The Shipman Mansion

A year-round supply of fresh water from the Delaware River runs into the Delaware Bay below Salem, New Jersey, while at the same time fingers of salt water wash in from the ocean. This fine mixture gives birth in the upper reaches of the bay to that most wonderful of bivalves – the oyster. On Wednesday, May 28, Michael J. Chiarappa, associate professor of history at Quinnipiac University, will bring the history and biology of the Delaware Bay oyster to life in a talk in the Shipman Mansion at the Red Dragon Canoe Club, 221 Edgewater Avenue, Edgewater Park. In the 7 p.m. free program, Dr. Chiarappa will reveal, in part, why Port Norris, New Jersey’s oyster capital, once claimed to have more millionaires per capita than any other community in the United States. Dr. Chiarappa’s research and teaching is focused in the areas of American environmental history, the history of America’s built environments and landscapes, American maritime history, and local/regional history. Michael J. Chiarappa received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and is Associate Professor of History at Quinnipiac University. He is co-author of Fish for All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment on Lake Michigan (2003), co-editor of Nature’s Entrepot: Philadelphia’s Urban Sphere and its Environmental Thresholds (2012), and the author of articles focusing on vernacular landscapes, regionalism, and the use of natural resources in maritime environments. Dr. Chiarappa’s research and teaching is focused in the areas of American environmental history, the history of America’s built environments and landscapes, American maritime history, and local/regional history. He is also specializes in public history and formerly co-directed the Public History Program at Western Michigan University where he taught courses in historic preservation, documentation methods, and cultural resource management. He has conducted numerous field schools focusing on historic preservation, maritime preservation, museology, oral history, and local history and has worked on historic preservation, maritime preservation, and public history projects in the Middle Atlantic, New England, and Great Lakes regions, and in the Pacific Islands. A graduate of the Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies and a member of the Board of Directors of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, he has worked extensively with a variety of museums and government agencies, including the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service The May program is one in a series of free monthly educational programs presented by the charitable non-profit Shipman Mansion Foundation. As with all of the programs, dessert will be served and tours of the mansion will be offered.