Schools recall Leary Dickerson and the oyster-punching machine

School Superintendent Dr. Tracy Seitz in her superintendent’s report spoke of student activities surrounding February and Black History Month.

Jamaica District school board member and the only African-American on the school board, Elliott Reed, requested that the schools look into the history of the late Leary Dickerson of Nesting in the Jamaica District of Middlesex and the African-American inventor of the oyster-punching machine.

Dickerson was highlighted in the Middlesex County history book, “Signatures in Time — A Living History of Middlesex County, Va.,” and the following is a version of his accomplishments and life.

Leary Dickerson was born in 1894 in Nesting, Va., on Parrotts Creek and the Rappahannock River. His mother, Lucy Crump, was born enslaved and as a child gained her freedom with the Northern victory of the Civil War.

Lucy grew up and married James Henry Dickerson, who had come to the Nesting area in the mid-1880s from Virginia’s Eastern Shore…