The thriving seaweed industry in Scituate, Massachusetts, which is regarded as the town with the highest percentage of Irish residents in the United States, is responsible for the town’s entire Irish population.
Daniel Ward, an immigrant from Ireland, was sailing off the coast of Boston in the middle of the 1800s when he noticed red algae floating just below the water’s surface. As a fisherman, he was familiar with the substance and identified it as carrageen, also known as “Irish moss.”
The discovery of a resource with untapped potential was immediately apparent to Ward, who understood that he had made a fortune. The seaweed industry in the United States had its start when Ward made his home on the beaches of Scituate, which is located about halfway between Boston and Plymouth.
Carrageenan is a substance that is obtained from seaweed, and it is an ingredient that is used in a variety of goods, including food preservation, the creation of beer, and toothpaste.
Mossing was traditionally a family affair, with men often being the ones to collect the moss and their wives and children being the ones to care for it on the land. Mossers would scrape the red algae off of the rocky underwater ledges along the coast with long, heavy rakes. After being treated, the moss was dried down and processed into carrageenan.
After beginning to participate in the harvesting process when she was just nine years old, Scituate native Mim Flynn became recognised across the region as the “mossing queen.” Mim was well-known for her ability to navigate the water in a skiff while collecting moss, which earned her the nickname “Skiff Mim.” In the late 1930s, the young girl became the subject of news articles in many publications. She achieved widespread acclaim and attracted widespread attention to the seaweed sector.
In 2008, her daughter Mary Jenkins made the following statement to a local newspaper in Quincy, Massachusetts: “It was amazing for people to see a young, petite woman who was only 5ft 2 tall, pulling these huge boatfulls of moss.”
