About
The sidewalk between 2nd and 3rd on Ankeny Street was stacked with boxes of live crabs. It was 1907, and Louis C. Wachsmuth was carting them inside to the big, briny crab pot. Oysters, shrimp, live lobsters from the East, and all kinds of fish were handled in carload lots. Dealing in seafood was nothing new for Louis. He grew up working with his father and brothers on the family oyster farm in Oysterville, Washington. Louis’ father, Meinert Wachsmuth, was born on the Isle of Sylt, off the coast of Denmark in 1842. At the age of 14, Meinert stowed away on an ocean-going vessel and wound up shipping before the mast for nearly ten years. He sailed around the Horn seven times before settling down to work the trade route between San Francisco, CA, and the oyster rich bays of Oregon and Washington. Meinert decided to end his maritime career when he was shipwrecked at Yaquina Bay, OR, aboard the schooner Annie Doyle in 1865. In 1869, Meinert married Elizabeth Sullivan and moved to Oysterville. He and his bride were blessed with three sons, Harry, Theodore, and Louis before they returned to San Francisco in 1881 to set up their own business. Louis learned to shuck oysters the next year at the age of five and developed a lifelong curiosity about the succulent bivalves while growing up along the shores of Shoalwater Bay.
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