from the restaurants naming him as their sole terrapin supplier, he bought the diamondbacks for a song, penned them up at Hammock Point, and fed them using crab waste from picking plants in town.
When LaVallette settled in Crisfield in 1887, terrapins were abundant. In 1891, the first year for which data are available, an estimated 89,000 pounds were harvested in Maryland. Yet, only two years later came a pessimistic assessment. “This small but expensive animal fills such a prominent place among the luxuries for which our State is famous,” said a report prepared for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, “…but its occurrence in our waters is too irregular and infrequent to give it an established place among our resources.” LaVallette just raised the prices as the supply dropped. In 1893, LaVallette got as much as $180 for a dozen “full counts” (a full-count terrapin had an underbelly at least seven inches long, and weighed three to six pounds), and in 1896 he boasted to the New York Times, “I have controlled the entire supply of Chesapeake Bay diamondback terrapin for a good number of years.” His biggest market was New York City, where in 1896, the visit of Chinese statesman Li Hung-chang brought LaVallette an order for $3,000 worth of terrapin; and a dinner at Delmonico’s, given in 1890 by financier Jay Gould, brought him $4,700 for 28 barrels of turtle meat.
But, as with crabs, finfish and oysters, the depleting terrapin stock couldn’t be kept quiet forever, no matter how well LaVallette could spin the truth. By 1897, the Maryland harvest was down to 7,266 pounds; by 1901 it had fallen to 1,583 pounds; and by 1904, nearly all the terrapins being passed off as Maryland diamondbacks were coming from somewhere else. Smaller terrapin operations, LaVallette complained, were supplying terrapins they bought in the Carolinas and Texas, “trying to palm them off on buyers as the genuine Chesapeake article.” Yet, throughout these years, LaVallette managed to get great press. In 1897, the Baltimore Sun reported that he continued to have “an immense trade in terrapin” in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. The paper took note of his “handsome dwelling” on the south side of town, securely fenced “so as to prevent the escape of the high-priced inmates” from his terrapin pound across an arm of the adjacent small creek. In the winter, the paper reported, LaVallette’s 10,000 terrapins lived in his basement, “kept dark and above the freezing point, but not too warm.” and in 1898, the Portrait and Biographical Record of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, published in New York, noted that LaVallette “is familiarly known as the ‘king terrapin’ dealer of the world.”
Even as the harvest numbers fell, LaVallette continued to insist that his own terrapins were Maryland diamondbacks. Perhaps he was telling a half truth. According to Wilson, in the early 1900s LaVallette headed up to the Maryland State Experimental Station for terrapin propagation at Lloyds in nearby Dorchester County. It’s not such a reach to wonder if this wasn’t his way of supplementing his own stock with diamondback eggs from other regions. Whatever the case, with the market still clamoring for the reptiles, scarcity continued to have it upside. In 1906, terrapins brought $96 a dozen. “One may commit murder, steal a horse, or run away with another man’s wife on the Eastern Shore and stand some show of coming clear,” observed the Washington Post in November 1902, “but woe betide the hapless one who is caught poaching about the pounds, interfering with the eggs or taking terrapin out of season, for he is as certain of punishment as the sun is to rise. These pounds are jealously guarded night and day, for on the Eastern Shore terrapin is the most profitable crop raised. In fact, a pound full of diamondbacks is as good as a gold mine any day.” Three years later, the same newspaper reports, “Today terrapin are so scare and costly that only kings and money kings at that can afford to eat them.”
Meanwhile, throughout the 1890s, LaVallette had secured his position in Crisfield as a local man of means. In February 1898, for example, he loaned the Crisfield Opera House Association $5,000, at 5.5 percent interest. Although he was a relative newcomer, his wealth bought acceptance for him and his family, whole social comings and goings were duly chronicaled in the “Local News” columns of the Crisfield Times.
There was, however, one member of the LaVallette household whose name never made the social columns. It is unknown precisely when a young woman named May Bussey went to work for the LaVallettes as a governess. Census records indicate she was born in Maryland in the early 1970s, making her perhaps 10 years younger than the Terrapin King. “She was what you call the third party,” Elsie Bluhm told me.
On February 29, 1908, the Crisfield Times reported that Albert was “spending some days with his family at Ruthelie,” raising the questions of where he was the rest of the time. Then came this report in the April 11 edition: “Mrs. A.T. LaVallette and daughters Amy and Ruth left Tuesday evening for an extensive visit to relatives and friends in Los Angeles, California.” The following August, the newspaper reported that “Mrs. A.T. LaVallette and her daughter, who have enjoyed the summer in a bungalow on the Pacific, at Venice, Calif., unique among American resorts, have returned to Los Angeles.” From then on, the LaVallettes were no longer residents of Crisfield. By the 1910 census, Amy LaVallette was living with her monther in Long Beach, California—and the Terrapin King and May Bussey were living in Wythe, near Hampton, VA.
It must have been quite a scandal in its time. Amy LaVallette filed for divorce in 1912 Circuit Court in Princess Anne, claiming that her husband had “abandoned and deserted” her in April 1908. He left her “wholly destitute,” she claimed, while he still owned “a large amount of real and personal estate” in Maryland and elsewhere. Sadly, she also claimed that he had rejected her repeated efforts at reconciliation. Crisfield Times publisher Lorie Quinn signed an affidavit on Amy LaVallette’s behalf. Albert responded that he had contributed “as far as he was able” to the support of his wife and children, but that he owed “considerable money.” Ultimately, Amy LaVallette received alimony payments of $50 monthly for life and, in 1913, title to Ruthelie. But she would never again live there.
Details of the Terrapin King’s later years remain sketchy. According to Elsie Bluhm, he and “Miss May,” whom he married in 1915, lived comfortably on a houseboat—the Valletta— in Hampton, VA. During World War 1, at age 52, he served a remarkably brief 27-day stint in the U.S. Navy as an ensign; skippering his own 15-ton fishing boat, he watched over security nets that were designed to prevent German submarines from entering the Chesapeake Bay. A decade later, in the summer of 1927, he and May traveled to San Francisco to visit the destroyer U.S.S. LaVallette (DD-315), which had been named in honor of his grandfather. “Mr. and Mrs. Albert LaVallette, who live at Hampton, VA., came out for lunch on this ship,” according to the ship’s official papers. “The visit to the ship was very pleasant to all that came in contact with them as they were a delight and interesting couple.”
The 1930 census found Albert still living with May aboard the houseboat in Wythe (now part of the city of Hampton), and from time to time local papers reported on his activities. “LaVallette’s ‘quiet haven’, “ reported one, is “one of the landmarks of Hampton Roads.” Another likened a visit with him to “a tale out of a book, for he had innumerable stories to recount, the romance in which were enhanced by museum-like character of his abode.” Yet another described him as “at one time famous, locally at least, for his breeding of terrapins.”
LaVallette apparently also raised terrapins while living on the houseboat, but the Hurricane of 1933 wiped out that operation. It would prove to be the beginning of the end for LaVallette. By May 1937, he one-time Terrapin King was ill and broke. Suffering from an enlarged prostate, he entered the Veterans Administration hospital in Kecoughtan, VA., and asked the government for $6 to pay for a hairbrush, razor and blades, shaving cream. cigarettes, envelopes, matches, writing paper and stamps—items he claimed he could not afford. Then, in July, he died from internal bleeding following what should have been a routine diagnostic procedure. He had, his hospital file noted, “only thirteen cents” in “personal funds.” Nonetheless, thanks to his service in the Navy. LaVallette was buried at Hampton National Military Cemetery, and the Veterans Administration paid the burial costs of $37.44. His widow May and his son Elie attended the graveside ceremony. When the American flag was presented to May, she gave it to Elie. Reporting on LaVallette’s death, a local paper called him “perhaps the most picturesqur character who has honored the Peninsula with his residence,” while another observed that he “sought and found life as he wished it.” A decade later, applying (unsuccessfully) for a pension, May wrote that she was homeless with no means of support—her husband left her destitute. All that remained of the Terrapin King was Ruthelie, the home he had built in Crisfield.
Amy LaVallette sold Ruthelie for $600 in 1923, after which it changed hands several times. In the 1930s, the Old Bay Amusement Park occupied part of the property. In 1989, a PBS movie entitled Jacob Have I Loved, based on a Newbery-Award-winning children’s book about a girl growing up on the Chesapeake Bay, was filmed at the house. By the time Steve Liberatore came to Crisfield in 1998 to look for an investment property, Ruthelie was vacant. When he saw the one-story house with its hip-and-gable roof and three chimneys, he couldn’t resist it. He and his wife Ginny have since renovated it and use it as their weekend retreat. Their collection of ceramic turtles covers the five fireplace mantels, and a turtle knocker adorns the side door. The terrapin pound is still there, several dozen pilings arranged in a square in a pond behind the property’s small Bay-front beach.
To the north, the new condos near the City Dock now dominate the Crisfield skyline. But the view south across Jenkins Creek remains unspoiled. At night, when the moon illuminates the water and marsh, or early in the morning when the workboats rumble past Hammock Pointe on the way to the crab pots, things actually don’t look all that different from when the Terrapin King ruled.
Be a part of the story.
The Ruth-Elie, built by Albert LaVallette Jr. in 1889. Restored by the Liberatore family in 1999.
