Sarah Hammond Stokes is the third shucker in the row, working at C. E. Marshall Seafood Inc. after the firm downsized and moved to a smaller facility in the 1990s. Photo by Larry Chowning
Key Takeaways
Sarah Hammond Stokes made oyster-shucking history as the first U.S. competitor, male or female, to place at the world championship in Galway, Ireland, with a third-place finish in 1984.
Known for clean, precise shucking rather than speed, Stokes helped bring international recognition to Virginia’s oyster industry and paved the way for future competitors.
A trailblazer in national and international oyster shucking competitions, Sarah Hammond Stokes of Urbanna, Va., died on Sept. 13.
Stokes was featured in the March 1985 issue of National Fisherman (NF) after she surprised the oyster-shucking world by finishing third in the world championship at the 30th annual Galway Oyster Festival in Ireland. She was the first United States shucker, male or female, to place at the event.
Stokes had surprised a field of women oyster shuckers in 1983, winning the female Virginia state championship at the Urbanna Oyster Festival and earning a trip to Leonardtown, Md., to compete in the national oyster shucking contest.
She surprised everyone at the national championship by winning the women’s championship and then captured the overall (men/women) competition, both times with the cleanest shucked oysters but not the fastest times.
During the contest, each shucker is allowed to select 24 oysters for each heat. The goal is to shuck them as fast as possible and arrange them on the half-shell as attractively as possible, with as little damage to each oyster as possible. Stokes had the magic touch with her arrangements and had the most clean/undamaged shucked oysters of all.
With her win at the national contest, she won an all-expenses-paid trip to Galway, Ireland, to compete in the 1984 International Oyster Shucking Contest. Nine countries completed in the international event and Stokes finished third in the competition.
Stokes was the first American oyster shucker to bring international recognition to the craft and laid the foundation for others, such as nationally known Deborah Pratt.
Pratt finished third at Galway in 1994 and second in the world in 1997, just missing by a few points a world championship. She was honored in 2023 by the Virginia House of Delegates when the house unanimously approved House Bill 320 honoring Pratt for “representing the Virginia seafood industry as a world-class oyster shucker.”
Stokes was less known around the state and country, but the 1985 NF story quoted Galway, Ireland, festival officials saying, “Sarah was a fine representative of the United States; she is energetic in competition, and she is a gracious lady.”
At the awards ceremony in Galway, Stokes carried the American flag as the band played the national anthem. She said in the 1985 interview, “I had never carried the flag for anything, and I was so proud.”
Stokes history
One of 12 children, Stokes was born in 1939 and grew up in Revis, Va., four miles outside of Urbanna with her parents, Grant and Lou Bagby, and brothers and sisters. Grant was an oysterman, and Lou worked the fields as a seasonal vegetable picker. Sarah’s first job was alongside her mother picking tomatoes in the fields. After high school, she picked vegetables in the spring and fall and worked in a crab-picking house during the summer.
Around 1960, her friend Georgia Foster, an oyster shucker, asked her if she would fill in for her at J. W. Ferguson’s and Son Seafood oyster shucking house in Remlik, Va. She needed a day off. Stokes went to work that day, and before the day was over, foreman Jasper Bray told her he had a “box” shucking stall for her anytime she wanted it.
Hammond Stokes at C. E. Marshall Seafood Inc. in Water View, Va., worked at her own Slot 17, where she honed her shucking skills and later finished third in the world at the World Oyster Shucking Championships in 1984. Courtesy of Southside Sentinel
During an interview in 2025 she said, “I think working in the shucking house was some of the happiest days of my life. There were about 40, mostly women, shuckers at Ferguson’s then, and we all got along good. We would work real hard and to make the time go by we would sing. There were several in the shucking house whose voices were wonderful, but we would all sing together hymns we learned in church - ones we all knew.”
At the time, J. W. Ferguson and Son shucking house was one of the largest in the state. “I was never the fastest shucker but I always shucked a real clean oyster. I had very few cuts on the meat,” she said.
When Stokes placed third in the world, she was professionally shucking oysters inside Powell’s Oyster House at Water View, Va., then operated by C. E. Marshall’s Seafood Inc. Today the large seafood building on Parrott’s Creek on Rappahannock River is empty but still stands, and inside “Slot 17” is where world oyster shucking competitor Sarah Hammond Stokes honed her skills and shucked her way to international fame.
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