needed workers and there was the problem. Virginia law made it illegal to harvest oysters until you owned and occupied land in the state for one year.

Being resourceful, Lindsay subdivided his marshland into 1-acre plots that he sold for $100 each to future oystermen. As Greenbackville was growing with cheap land and plenty of oysters, Judge John R. Franklin, who owned the immediately adjacent marshland began selling similar but smaller lots for only $25 each. And as the landowners and oysters started pouring in, Franklin influenced the Washington & Atlantic Railroad to add a spur going right through his property and on to his marsh town now named "Franklin City." Soon there was a commercial pier, oyster packing houses, a barrel factory, a hotel, a Methodist church, anda store built in Franklin City alone. By 1890, there were two trains per day (with 1,600 bushels of oysters in each) shipping seafood from both Greenbackville and Franklin City directly to the big cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. "(2)

Within a decade, however, things changed. In 1896 a large fire nearly destroyed Franklin City. Oyster supplies had diminished from over-fishing and bivalve diseases. Severe storms had destroyed properties that were never rebuilt. But the fatal blow was the opening of the Chincoteague Causeway in 1922 which allowed cars and trucks direct access to the seafood of Chincoteague Island, particularly the world famous "Tom's Cove Oysters."

The steam train still ran daily to Franklin City when I was a 10 year old kid in 1954; but steam was