3 minute read
Back Then Larry Chabot
Lady in the Lighthouse
Several women kept the lights burning despite prejudices against women serving as lighthouse keepers
Story by Larry Chabot
Sketches by Mike McKinney
Mary Terry – she of the musical name – was dead. She was found among the smoking ruins of the Sand Point Lighthouse at the end of Ludington Street in Escanaba.
Mary had come from Canada in 1863 with her husband John, a railroad man who had been hired to tend the new Sand Point lighthouse. Sadly, before he could report for work, John died of tuberculosis. His surprise successor was his wife Mary who – despite the prejudice against women keepers – not only lit the first light on May 13, 1868, but stayed on the job 18 years until tragedy struck her down.
Escanaba had become an important port on Lake Michigan after a new railroad linked the city with U.P. iron ore mines. It was obvious that a lighthouse was needed to guide incoming ships safely into the harbor, especially avoiding the big sand reef offshore. And so Sand Point was built.
Her appointment was criticized by some, who felt that women couldn’t handle the work, the long hours, or the isolation. “There was a lot of opposition to her appointment from local political leaders,” said Karen Lindquist of the Delta County Historical Society in an interview,” but people in the town, the general population of the city, loved her and thought she was a very capable woman.” A local paper praised her as “a living illustration of the capacity of women to do honest, hard work” as good as any any man.
As a childless widow, Mary was usually all alone in the building. Work was indeed hard and often dangerous. The hours were 24-7 during shipping season, and keepers were burdened with an 87-page rule book. The light alone called for over 130 separate tasks. She cleaned, made repairs, and kept a detailed log book (the local historical society has a copy). One entry read “whitewashed the north wall of the lighthouse today.”
Other chores called for daily cleaning and polishing the lens, cleaning windows in the lantern room, shining all the brass, painting and repairing the buildings, keeping weather reports, giving tours for visitors, stacking wood in the woodshed, planting a vegetable garden, and so on and so on and so on. As one lady of the light learned to her sorrow (see below), Mary was unable to leave the property without permission (see below).
UP IN SMOKE
Then, on a stormy night in March of 1886, fire broke out in the lighthouse, engulfing it in flames. Poor Mary Terry perished in the blaze, probably because fire fighters couldn’t reach her or the lighthouse due to the deep snow. Among the active rumors about the fire was that it was deliberately set to get rid of Mary and rob her of her valuables (her few possessions were untouched). Her reputation for careful and safe management convinced most people that the fire wasn’t her fault. A coroner’s jury decided that the cause of her death couldn’t be determined.
The historical society’s Karen Lindquist said that a worker had noticed that a woodpile near the furnace was “very warm,” whatever that meant. It took a couple of months to put the lighthouse back in business so that a new keeper – Lewis Rose – could succeed the late Mary Terry. In the period 18681939, nine different keepers minded the light. One of them was Peter Peterson, whose wife took over the job after Peterson died until his replacement arrived.
At least 50 women served as keepers on Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior, according to a University of Michigan study. One remarkable female was Catherine Shook, who raised eight children while keeping the light at Saginaw. Eliza Truckey, an assistant keeper at Marquette, ran things while her husband Nelson fought in the Civil War, and Elizabeth Whitney spent 41 years as a keeper at Harbor Springs and Beaver Island.
