After years of obscurity, the stories of women lighthouse keepers have come out of the shadows.
A vintage postcard shows Ida Lewis,"America's bravest woman," with her dog Dewey in front of the Lime Rock Light Station in Newport, Rhode Island.Two soldiers clung to their overturned boat, roiled by the frigid waters of Rhode Island’s Newport harbor. It was March 1869, and rough weather had turned a pleasure expedition into a perilous disaster. The vessel’s owner had already drowned, and the two men, who were headed back to nearby Fort Adams after a leave, were likely next.
Most women became lighthouse keepers by birth or marriage, or took over their husband’s duties once he fell ill or died. Lighthouses combined home and workplace—and there was plenty of work to go around. “The only way to learn how to keep a lighthouse is to shadow someone and learn how to do it,” says MacDonald.
It turned out to be prescient: During her father’s absence, the Burgess’s home was flooded, then washed away into the Atlantic. Abbie Burgess ended up tending the light alone for a month.A few years later, the Burgess family left Matinicus Rock. But Abbie had fallen in love with the lighthouse—and its new assistant keeper. She married him and lived and worked in lighthouses until her death in 1892.
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