Ms. Dora: Picking Dorchester Crabs at 90

By Richard Kendall

BISHOPS HEAD – Long before morning’s first light, a group of faces familiar to each other have assembled around long, cat’s eye green tables at the Dorchester Crab Company.
They need few tools: many use only their favorite knife but primarily their hands. Their obstacle is hundreds of pounds of crab shells and innards. Their goal for the day: pick as many pounds of pure Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab meat as they can bowl.
The youngest is a Mexican woman in her early 20’s. The oldest is Dora Pearl Pritchett Murphy.
Born April 17, 1918, Ms. Dora - as she is adoringly referred to by her many friends and neighbors – is 90 and still working 6 days a week during crab season.
When work commences at 4 a.m., conversations among the workers drops off to a hushed silence. Only the sounds of their picking are heard as they concentrate on their work.
They take a break at 5 a.m. Some sip coffee, others dig into their lunch pail for a snack from home. Fifteen minutes later, it’s back to work. Their next break is at 7:30 a.m. After that, they work until quitting time at 11:30 a.m.
Ms. Dora picked her first crab when she was about 4 years old when both of her parents worked at a crab house in Wingate, at the end of Crab House Road.
“They worked for Mr. George Robinson and Mr. Will Dean,” she recalled. “That crab house was destroyed during Hurricane Hazel (in October, 1954).”
While her parents worked, young Dora would drag a ¾ bushel basket over to the counter where her mother and father stood picking. She remembers cracking crab claws.
Her father was Hilary Pritchett of Wingate and mother, Adedia Meredith. Home for young Dora was Toddville but she moved for a while to Cambridge, to a house that still stands near the corner of Cedar Street and Academy Street. It was the home of her grand parents.
“My mother worked then at a shirt factory on Academy Street,” she said. “I used to go down and wave at mother through the window while she was sewing.” The dilapidated, brown brick building is still there, many years after the last piece of apparel was stitched together.
When Ms. Dora was 13, she quit school to care for her younger brother, Edward.
“It was during the Depression and my mother and father had to work,” she explained. “Back then it wasn’t required to stay in school.”
At 16, she took a job with Phillips Packing Company, in Cambridge. She was placed in front of a conveyor belt and was to watch string beans as they passed along in front of her, picking out the bad ones.
“I looked at that belt all day long,” she said. “When I got home, guess what my mother had for dinner? String beans!” She quit the Phillips job after one week.
She shucked oysters for 6 years, in Toddville.
“I was pretty good at that,” she admitted. During the summers, Ms. Dora traveled by water across Fishing Bay to Crisfield, Somerset County, to pick strawberries.
“I get seasick,” she said. “But, those boats were big enough and I did all right on them.”
When she was 20, she attracted the attention of Lois Murphy, of Bishops Head, a man of 36 years of age.
“That was at the (Zion United Methodist) church (in) Toddville,” she recalled. “He had lived 3 miles away all my life and I had never seen him before and if I did, I didn’t remember.”
But, Lois Murphy remembered Ms. Dora and before long, he asked her out on a date.
“My father said that if a young man didn’t have the nerve to come and ask him for permission to take out his daughter, he would not be welcome around our house.”
Mr. Murphy did come and ask Mr. Pritchett and Ms. Dora accepted Mr. Murphy’s invitation for a date. But, there was competition.
During one of Ms. Dora’s trips to Crisfield, she had also attracted the attention of Freddie Cullen, a young singer on a radio program that broadcasted from Salisbury.
“Crisfield was too far from home,” Ms. Dora said to explain why she stopped seeing the radio singer.
In 1940, Ms. Dora married Mr. Murphy at the Parsonage of St. Thomas Church, not too far from the home in Bishops Head she would share with Mr. Murphy, a life-long waterman.
But, there was competition.
At least for space in the 4 room home. Both of Mr. Murphy’s parents still lived there along with four of Lois’s ten siblings.
“It was a full house, for sure,” Ms. Dora recalls with a laugh.
Years later, Ms. Dora and her husband bought the house from his parents.
They had two children, Lois Ann, of Linkwood, and Allen, who resides in Michigan.
In 1950, Ms. Dora worked began working at Capt. Spark’s crab house in nearby Wingate.
Years later, the name changed to Dorchester Crab Company and Ms. Dora is still there, picking.
Here are a few interesting facts about Ms. Dora:
Johnny Unitas, of Baltimore Colt fame, often dined at Ms. Dora’s home. How this came about was that one of Ms. Dora’s brothers, Clyde Pritchett, during the 1960’s, was the caretaker at nearby Crab Point Farm. Several well known athletes traveled there to hunt. When they asked Clyde where they might get a home cooked meal, he brought them home. (Ms. Dora is also a good cook). Johnny Unitas, Dennis Gaubatz and Jackie Burkett of the Baltimore Colts became frequent guests, much to the delight of Ms. Dora’s (then) teenaged son, Allen, a big sports fan.
According to genealogy records kept by her daughter Lois Ann, Ms. Dora’s great grand father, Edward Wallace Pritchett (born Oct. 14, 1821, died March 22, 1906), fought at the Battle of Gettysburg. It is not known at this writing whether he fought for the Union or Confederacy during the bloody encounter in Pennsylvania on July 1, 2 and 3, 1863.
Ms. Dora has never smoked.
“Daddy said if he ever caught us with a cigarette he would shove it down our throats,” she stated.
Nor has she ever used alcohol.
“Except for one sip of beer one time,” she recalled from many, many years ago. “I didn’t like it.” That was the end of her drinking experimentation.
Ms. Dora wanted to be an airline stewardess. But, like drinking, that idea never got off the ground.
“My father ruled the roost,” she said. “He did not want me to be an airline stewardess. He told me if I joined up, he would tend to me when I got home. I decided not to risk that.” Ms. Dora has yet to fly in an airplane.
When crabs are out of season, Ms. Dora, an avid reader, spends many hours pouring over her favorite books which of late have been a series of novels based in old west settings.
If there are two things that irk Ms. Dora they are those who make fun of others and in-law jokes.
“I don’t push fun at other people and I don’t like people to push fun at me,” she explained firmly. “And, my in-laws were just so good to me. I don’t like it when people push fun about their in-laws.”
Almost 5 years ago, Bill and Bonnie Cox moved to Bishops Head from Gaithersburg, MD.
“We just wanted to get out of there,” explained Ms. Cox, who formerly worked for a financial institution before moving to the Eastern Shore.
After scouting out the location of their new home, in Bishops Head, they found a most beautiful sunset.
“I’ve been to Aruba and I’ve been to Barbados,” Ms. Cox said. “But, I have never seen a more beautiful sunset than here in Bishops Head.”
One day, Ms. Cox knocked on the door of a house in their new neighborhood.
“An old lady came to the door,” Mrs. Cox recalled. “I asked her if I could walk behind her house, down to the water, to look at the sunset.”
Ms. Dora told her yes, she could walk to the water’s edge to take in the hues and colors of the setting sun over the Honga River. That was the beginning of a friendship. Neighbors in these parts carefully look out for one another but that does mean they don’t have fun. Trips to town can become an adventure. Festivals are seldom overlooked. Crab feasts are a must.
“I love crabs,” Ms. Dora stated. “And, fresh tomatoes!”
To share their fun, Mrs. Cox created an internet blog which is now enjoyed by family and friends as far away as Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
“I just want people to know that Ms. Dora is 90 and still having fun!” Mrs. Cox said with enthusiasm.
Ms. Dora does not want to stay up too late during the week because her alarm clock sounds at 1: 45 a.m. After making her bed, getting herself ready, downing a few Ritz crackers and some orange juice, Ms. Dora Murphy is ready pick crabs.