So I’m fascinated by public memory because, to me, it is how we, the general public, collectively think about our past and tell stories about our past, which is different than the official history that one might find. Public memory is very important to you as a researcher, and why? By her own account, she saved 50 people from various kinds of shipwrecks and trouble at sea. His last words, according to lore and history, were: “Mind the light, Kate.” She did! She retired at age 73 in 1919. So, right away she had that work, then assisted her husband, but then he died in 1886, which was only a few years after they got to Robbins Reef Light. Then they were stationed at Robbins Reef Light Station in New York, where Kate was actually hired initially as the assistant keeper. She met and married John Walker, and he became keeper at Sandy Hook and they stayed there for a little while. She has a connection with Sandy Hook, which as many of you know, is the oldest lighthouse in the U.S. And she was the only one there to do it.Īre there notable women from our region that you have been able to find some of their effects and writings? She wrote a lot about, basically almost being blown into the lake during bad weather because she had to walk on an elevated walkway, which is a bit of a technical thing, but dangerous to say the least. She kept a lot of records of storms, her life, rescues that she enacted. A lot of people don’t realize how many lighthouses and light stations existed on the Great Lakes. So, Harriet Colfax was a keeper at Michigan City Light Station in Indiana. And then others, we don’t have a whole lot of information about.Ĭan you remember some of those more detailed entries in the logs? But we also have the keepers’ logs, and some of the women would add little tidbits of life, not just the weather or the very technical aspects that they had to keep. Some of them documented storms and sort of how dangerous and isolated it could feel. We have letters or little entries that they wrote for publications at the time that would talk about how much they longed to be on the shore, or how much they felt like they were missing. So 12-year-olds, you know, 14-year-olds, some of them eventually ended up doing some keeping work. Yes, so we actually have writing from some of the young women. Is there any writing that indicates that is the case? And I’m sure you could be working all kinds of strange hours, and you’re probably isolated. You might get glimpses in the archives and in the records, but you don’t necessarily get a full story. Not all of these women would have been educated not all of them would have written extensively about their experiences. Well, and it’s an interesting question, records, because typically we keep records of people who we think matter for some reason, right? So people with power, people with a certain level of education. But they certainly do a good job of laying a foundation.Īnd I learned that record-keeping wasn’t routine until the first quarter of the 1800s. And I don’t think they would claim this book covers every single woman who kept a lighthouse. And then, I think a lot of it was also searching out various lighthouse organizations, or historical societies and communities, and getting whatever those organizations had. And so a lot of their work, it seems, has come from the National Archives, where some of these keeper logs, letters, other personal effects have been kept. Did the Cliffords rely on letters, lighthouse logs, and records? One of your go-to sources for stories about women keepers is the book “Women Who Kept the Lights On” by Mary Louise Clifford and Candice Clifford. Other times, they were actually removed after a short period of time when a replacement keeper, typically a male, could be arranged and would arrive at the station. Sometimes, those women were allowed to remain as keepers and were appointed officially. So they sort of learned on the job as helpers. Quite a few became keepers because they had been doing the work alongside their husband, or in some cases, their father. Well, we know that they were remarkably diverse in terms of how they became lighthouse keepers. Morning Edition host Jennifer Lynn spoke with MacDonald about some of these women, who they were and how they got started. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor
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