Ladies of the Lights: Michigan Women in the U.S. Lighthouse Service

by Patricia Majher

Overview

"A great read about some great ladies, Pat Majher's Ladies of the Lights pays long overdue homage to an overlooked part of Great Lakes maritime history in which a select group of stalwart women beat the odds to succeed in a field historically reserved for men."
---Terry Pepper, Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association

Michigan once led the country in the number of lighthouses, and they're still a central part of the mystique of the state. What even the region's lighthouse enthusiasts might not know is the rich history of female lighthouse keepers in the area.

Fifty women served the sailing communities on Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior, as well as on the Detroit River, for more than 100 years. From Catherine Shook, who raised eight children while maintaining the Pointe Aux Barques light at the entrance to Saginaw Bay; to Eliza Truckey, who assumed responsibility for the lighthouse in Marquette while her husband fought for four years in the Civil War; to Elizabeth Whitney, whose combined service on Beaver Island and in Harbor Springs totaled forty-one years---the stories of Michigan's "ladies of the lights" are inspiring.

This is no technical tome documenting the minutiae of Michigan's lighthouse specifications. Rather, it's a detailed, human portrait of the women who kept those lighthouses running, defying the gender expectations of their time.

Patricia Majher is Editor of Michigan History magazine, published by the Historical Society of Michigan. Prior, she was Assistant Director of the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame in Lansing, Michigan. In addition, she has been writing both advertising and editorial copy for almost thirty years and has been a frequent contributor to Michigan newspapers and magazines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472051434
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	09/13/2010
Pages:	136
Sales rank:	495,172
Product dimensions:	3.00(w) x 6.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Patricia Majher is a former Editor of Michigan History magazine, published by the Historical Society of Michigan. Prior, she was Assistant Director of the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame in Lansing, Michigan. In addition, she has been writing both advertising and editorial copy for almost thirty years and has been a frequent contributor to Michigan newspapers and magazines.

Read an Excerpt

Ladies of the Lights

Michigan Women in the U.S. Lighthouse Service

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By Patricia Majher

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

Copyright © 2010 University of Michigan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-07143-2

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Chapter One

Female Lighthouse Keepers: A Brief History

Mary Louise and J. Candace Clifford have written the foremost reference work about female lighthouse keepers in the United States. But a condensed version of that history may be useful to readers embarking on this book.

America's First Female Keeper

The story begins in the early eighteenth century, with the illumination of the inaugural "aid to navigation" in U.S. waters: Little Brewster Island lighthouse in Boston Harbor. First lit in 1716, it was manned—literally—by a fellow known as George Worthylake. Ten more lights were constructed up and down the East Coast, and nearly sixty years would pass before the first female keeper in the United States would be appointed. Her name was Hannah Thomas.

Initially serving as assistant, Hannah took full responsibility for the Gurnet Point lights at the entrance to Plymouth Bay (Massachusetts) when her keeper husband John left to fight in the colonial army in 1775. He never returned to his home, having died of smallpox in Canada. In his stead, Hannah assumed the difficult task of maintaining not one but two lanterns on the site, even surviving a skirmish between a British ship and a local militia that was guarding the lights. Her son succeeded her as keeper in 1790.

The Great Lakes' First

According to lighthouse historian Francis Ross Holland, the earliest lighthouses on the Great Lakes were lit at Presque Isle, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York, in 1819. Two years later, the first tower in Ohio was erected on the tip of Marblehead Peninsula at the narrow entrance to Sandusky Bay. Benajah Wolcott was appointed keeper there and served admirably until a cholera epidemic took his life in 1832. His widow, Rachel Wolcott, became the first Lady of the Light in the region when she was named by the federal government as his replacement.

For two years, Rachel lit the wicks of thirteen whale-oil lamps each night as a signal to passing ships. She then stepped down so that her second husband might take the top job; he kept the light for an additional ten years. All in all, Rachel Wolcott van Benschoten devoted twenty-two years of her life to Marblehead.

Michigan's First

In Michigan, the earliest lighthouse was established at Fort Gratiot (Port Huron) in 1825. But the state's first female keeper—Catherine Shook of Pointe aux Barques—didn't assume her position until twenty-four years later. Poor health and the demands of tending a light and a family of eight prompted her to resign her post in 1851. (More detail on Catherine Shook's life may be found in chapter 11.)

Three years passed before a second Michigan woman appeared in the records of the U.S. Lighthouse Service: Mrs. Charles O'Malley at Bois Blanc Island. And just ten more of the state's women were on the books up until 1869 despite efforts by federal administrators to compensate keepers' widows with gainful employment.

The 1870s were the high-water mark for women in the service, both in the nation and in Michigan. During that decade, twenty-two were employed at important lights on lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior and on the Detroit River. By the 1880s, however, the national population of women keepers began to drop. In Michigan, that number dipped to sixteen and, in the 1890s, to ten.

After 1920, only three women still maintained lights in Michigan; changing technology and the assumption of the Lighthouse Service into the all-male U.S. Coast Guard in 1939 are generally regarded as the reasons. When Frances Wuori Johnson of the White River light resigned her post in 1954, her action marked the official end of the 105-year history of female lighthouse keepers in the state.

Chapter Two

Michigan: Home to the Most Female Keepers

Michigan's leadership role in U.S. lighthouse history is undeniable; for one thing, it's the state in which the most lighthouses were erected. And more than 120 remain there, as compared to five hundred total in the rest of the nation.

By extension, Michigan also recorded the most keepers in the Lighthouse Service and earned another distinction as well: It was home to the most female keepers. Twenty-seven of the state's women served as principal keepers out of approximately 140 across the country. Another twenty-five Michigan women were appointed assistant keepers.

Do sheer numbers of lighthouses and keepers dictate that Michigan should also lead in this third category? "That would be a safe assumption," noted J. Candace Clifford, who coauthored Women Who Kept the Lights, the first book to focus on women in the Lighthouse Service. Gladys Beckwith, founder of the Michigan Women's Historical Center and Hall of Fame, suggests a second possibility: "At the same time Michigan women were making a name for themselves in the service, their sisters around the state were making history as national leaders in the fight to win women the right to vote and assume other rights in our society."

"It comes as no surprise to me," she added, "that Michigan women rose to the challenges of lighthouse keeping with the same vigor and resolve."

By all accounts of the period, Michigan's female keepers were vigorous women who took their profession very seriously. While the majority succeeded their husbands in the job, several secured appointments on their own: a rare accomplishment for women in the service.

Reports of bad behavior were rare among Michigan's Ladies of the Lights. And, like their national counterparts, they stayed longer at each posting and committed to longer careers than did men—some into their sixties and seventies.

Michigan women bravely faced the most challenging assignments, with many serving at remote stations such as Au Sable Point. Located along the southern shore of Lake Superior, the lighthouse was twelve miles away from the nearest village along a narrow path hugging the base of steep sand dunes. On windy days, the trail was virtually impassable due to crashing waves. And, though its lamp was first lit in 1874, no road connected the lighthouse to civilization until 1928. To say it was a difficult posting for families would be an understatement. The Northern Michigan University Center for Upper Peninsula Studies noted that wintertime seclusion was partly to blame for the deaths of one keeper's son and daughter.

The weather played a part in the death of at least one of the state's female keepers, who drowned when a boat she was riding in capsized in Lake Michigan. Another died in a suspicious fire that struck her wooden lighthouse one fateful night in 1886.

Despite the dangers of the job and its physical demands, Michigan's female keepers stayed the course for more than a hundred years—only leaving the Lighthouse Service when its administration (and, later, that of the Coast Guard) discouraged requests for continued employment.

The lives of these fifty-two women have not been as well documented as those of their male counterparts. But, thanks to records preserved in the National Archives as well as in county histories, contemporary news accounts, genealogies, and one keeper's autobiography, we can answer some basic questions about Michigan's Ladies of the Lights.

Chapter Three

Typical Duties of a Lighthouse Keeper

To fully appreciate the challenges that women faced in the light keeping profession, you must first understand what any keeper or assistant keeper was expected to do. The following excerpt from an 1835 document issued by the superintendent of lighthouses details just a few of those responsibilities:

1. You are to light the lamps every evening at sun-setting, and keep them continually burning bright and clear till sun-rising.

2. You are to be careful that the lamps, reflectors, and lanterns [the glass-enclosed room at the top of a tower] are constantly kept clean, and in order; and particularly to be careful that no lamps, wood, or candles be left burning anywhere so as to endanger fire.

3. In order to maintain the greatest degree of light during the night, the wicks are to be trimmed every four hours, taking care that they are exactly even on top.

4. You are to keep an exact account of the quantity of oil received from time to time; the number of gallons, quarts, gills, [etc.] consumed each night, and deliver a copy of the same to the superintendent every three months....

Michigan's earliest lady lighthouse keepers worked with Lewis lamps: an array of multiple oil-burning fixtures, each outfitted with a reflector and lens to magnify and focus the light out over the water. The Lewis lamps had their flaws—the reflectors warped out of shape and shed their reflective coating, while the entire assembly sooted up very quickly—so they were replaced starting in 1852 with a French invention. The large and intricately designed Fresnel lenses magnified light to such a degree that one oil-burning lamp placed inside could do the work of many.

Although Fresnel lenses greatly improved safety on the seas (and Great Lakes), they did relatively little to simplify the jobs of keepers and assistants, who still had to take shifts to ensure that their lamps stayed lit from sundown to sunup and that the clockwork-like mechanisms that rotated later lenses stayed in motion.

Keeping a lamp lit when the wind was gusting or a storm was raging could prove quite challenging. A newspaper reporter described Mission Point keeper Sarah Lane's response to bad weather in this way:

On a windy night, there is danger of [the lamp] smoking or going down, and the colder the weather and worse the storm, the oftener must Mrs. Lane make her weary trips to the top of the tower to guard against trouble. On frosty nights, the [lantern window] panes must be frequently wiped with glycerin to keep them clear.

In foggy weather, early keepers were also responsible for stoking the coal-burning boilers that powered their fog signals—sometimes day and night. In 1887, a particularly inclement year, Patrick and Catharine McGuire kept their Marquette Harbor signal screaming for 697 hours: a light station record.

At daybreak, keepers would extinguish their lamps, close the curtains in the lantern, and turn their attention toward record keeping—for example, recording the weather, ship sightings, and other details of the day in a logbook—and maintaining the light station's structures and equipment. This was a critical part of the job, as stations were inspected periodically by federal officials who had the power to penalize and even remove errant keepers.

Typical tower chores included refilling the lamp with oil (until the electrification of lighthouses started in the 1920s); polishing the lighthouse glass and brass; washing the windows of the lantern; and scrubbing the tower floors and steps. The keeper's residence also had to be kept clean and uncluttered. Meals needed to be cooked and laundry done. And, if the light station was blessed with the right kind of soil to sustain a garden, there were planting, weeding, and harvesting chores to do. Some keepers even raised livestock.

If that weren't enough, keepers were additionally directed by the Lighthouse Service to "treat with civility and attention such strangers as may visit the light-house under your charge."

Like their male counterparts, female keepers no doubt engaged family members in the execution of some of these tasks to lighten the load. Still, the primary responsibilities fell on their shoulders. That burden is evident in the faces of the few Ladies of the Lights for whom "before keeping" and "after keeping" photographs exist.

During the shipping season on the Great Lakes—then running between May and November—keepers were expected to stay at their posts every day. The nineteenth-century rules about leaving were very specific: "You will not absent yourself from the light-house at any time without first obtaining the consent of the Superintendent, unless the occasion be so sudden and urgent as not to admit of an application to that officer; in which case, by leaving a suitable substitute, you may be absent for twenty-four hours." In the twentieth century, regulations were a little more relaxed, especially at minor stations. Noted Frances Wuori Johnson, a keeper at the electrified White River light in the 1940s and 1950s: "I did go down [to my parents' home in Pontiac] once and visited for about three days. I had [a neighbor] watch the light for me. I gave her my mother's phone number. Everything worked out okay. That was the only time I was ever gone."

Chapter Four

How Did Women Get Appointed to Keeper Positions?

The wives (and sometimes daughters) of keepers had little trouble being named assistant keepers in the Lighthouse Service; if their relatives requested the appointment, it was generally granted. But getting a woman named the principal keeper at a light? That was another thing altogether.

Until 1896, when lighthouse keepers became civil servants, principal keepers acquired their positions by federal appointment on the recommendation of the local collector of customs. As most customs officials were male, they tended to suggest keeper candidates who were male. Appointments were also granted as favors to veterans of military service or to members of the prevailing political party—again tilting the odds in favor of men.

Stephen Pleasonton, the federal official responsible for the Lighthouse Service from 1820 to 1852, did what he could to change this system. In an 1851 letter to his superior, Secretary of the Treasury Thomas Corwin, Pleasonton wrote:

It must be apparent to all who reflect upon the subject, that I have had much inconvenience and difficulty to encounter from the frequent changes incidental to our form of government, in the [politically appointed] keepers, who for a time do not understand the management of their lamps, and consequently keep bad lights and waste much oil. So necessary is it that the lights should be in the hands of experienced keepers, that I [do], in order to effect that object as far as possible, recommend, on the death of a keeper, that his widow, if steady and respectable, should be appointed to succeed him.

Pleasonton's suggestion appears to have been taken seriously; approximately thirty widows were named keepers nationwide in the 1850s and nearly fifty by the 1870s.

Michigan women who benefited from this recommendation included Mary Vreeland succeeding Michael Vreeland at the Gibraltar lighthouse, Slatira Carlton succeeding Monroe Carlton at St. Joseph, and Elizabeth Van Riper (later Williams) succeeding Clement Van Riper at Beaver Island Harbor. (It should be noted, however, that Williams's professionalism on Beaver Island earned her next appointment at Little Traverse light on her own merits.)

Though a widow of a lighthouse keeper, Mary Ann Wheatley did not succeed her husband, William, at his last posting: Marquette Harbor. Instead, three weeks after his drowned body was found near the mouth of the Little Garlic River, Mary was appointed keeper at Eagle Harbor Range lights and remained there for seven years.

Another way that women could gain a position as principal keeper was if their keeper husbands enlisted for military service. This was the case for Anastasia Truckey, who maintained the light in Marquette Harbor for three years after her husband, Nelson Truckey, helped form Company B, 27th Infantry Regiment, Michigan Volunteers, and left for parts south to fight in the Civil War. (A historical novel titled Finding My Light, written by a descendant of the Truckeys, weaves facts about Anastasia's keeping career and her children with a fictional subplot involving a young man who may or may not be a Confederate spy.)

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Ladies of the Lights by Patricia Majher Copyright © 2010 by University of Michigan . Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments....................ix
Introduction....................1
1 Female Lighthouse Keepers: A Brief History....................5
2 Michigan: Home to the Most Female Keepers....................9
3 Typical Duties of a Lighthouse Keeper....................13
4 How Did Women Get Appointed to Keeper Positions?....................18
5 What Drew Women to This Work?....................23
6 What Special Hardships Did Women Face?....................26
7 Were Any Female Keepers Also Mothers?....................31
8 Were Female Keepers Treated Differently from Male Keepers?....................34
9 What Were the Contributions of Wives of Male Keepers?....................38
10 How Long Did Female Keepers Serve?....................45
11 Sixteen Who Served....................48
12 An Interview with Frances (Wuori Johnson) Marshall....................74
13 Epilogue....................90
Map....................92
Geographical List of Keepers....................93
Alphabetical List of Keepers by Last Name....................95
Alphabetical List of Keepers by Lighthouse....................97
Chronological List of Keepers....................99
Suggested Reading....................101
Notes....................103
Bibliography....................111
Index....................117