Virginia Oliver
Photo: David Dostie Photography, WABI5
Lipstick isn’t the most common accessory for lobstermen, but it was for Virginia Oliver. She hauled lobster traps starting at the age of eight and retiring at the age of 103 – making her, by most accounts, the oldest working lobsterwoman in the world.
Oliver was born June 6, 1920, in Rockland, and grew up on the Neck, a small spit of land connected to Andrews Island by a tidal sandbar. She started trapping lobster alongside her father and older brother at age eight, at a time when almost no women worked in Maine's lobster industry — she lived with an aunt in Rockland during the school year and spent the rest of her time on the water. She never really stopped. Lobster sold for 28 cents a pound when she started.
After getting married and having children, Oliver stayed at home until her youngest was nine. She then worked at a sardine factory and then a printing press in Rockland for 19 years. In the early 1970s Oliver started going out with her husband Bill, deciding, “lobstering, I wouldn’t have to work half as hard, and I could be my own boss.”
In her later decades she worked as sternman aboard the Virginia — a boat that had belonged to her late husband, and that she renamed after herself — alongside her son Max, hauling, measuring, and banding lobster three days a week from June through October. She was particular about the schedule: three days was plenty, five was "a job," and she had no interest in making it one. She kept her lobstering license current every year, well past her hundredth birthday, and told a reporter in 2021 that she planned to keep going as long as she could.
By her hundredth birthday Oliver had gained national attention. She appeared on magazine covers, was profiled by the Associated Press, NBC, and the TODAY show, and became the subject of two children's books, including author Barbara Walsh's The Lobster Lady: Maine's 102-Year-Old Legend and Alexandra S.D. Hinrichs The Lobster Lady. Despite all the attention, Oliver remained unruffled and fiercely independent. Being on the water was something she loved, and there was no reason to stop just because she was older.
Oliver finally did retire from lobstering at the age of 102 and passed away in January 2026 at the age of 105. Her son Max, one of four children, continues to lobster on the boat that bears his mother’s name. Be sure and check out the Maine Lobster Festival, where Oliver was the long-time Grand Marshal and is an event she supported for decades.
