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.
