Scope and Content
The materials in this collection were produced as part of the Men’s Lives project, sponsored by Adelaide de Menil and The Rock Foundation, to document the occupational culture, lifestyle, and heritage of a small fishing community of surfmen and baymen on the East End of Long Island. This collection includes oral history interviews and interview transcripts, notes, and a file card index of interview excerpts, field notes, and subject headings. Related ephemera include a publicity file of English and French language press coverage of the Men’s Lives exhibition.
In 1981, a local fisherman and photographer, Doug Kuntz, expressed the desire to document his local East End community of fishers on South Fork, Long Island, whose traditions can be traced back three hundred years to its original settlement during the seventeenth century. Adelaide de Menil encouraged Kuntz to pursue the project and invited seven other photographers and writer Peter Matthiessen to document the community. The materials gathered during the following four years became the source material for the Men’s Lives traveling exhibition and for Matthiessen’s book Men's Lives: The Surfmen and Baymen of the South Fork (1986).
Between 1981 and 1985, individuals from the fishing community participated in interviews covering all aspects of maritime commercial fishing and included occupational culture, lifestyle, and heritage in their discussions. Family history is particularly well documented in this collection, as multiple members of the Lester and King families were interviewed, many more than once. These interviews were conducted by folklorist John Eilertsen and include the following maritime topics: handlining, gill netting, eeling, dragging, cod fishing, sport fishing, sword fishing, shell fishing, menhaden fishery, long lining, lobster fishing, haul seining, decoys (gunning and trapping), wind weather and tide boats, net mending and rope splicing, whaling, trap fishing, shipping and selling, income and expenses, and legislation and politics.