Leonard Copsey’s Seafood Market: Spiced Shrimp, Crabs, Fresh Fish and Oysters Keep Pee Wee and Ralph Hopping

NEW MARKET — Frances “Pee Wee” Gray, co-owner of Leonard Copsey’s Seafood Market on Rt. 5 in New Market operates a busy seafood carryout that caters to a clientele of long-time native residents as well as those motoring in Southern Maryland that are lucky enough to spot the sign for the business.

“I’ve been working around it since I was little, it seems like its been forever. I started out helping my father, buying crabs as a teen. In 1974 I went to work for him full time, he used to have the Famous Drift Inn Crab House, the oldest in southern Maryland. He had the Crab House in the summer and oysters in the winter, and grew tobacco in the summers too,” said Gray.

Two of her sisters and her brother all operate thriving seafood restaurants in the county. Sissy operates the Sandgates Inn on the Patuxent River, her brother Lonnie and his wife Elaine operate Captain Leonard’s Crabhouse on Rt. 235 in Oraville, and her sister Pumpkin and her husband Jerry Bowles own and operate her parent’s long-time business, Drift Inn.

Hagerstown crabhouse double-dipper in poaching sting for undersize crabs

HAGERSTOWN, MD. — According to the Maryland Natural Resources Police, a follow-up visit to a Hagerstown seafood shop charged earlier in the month with selling illegal crabs yielded more of the same last Thursday, the Maryland Natural Resources Police reported.

An officer conducting an inspection at Cameron’s Seafood on Dual Highway discovered one bushel with 82 undersized crabs and another with 42 undersized crabs. On Aug. 1, he found one bushel with 110 undersized crabs and another with 59 undersized crabs.

For the latest violations, Hussein Kato Katende, 38, of Columbia, was issued two citations and the crabs were delivered to a Hagerstown food bank.

THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY now on newsstands from Glen Burnie to Ocean City

The monthly print edition of THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY can now be found on newsstands all over Maryland. Reaching far beyond the Southern Maryland region, look for THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY in major stores in Prince Georges County, Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, Queen Anne County, Talbot County, Worcester and Wicomico on Maryland’s Eastern Shore as well as in Delaware. The print edition will soon be distributed in Northern Neck Virginia as well. Advertisers may reach Larry Jarboe at 240-298-5253 or Ken Rossignol at 301-535-8624.