Our Story

A transplant to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, Henry Miller Terry was born on Long Island, New York in 1882. Himself descended from generations of sailors and watermen, Henry Miller Terry left school early to work for his father aboard his father’s sailboat, the Miss Sadie. Aboard the Miss Sadie, he traveled the Atlantic coast—often with shanghaied crews—hauling fruit from South America for his father. On the way back up the coast, Captain Terry and his son, Henry, would stop to take on seed oysters in the coastal waters of Virginia. They’d secure these seed oysters in large nets, which they hung overboard on either side of the boat and carried back to New York’s Great South Bay to sell as transplants to the Long Island Oyster Company. On one such journey, Miss Sadie ran into a storm off of Cape May, New Jersey. Unable to outrace the storm, Captain Terry tied a rope to his son and sent him overboard to cut loose the oyster nets on both sides of the boat. When they pulled him back aboard bloodied, his clothes cut to ribbons from the razor sharp oyster shells, Henry Miller Terry decided he’d had enough of his father’s ship. Soon after, a young Henry set out on his own, eventually moving to Willis Wharf, Virginia on the Eastern Shore of Virginia where, in 1903, he founded H.M. Terry Co.