Leary R. Dickerson (11 July 1894–6 April 1974), inventor, was born in Middlesex County and was the son of James Henry Dickerson, a farmer, and Lucy Crump Dickerson. He likely spent part of his youth as an oysterman. The oyster industry, a cornerstone of Virginia's economy east of the fall line late in the nineteenth and early in the twentieth centuries, provided some of the few relatively profitable occupations then available to African Americans. Dickerson worked for the York River Shipbuilding Corporation in West Point during World War I and found employment after the war with the Chesapeake Corporation, a manufacturer of paper products. On 29 April 1920 he married Carrie Burrell, a milk deliverer, in West Point. They had two sons and two daughters.

Early in the 1920s Dickerson moved to Nesting, Middlesex County, where he planted and harvested oysters along the Rappahannock River, ran a grocery store, and repaired marine engines. In 1923, after gouging his hand with a knife while shucking an oyster, he developed a hand-operated punching device that facilitated the dismantling of oysters by breaking off the mouths of shells safely and quickly. A shucker could then insert a knife and readily remove the oyster from its casing. Dickerson filed for a patent on 28 December 1923 and received patent number 1,510,313 on 30 September 1924. To commemorate the second anniversary of the patent, Middlesex residents held a celebration in Dickerson's honor. He issued a standing offer of a $500 reward (later up to $1,000) to anyone who could substantially improve his invention. In February 1926 he was accepted into the League of American Inventors.

Early in the 1940s Dickerson worked on the construction of the Pentagon in Arlington County. He continued tinkering with his oyster-punching device, and on 20 October 1942 he received patent number 2,299,311 for a foot-operated version. About 1943 Dickerson issued a pamphlet advertising a publication called the Inventor's Record, which he intended to sell throughout the United States to raise capital for an experimental laboratory to be headquartered in Baltimore. There is no evidence he ever established the laboratory, however. On 6 July 1948 Dickerson received patent number 2,444,636 for his final oyster-punching machine, which featured a mechanism that positioned the oyster in the path of a rotary cutter and allowed a portion of the shell to be cut away. The R. T. Overstreet Company of Norfolk manufactured and distributed the device, which two large oyster-packing companies in Norfolk and on the Eastern Shore adopted. Royalties from sales of his machine provided Dickerson with a comfortable income.

Leary R. Dickerson died on 6 April 1974 at a nursing home in Henrico County. He was buried at the Saint Paul Baptist Church Cemetery, in Jamaica, Middlesex County.

Sources Consulted:
Self-reported birth date of 11 July 1894 in World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1917–1918), RG 163, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.; birth and death dates in Death Certificate, city of Richmond, Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; variant birth dates in Social Security application, Social Security Administration, Office of Earnings Operations, Baltimore, Md. (11 July 1893), BVS Birth Register, Middlesex Co. (11 Jan. 1894), and World War II Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1942), RG 147, NARA (11 July 1896); King William Co. Marriage Register (age twenty-six on 29 Apr. 1920); feature articles with portraits in Richmond Planet, 30 Oct. 1926, and Norfolk Journal and Guide (national ed.), 19 Aug. 1950; Agencies Wanted Throughout America: For Information, Write L. Dickerson (prospectus, ca. 1943), copy at Virginia Historical Society, Richmond (variant birth year of 1896); Jet 22 (23 Aug. 1962): 46; Carrie D. Chandler (daughter), "The L. R. Dickerson Family," in Jessie M. DeBusk et al., eds., Family Histories of Middlesex County, Virginia (1982), 84; Tommy L. Bogger, A History of African-Americans in Middlesex County, 1646–1992 (1994), 76; obituary in Urbanna Southside Sentinel, 11 Apr. 1974.

Photograph in Richmond Planet, 30 Oct. 1926.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Katharine E. Harbury and Jennifer R. Loux.

How to cite this page:
Katharine E. Harbury and Jennifer R. Loux, "Leary R. Dickerson (1894–1974)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dickerson_Leary_R, accessed [today's date]).

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