The Legendary Doxsee Family
For almost 150 years, the Doxsee Family owned and operated one of the oldest seafood businesses on Long Island and throughout New York.
The Beginning
The Doxsee family presence in America dates back to 1743, when a 21-year-old Thomas Doxsee emigrated from England to Massapequa Brook in Huntington. His son Archelaus moved to Islip where James Harvey Doxsee (Bob Doxsee’s great grandfather) was born in 1825 and eventually created an enterprise that would involve subsequent generations of Doxsees’ in the clamming, fishing and canning industries up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
Doxsee Pure Little Neck Clams
James Harvey had nine children. In 1865 they started preparing the clams, found so abundantly on the southern shore of Long Island, for market. These products, known as, “Doxsee Pure Little Neck Clams”, and pure clam juice, clam chowder, etc., found market in all parts of the United States, and were largely exported. The capacity of the factory was over four hundred bushels of clams daily.
J.H. Doxsee and Sons
In 1897 he established a branch at Ocracoke, North Carolina, of which his son was manager, and later the business was incorporated as J.H. Doxsee and Sons. James Harvey Doxsee was vice president of the South Side Bank at Bay Shore, a Jeffersonian Democrat, a leading Presbyterian and elder, treasurer and trustee of the church.
He died on August 4, 1907. His son, Robert L. Doxsee, Sr., was mayor of Freeport in the late 1940s and died in 1967. He turned over what was then called Long Island Sea Clam Company to his Robert Doxsee Jr. about 1960.
Bob Doxsee, Jr.
Bob Doxsee Jr., became president of the family business, which operated out of Point Lookout until 2008. That’s when Bob decided to downsize the company, while continuing to sell frozen products for retail. The legendary Doxsee Sea Clam Company came to an end in 2012 due to the damage from Hurricane Sandy.