James Waverly Ferguson (20 November 1907–12 January 1986), seafood executive, was born in Norfolk and was the son of Goldie Virginia Detrick Ferguson and her first husband, John Howard Ferguson, who evidently died when his son was an infant. He and his elder sister went to live with their paternal grandparents in the town of Remlik, in Middlesex County. His mother remarried, and he had four half-brothers and two half-sisters. Ferguson lived in Remlik all his life and on 23 December 1926 married Blanche Virginia Smith, of Middlesex County. They had two sons and one daughter.

J. W. Ferguson, as he identified himself as an adult, or Buster as he was known to family and friends, attended the public schools of Urbanna through the seventh grade when he left to take his first job as a commercial fisherman. Late in the 1930s, he purchased his own oyster boat for $500. In 1948, with an initial investment of $20,000, he and a partner opened the J. W. Ferguson Seafood Company, Incorporated, which grew to be a leader in Virginia's seafood industry and by the 1980s employed about sixty people. The company packed and marketed two trademarked brands of oysters, Choice of Chesapeake Bay, and Rappahannock River. It also packaged breaded oysters for sale under other labels and provided oysters to the Red Lobster restaurant chain. The packing house was in Remlik and identified itself in advertising as "One of America's Largest Packers of Fresh and Frozen Oysters."

In 1976, Ferguson launched a counterattack against public announcements that the federal and state governments issued warning people of the effects that the pesticide Kepone, the commercial name of the chemical chlordecone, could have on people and fisheries after a spill of the chemical in the James River. Kepone had not contaminated other Virginia fisheries, but the warnings and publicity threatened to reduce or eliminate markets for seafood harvested in the Rappahannock River, where Ferguson's corporation operated, and elsewhere in the state. The Virginia Oyster Packers and Planters, the Virginia Seafood Council, the National Fisheries Institute, the Shellfish Institute of North America, and the Virginia tourism industry supported his efforts. Ferguson's concerns were well-founded, as fears relating to the James River's Kepone contamination damaged Virginia's seafood industry as a whole, likely causing his company's sales to drop from a reported $2 million in 1975 to between $300,000 and $400,000 a decade later.

In a cooperative effort with Virginia Polytechnic Institute (later Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University), Ferguson helped develop a steam tunnel that heated live oysters until their abductor muscles relaxed, making them easier to open with a knife. In 1977, Ferguson implemented this revolutionary oyster steam-shucking process, which increased the speed and ease of the operation. Coming at a time of declining numbers of skilled oyster shuckers in the region, this innovation expanded substantially both production and worker earnings at his company and eventually was adopted across the entire industry.

Ferguson served on the Virginia Marine Resources Study Commission in the 1960s and the Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Committee and was president of the Virginia Seafood Council, the Shellfish Institute of North America, and Virginia Oyster Packers Association. He was a member of the National Fisheries Institute and the National Frozen and Refrigerated Foods Association.

Ferguson served three terms on the Middlesex County board of supervisors representing the Saluda District. Running to abolish the "secrecy on matters of public interest," such as tax increases and public land acquisition, he was elected on 3 November 1959 to a four-year term. Denied reelection in November 1963, he won election as a supervisor again in 1971 but resigned in 1973 after the board's majority decided not to hire a professional county administrator. In 1976 after the board of supervisors agreed to hire the county's first administrator, Ferguson won election to fill a vacancy for an unexpired term. During the 1976 election campaign, he supported land-use zoning ordinances to permit accurate assessment of property so that taxes would be levied on the fair market value. Ferguson served as chair of the board in 1962, 1978, and 1979. He also served on several committees that addressed issues of regional planning and development.

James Waverly Ferguson died of septic shock on 12 January 1986 in Walter Reed Memorial Hospital in Gloucester. He was buried in Remlik Gardens Cemetery.

Sources Consulted:
Birth and death dates and identity of parents on Death Certificate, Gloucester Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; sister's reminiscence of their childhood in Urbanna Southside Sentinel, 6 Apr. 2004; Middlesex Co. Marriage Register; advertisement with first quotation, Virginia Record 95 (July 1973), 38; seafood company highlighted in Urbanna Southside Sentinel, 2 Sept. 1976, 1 June 1978; election campaigns covered in Urbanna Southside Sentinel, 30 July (second quotation), 4 Sept., 5 Nov. 1959, 19 Sept., 24 Oct, 7 Nov. 1963, 16 Sept., 21, 28 Oct., 4 Nov. 1971, 7, 28 Oct., 4 Nov. 1976; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 8 Dec. 1985; obituaries in Newport News Daily Press, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Richmond News Leader, Richmond Times-Dispatch, all 14 Jan. 1986, and Urbanna Southside Sentinel, 16 Jan. 1986 (portrait).

Photograph in Southside Sentinel, 24 Oct. 1963.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Lisa Clemmer.

How to cite this page:
Lisa Clemmer, "James Waverly Ferguson (1907–1986)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Ferguson_James_Waverly, accessed [today's date]).

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