The women lighthouse keepers who saved countless lives from coast to coast

Transcript

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Lisa Desjardins: And finally tonight, some of the little known stories of the women who operated lighthouses across the country, saving lives and keeping history. John Yang brings us this story of strength and beauty.

John Yang (voice-over): Surfers and seabirds called this stretch of the California coastline home. It can be dramatic and breathtaking. But the rocky, jagged shore and shoals, sometimes shrouded in fog, can also be treacherous for boats and ships that get too close.

For generations, the Point Pinos Lighthouse in Pacific Grove has stood century, warning mariners to keep their distance. When it was built in the mid-1850s, this was an isolated outpost. The nearest town, Monterey, was about four miles away, reachable only by a twisty dirt and sand trail.

Those on the east coast who wanted to get to the west coast generally traveled by sailing boat, a six month ordeal that took them around Cape Horn at the tip of South America.

John Yang: This is the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the U.S. Pacific coast. Two women have been principal lighthouse keepers here, dating back to 1856, when Charlotte Layton became the first woman to have that job on the West Coast.

Nancy McDowell, Docent Coordinator, Point Pinos Lighthouse: Charlotte Layton, who was the first, took over when her husband was killed. She sort of knew what to do and she was widowed and the people around the local community wanted her to have a job so she wouldn’t be destitute.

John Yang (vice-over): Nancy McDowell is the docent coordinator at Point Pinos. How did her husband die?

Nancy McDowell: He was with the group that went out to the house where this bandit was and he went to the back door and that’s where the bandit came out and shot the three of them that were back there.

John Yang: And that’s how she lost her husband, but also became the head keeper.

Nancy McDowell: Yes.

John Yang: These are sort of unheralded pioneers doing this.

Nancy McDowell: Right. We think it’s wonderful and especially that she got the same pay as her husband had.

John Yang (voice-over): It was one of the first non-clerical government jobs open to women. Over the years, there were scores of women lighthouse keepers from coast to coast.

Shauna Macdonald, University of Canada: One of my grandfathers worked at a lighthouse here in Nova Scotia, so I’ve always been fascinated.

John Yang (voice-over): Shauna Macdonald of Cape Breton University in Canada works to shine a light on the women who ran lighthouses.

Shauna Macdonald: There were hundreds of women from the 18th, but really 19th and 20th centuries who kept lighthouses in the United States. Most of them, however, would not have been official keepers. So the official number is somewhere around 200.

John Yang: 200 is more than I had imagined. Did that number surprise you?

Shauna Macdonald: Absolutely. I mean, I’m someone who’s always been interested in women’s history and women’s lives, and I just — I sort of felt ashamed that it hadn’t ever occurred to me, you know, even though I had been researching lighthouses, when I realized how many women had done this work or had been involved in some way.

Nancy McDowell: So from here you can see the original lens up there and —

John Yang (voice-over): At Point Pinos the second woman to be principal lighthouse keeper was Emily Fish. She had the job from 1893 to 1914.

Nancy McDowell: She hopefully had a time to sit, maybe resting during the day after being up all night with the lamp.

John Yang (voice-over): The widow of a physician, she was known as the socialite keeper. She entertained guests at the lighthouse in her fashionable sitting room.

Nancy McDowell: Maybe you’d like to go up and see where she went —

John Yang: Sure.

Nancy McDowell: — from her room to take care of the light. And so it’s narrow steps, but it goes up to a ladder, and we can even go up the ladder. Just like the keepers would have had to do. We’re going up the ladder to the lantern room.

John Yang: So we see this vista and this light is going out 17 miles is in this entire direction.

Nancy McDowell: Yes. However many degrees this is all the way around. It’s not 360 because this little part’s gone. And I’m not sure how many that is, but it goes everywhere except in the fog. And I don’t know how far it does go. It depends on how thick the fog is, I suspect.

John Yang (voice-over): By 1990, all U.S. lighthouses had been automated, eliminating the need for keepers.

Shauna Macdonald: Lighthouse keeping was not a terribly posh job, despite the exception of someone like Emily Fish. These were mostly working class people. These were not easy jobs. And while we might look at lighthouses today as places of beauty, where we go to learn about history or we love to paint or take pictures of at the time, they were just another necessary technology that everyone you know relied upon.

John Yang (voice-over): North of Point Pinos, across Monterey Bay is Santa Cruz, once home to another important lighthouse run by a woman. Laura Hecox was the principal lighthouse keeper there from 1883 to 1917. She was also a naturalist, amassing an impressive collection of specimens from the area.

Ida Lewis was arguably the best known U.S. woman lighthouse keeper. She made it onto the cover of Harper’s Weekly in 1869. She ran the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Rhode Island’s Newport Harbor.

Shauna Macdonald: She did a lot of rescuing, so that’s how she was. She came to be known by rowing out in her rowboat and rescuing people who had gotten into some kind of trouble on the water. She began at the age of 15 because her father had fallen ill. And so he just sort of supervised and she did the work until she was an elderly woman.

By all accounts, she was a tiny woman, but she was able to do these wonderful things. So she was famous in her time. But then I also love women who haven’t gotten as much attention. Laura Hedges. She kept a lighthouse in New Jersey for a while when her husband had fallen ill.

And then I was able to visit the National Archives and find the logs where I can see Laura Hedges having been the keeper in 1925 and 1926, and the day that her husband passed, she simply had written in the log, keeper died. And the time and the rest of the log is weather and sailing reports.

John Yang: Her husband dies, she makes a note of it. But she keeps on working. She keeps on her job.

Shauna Macdonald: She keeps on working. These women are remarkable for their strength, I think, both physical and mental, as well as obviously emotional to be able to keep doing this work. Most of them didn’t think of what they were doing as remarkable or interesting or strange.

They did their jobs. They did them well. They cared for people.

Nancy McDowell: These logs were written by Emily Fish.

John Yang: Oh wow.

Nancy McDowell: And usually it had to do with the weather and what was happening around.

John Yang: Hazy fog, clear showers.

John Yang (voice-over): 89 years old, Nancy McDowell is determined to keep a spotlight on the stories of these women keepers just as they and those like them around the country kept their shoreline beacons illuminated.

Lisa Desjardins: And that’s our program for tonight. I’m Lisa Desjardins. For all of my colleagues, thank you for joining us. See you tomorrow.