The New York Evening Post carried an obituary: "There are the queenly liners, the grim battle craft, the countless carriers of commerce that pass in endless procession. Walker retired in 1919 and moved to a house on Staten Island, where she died 12 years later. She declares that if she were compelled to live anywhere else she would be the most miserable woman on earth, and that no mansion on Millionaires' Row could tempt her to leave of her own free will." As a wife, mother, and widow, the happiest and saddest days of her peaceful life have been spent within the circular walls of her voluntary prison. is comprised within the limits of Staten Island, New York City, and Brooklyn. According to a New York Times reporter who interviewed her in 1906, "All that she knows from personal experience of the great land to which she came. Over the years she saved some 50 people from drowning. The children went to school on the mainland, but Walkerrarely set foot outside the lighthouse grounds. For the next 33 years she climbed to the top of the light tower and filled the kerosene lamp several times each night, assisted by her son and daughter. When Walkerdied of pneumonia in 1886, his widow took over his job. The light was a conical iron structure at the end of a submerged reef - a man-made island within sight of the Manhattanskyline. John Walker and his German immigrant wife, Kate, were appointed keeper and assistant keeper of Robbins Reef Light, off Staten Island, N.Y., in 1883. The loneliness and independence of life at a lighthouse exerted an odd attraction to some people. During most of the year her only contact with the outside world was via a telephone line to the naval shipyard, whose officers set up the poles and strung the wire for her as a Christmas present. She lived there for 25 years, raising her children with the help of donated schoolbooks and tending the residence with the help of a Chinese-American cook. McDougal's friends at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, Calif., arranged to have her appointed keeper of the nearby Mare Island Light. He left his widow, Kate McDougal, with four children and a Navy pension of $50 a month. In 1881, Navy CAPT Charles McDougal drowned in a storm off the coast of California. ![]() She appealed to the governor of Mississippifor help, offering her services to make clothing for the soldiers "to do my share in our great and holy cause of freedom." Lighthouse Board records do not indicate whether Reynolds continued to be paid her salary through the Civil War, but she was listed as keeper of Biloxi Light until 1866. ![]() Seven years later, Reynolds' world suddenly disintegrated when the city government ordered Biloxi Light extinguished and some characters in Confederate uniforms absconded with her valuable store of lamp oil. She augmented her income by caring for "a large family of orphaned children" who were "heirs at law to a considerable estate," the executor of which sent her an annual stipend. Mary Reynolds became keeper of the lighthouse at Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1854 with a salary of $400 per year. The majority were the wives or daughters of keepers or other Lighthouse Board employees who died on the job. Candace Clifford, found the names of 138 women who were employed as lighthouse keepers between 18. The early records are skimpy, but two modern researchers, Mary Louise Clifford and J. There seems to have been no official policy regarding the hiring of women to work at lighthouses. ![]() It was just the sort of job, in the social atmosphere of Victorian America, for a woman. The position of keeper did not require much education, training, or mechanical skill it demanded dedication, stamina, patience, and a willingness to work for a low salary. Its light came from a whale-oil lamp mounted behind a thick glass lens, sometimes equipped with a weight-driven mechanism to make it rotate and pump oil to the lamp.Īlong with the position of keeper went a house, usually built into the base of the light tower, and a plot of land on which the keeper's family was expected to keep livestock and grow vegetables. The old-fashioned lighthouse was a primitive contraption. within any bay, inlet, harbor, or port of the United States, for rendering the navigation thereof easy and safe." The first female federal employees probably were lighthouse keepers. 7, 1789, when the new Congress appropriated funds for "the necessary support, maintenance and repairs of all lighthouses, beacons, buoys and public piers. The oldest root of the modern Coast Guard's institutional family tree can be traced back to Aug. His wife, Hannah, took over his job as keeper of Gurnet Point Light, near In 1776, John Thomas joined the Army to fight in the Revolutionary War. At least one professional ancestor of the modern female Coast Guardsman predated the federal government itself. ![]() Women have been performing Coast Guard duties longer than there has been a Coast Guard.
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