Women's History Month Event: Michigan History Magazine Editor Patricia Majher Discusses Her New Book "Ladies Of The Lights: Michigan Women In The U.S. Lighthouse Service"

Wed, 04/11/2007 - 12:39pm

When: March 3, 2011 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

Michigan leads the country in the number of lighthouses, and they're still a central part of the mystique and colorful countryside of the state. What even lighthouse enthusiasts might not know is the rich history of female lighthouse keepers in the area.Join us as Michigan History Magazine Editor Patricia Majher discusses the history of more than 50 of these women who served the Michigan sailing community with dedication and distinction from 1849 to 1954. She will tell the fascinating stories of 10 of these women, who are also featured in her new book "Ladies Of The Lights: Michigan Women In The U.S. Lighthouse Service." A booksigning will follow and books will be on sale at the event.Lighthouse keeping was a rugged life of long hours and hard work punctuated by periods of real peril. Imagine how it felt to be one of the rare women admitted into this profession: challenged to their limits, yet loving every minute of it. Celebrate Women's History Month and learn more about this unique facet of Michigan history.

Transcript

• [00:00:24.70] CECILE DUNHAM: I would just like to introduce our speaker today. Her name is Patricia Majher. She's currently the editor of Michigan History Magazine. She has a BA in journalism from CMU. And a Masters in historical preservation from EMU. And she's here tonight to talk to us about her wonderful book, Ladies of the Lights. And so with no further ado, please join me in welcoming Patricia Majher.
• [00:01:03.10] PATRICIA MAJHER: Well, good evening. Good evening. All right. Thank you all for coming out. And thanks to my friends and family supporting me tonight. And happy Women's History Month. By national charter, this is Women's History Month every year.
• [00:01:25.46] My presentation tonight is on the female lighthouse keepers of Michigan. Let me give you a little background as to how I came to write about this subject. Why it interested me. Prior to the job that I currently have, which is the editor at Michigan History Magazine, I was the assistant director and curator at the Michigan Women's Historical Center in Lansing. And that is sort of a repository of history, obviously relating to Michigan women. And the only museum in the state that's dedicated to that. And so when we would develop exhibits there would always focus on that. It wouldn't necessarily be broad scope of women's history. But what did women in Michigan do that we can we can talk about?
• [00:02:18.52] And in thinking of an exhibit, this was back in 2007, I think, I had read an article, oddly enough in Michigan History Magazine, about a keeper at Sand Point Escanaba Lighthouse. And her name was Mary Terry. And the article was a cover story, quite extensive on the inside. Partly because it was a woman. And not many people knew there were women keepers. But she was one of two women who died on the job.
• [00:02:50.77] In her case, it was a mystery because she had died in a fire that some felt was set to cover up a crime. She was known to be well-to-do woman. She owned parcels of land in the area, saved her money. And there was just this feeling that in this isolated lighthouse, she may have been robbed. And then the fire was set to cover that. And she unfortunately died in the fire. And her body was so damaged by the fire, they really couldn't determine the cause of her death.
• [00:03:26.05] In that article, there was a list of 50-plus women who had served either as keepers or assistant keepers. And not only had I not know there was one, Mary Terry, I did not know there were 50-plus more. So I guess that just sort of stuck in my head for a while. So when it came time to do this exhibit, to come up with an exhibit idea, that popped into my head. Partly because it was a fascinating subject. But Michigan has the most lighthouses in the nation. And as a result, had the most keepers and the most female keepers.
• [00:04:01.73] So I thought, this is something that we as Michiganders can really trumpet and be proud of. That we you know played such an important role in Maritime history. So we pulled together the exhibit. And it was very well attended. And it's still traveling around the state. And then with that, I pitched the idea to U of M Press. And they said, yes. We think that would make a good book. So think you to U of M Press.
• [00:04:32.91] Let me give you a few statistics about just, no pun intended, broadly speaking, about Michigan ladies of the lights. They served a span of a 105 years. The first lighthouse in Michigan opened in 1832. The first female was serving as a keeper just 17 years later. And the last woman to serve ended her term in 1954. And that was actually about 30 years beyond what most women were serving around the United States.
• [00:05:05.74] There was a changeover in technology at that time. And women were being phased out. In the '30s, the Coast Guard took over. The Lighthouse Service, which had been under various departments, including the Department of Treasury. They had certain ideas about whether women should be serving a purpose like that in their ranks. So women really were phased out in the '20s and '30s in most cases throughout the United States. But this one woman whom I'll talk about it a little while, served until 1954.
• [00:05:42.65] There are 52 known female lighthouse keepers or assistant keepers. And I say known because it wouldn't surprise me if we discovered there were more. In the lighthouse records, they sometimes list the keepers only by their first initial. So we have no way of knowing, unless you dig deeper into each individual keeper, whether they were male or female. And then there are those names that are sometimes-- you could interpret either way. But at this point, we know about 52. As I said, more than any other state in the union.
• [00:06:17.06] And those women served widely in Michigan. They were on Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior. Also in the Detroit River. Many of the lighthouses they served out on the lakes are still standing. Most of the lighthouses in the river are not. The river has risen and actually submerged many of the islands that those lighthouses were erected on. So those lighthouses have been replaced with simple beacons. So we can't really see where they served in the Detroit River. But at least they're in the annals of lighthouse service.
• [00:06:53.67] Michigan women served a good amount of time on the job, an average of 5.5 years. And nine of them served for 10 years or more. One served for 41 years. Most of them succeeded a husband who died on the job, who had been a keeper there. Or they filled in for a husband who might have been absent due to war. Several keepers left to fight in Civil War. Their wives took over. And a couple left during the brief Spanish-American War in 1898. And their wives took over for that period. And then there were women who, after serving that way, were allowed to serve elsewhere because they had proven themselves. But generally speaking, they got into the job initially as a result of either succeeding a deceased husband or filling in for them in an absence.
• [00:07:50.59] Several of the females were part of families that had many keepers in them. There's a family in Lake Michigan, the Sheridans is who served at a number of lighthouses. And it's multiple generations and multiple genders. And the same is true on Lake Huron with the Garrity family. They served in the Presque Isle area, Rogers City, Alpena area. And there were women who were lighthouse keepers who had children who later succeeded them in the profession.
• [00:08:24.63] The first lady of the light, we have no photo for. Her family has not found a photo of her. But then she died in 1860. So that's why. And she served at Pointe aux Barques. Catherine Shook was her name. She was married to a man named Peter Shook. And he was the first lighthouse keeper there at Pointe aux Barques. That's at the tip of the Thumb. As ships would sail into Saginaw Bay, they would pass that lighthouse. And he served there for two years, I believe. And she took sick. And he was very worried about her. And he actually went overland down to Port Heron to find a doctor to help her.
• [00:09:08.02] The doctor and Peter and a couple of the doctor's assistants sailed back toward the lighthouse and did treat Catherine. And then they went to sail back to Port Huron. Peter went with them to get supplies. And the entire crew of that boat died. They were capsized in Lake Huron.
• [00:09:30.54] So if you can imagine the situation. She's out in what was really the middle of nowhere at that point in 1849 at the tip of the Thumb. And I don't know how she found out her husband had died. But obviously she did. And she was left to raise their eight children alone while keeping the lights. And in just one month after she assumed that responsibility, in the midst of grieving her husband, their cottage caught on fire, the keepers cottage. And so she and eight children were burned out of that. And she couldn't sign for the materials to rebuild it because she was a woman. Let me read a little bit about her story to you.
• [00:10:21.50] "When the lighthouse inspector finally arrived", after the cottage had burned, "he found Catherine and her children huddled in a small shanty they directed. Catherine was suffering from burns she'd sustained while trying to put out the fire. She also suffered the indignity of not being permitted to sign for materials to rebuild her house. Her teenage son signed the forms instead.
• [00:10:45.65] Fortunately, Catherine was held blameless for the blaze. The inspector theorized that a poorly-built chimney was the cause. Her dedication to the light was recognized by the lighthouse service. And she continued as its keeper until her voluntary resignation in 1851." So she served for just two years. But it was a pretty tough two years.
• [00:11:11.41] I mentioned earlier the Garritys as a lighthouse family that had multiple generations. Mary and Anna Garrity were mother-daughter, and are believed to be the only two Michigan ladies of the lights that were related. Mary served her husband, Patrick, as his assistant. And then Anna took over one of the other lights in the area at Presque Isle later in her life. And their family's combined total of years spent as keepers equals 184 years. But between Patrick, the father, and Mary, the daughter, who was the last of the Garritys to serve, that was about a 65 year span. So there were Garritys up there for many years, keeping the lights in Presque Isle.
• [00:12:03.68] Anna was also the second-- I should point out that this is pictured of Anna, not Mary. Anna was the second longest-serving woman in Michigan. Obviously, the lady who served for 41 years takes the award for being the one having the most time on duty. But Anna was second longest. 23 years, which was a pretty impressive number, male or female.
• [00:12:32.35] Then we had a lady of the light who served in the Bay City area at the mouth of the Saginaw River. Julia Braun was her name. And she helped her invalid husband until his death, and then succeeded him. There were a number of Civil War veterans who had been injured in some way in the Civil War who were given lighthouse keeping duties as sort of a reward for what they had given for their country. But as I say, they were disabled in some way. And yet they were expected to take on this enormous task of keeping the light lit. So she was one of the women who really, in everything but name, served as the primary keeper for that. But then finally was named that when he died.
• [00:13:16.94] One of the tasks that she did while she was on her watch was she oversaw construction of the existing lighthouse there at the mouth of the Saginaw River. And she served as the keeper until she married again. She married a man who was a pilot, a person who led ships up and down the Saginaw River. And when that marriage occurred, she was immediately demoted to his assistant.
• [00:13:42.98] Then her position was abolished in 1882. Interestingly, at the same time, Mary Garrity's position was abolished. The exact same day the two of them were relieved of duty. And then it was later, just within a few months, it was filled by man.
• [00:14:01.07] The longest-serving lady was Elizabeth Whitney Williams. Whitney was her maiden name. Van Riper was her first husband. And then Williams was her second husband. Her husband, Clement Van Riper, was the keeper at Beaver Island Harbor Lighthouse. And he died as he tried to save a crew from a stranded ship. She succeeded him and stay there for 12 years.
• [00:14:29.53] When she married again, she married a man named Daniel Williams. They decide they wanted to live on the mainland. She requested a transfer to a brand new light, hadn't been served at by anyone yet, Little Traverse Light. And she served there for 29 years. She ended up retiring when she was 71.
• [00:14:49.43] She wrote an autobiography, which I would recommend reading that for a number of reasons. She speaks very poetically about her life as a the lighthouse keeper. But she also talks about her earlier life. She was born on Mackinac Island. And eventually her family settled on Beaver Island. And she was there during the time when they had-- Oh. I can't see if you turn off the lights, unfortunately.
• [00:15:17.22] James Strang was there. And he was considered the Mormon King of Beaver Island. And there was such animosity between what they call the gentiles in the Mormons that the Mormons basically took over the island. And forced the others to leave. Her family did eventually come back after he was assassinated by her followers. So she speaks of that too. So it's just a very interesting history of that time and in Michigan history. She also speaks about the Native Americans that she encountered. And just the beauty of living on the water in the beauty of her island.
• [00:15:54.31] She also wrote poems. Let me read just a bit of one she wrote about the lighthouse keeping profession. "Let our lamps be brightly burning for our brothers out to sea. Then their ships are soon returning. Oh how glad our hearts will be. There are many that have left us. Never more will they return. Left our hearts with sorrow's aching. Still our lamps must brightly burn." And those poems are included in her book. It's called A Child of the Sea.
• [00:16:24.99] And she, in addition to writing, herself, she has been written about many times. She is really sort of the rock star of Michigan's female lighthouse keepers. She's the subject of books, both written for adults and children. Chapters in books. There was a play written about some key women lighthouse keepers, and she was one of them. There's a children's website about her. So she really has really caught the attention of people over the years. There was one other woman on the Great Lakes who served longer than she did, amazingly. Served 43 years. But 41 years is nothing to sneeze at either.
• [00:17:09.93] We have a reluctant lady of the light. No pictures for her, unfortunately, either. Her name was Lucy Gramer. And she was married to the lighthouse keeper at the Ecorse Range Light, down in the Detroit River. His name was Gus Gramer. And he was quite a character. He had sailed away to work on, I think it was a whaling ship. Had been ship wrecked. Had served in many areas in the Great Lakes as a sailor. And then eventually settled down as a lighthouse keeper.
• [00:17:40.71] But the wanderlust was never far away. And he decided he was going to fight in the Spanish-American War and left her to handle the light in his absence. The same month that she bore a child. So must have been difficult introduction to the lighthouse keeping profession.
• [00:17:59.88] Their marriage was rocky. When she tried to divorce him, he argued their case in The Detroit Tribune. And here's what we had to say about that.
• [00:18:13.58] "The newspaper reported how Gus called upon his wife the other night, and urged her to come back with the children and live with him. But she demurred. And after acknowledging how good he'd been to her, she fell on her knees, Gus says, and, between her sobs, confessed that she really preferred a former roomer of the Gramer's, although he is not as handsome. Gramer then claimed to have called his old friend, made the man kneel beside his wife, and placed Lucy's hands in that of the other person. 'Lucy', he is reported to have said, 'be good to the children. Charlie, be good to Lucy, as she has been a good wife to me.' He told the reporter that he concluded the meeting by taking Lucy and Charlie to an ice cream parlor."
• [00:18:54.34] "Unfortunately for Gus, Mrs. Gramer disputed his account, particularly the part about falling on her knees. She replied, 'If Gus was half as good as Charlie, it would be better for him. And there would probably have never been any trouble. When he says that I am going to marry another man as soon as I get a divorce, he is drawing on his imagination. There is no truth in it. And I never fell down on my knees to Gus and confessed anything. Everyone knows that I am full of the Old Nick. But everybody except Gus knows also that it is all honest fun and no meanness. And Gus ought to have known that too.' Although Gus agreed to give Lucy custody of their children, she didn't trust him to keep his word. She told the paper that she was going to keep a sharp lookout to see that he didn't get any legal advantage when she was not looking."
• [00:19:45.64] Now Gus left. They did get divorced. Gus remarried again, a woman named Mary. And he left her for a time to replace him as keeper. So he had that twice in his history.
• [00:20:07.51] The last lady of the light was named Frances Wuori Johnson. And she married a keeper and assisted him at White River. That's just north of the Muskegon area on Lake Michigan. They also had a rocky marriage. And both of them left the light. Within a year, though, she petitioned to return as the primary keeper. She was the only Michigan female to serve in the Coast Guard era. And let me read a little bit about her, what she thought of her first husband.
• [00:20:43.58] I interviewed her for the book and did an oral history interview with her. So I asked her, "let's go backwards for a minute. You were Leo's assistant for lighthouse keeping when you're married. You assisted him, right? 'Assisted him? He didn't do anything. He liked to fish and hunt and stuff like that. That's what he did. He found out that he could do that. And I could do all the work. So I, of course, fixed the meals and did the dishes and waxed the floors. The floors were all wooden floors, hardwood. I had to scrub them and then wax them with paste wax. And then polish that. Gads. And then I had to keep a light running every single day.'"
• [00:21:26.74] The interview with her is very entertaining. She's just kind of a feisty character. And she, unfortunately, when she went back be me the primary keeper on her own, that went quite well for a while. But then she married again. That marriage didn't work out. And she had a child at that point. And she did not feel that she could raise the child and keep the light by herself. So she left, at the age of 33, a profession that she loved dearly.
• [00:21:55.16] One of the things that she was known for in her a career there was she saved many people's lives who were swimming in Lake Michigan, who would get caught in the riptides and just not realize how far out they were. Or that they were soon to be foundering. And in the interview, she talks about how one woman was fighting her as she was trying to save her. And she ended up socking her in the face just to stop her from getting in the way. And the woman complained when they got back to shore. And she's said, well I had to do that, or we were both going to die. But she was quite a character. She just died two weeks ago, unfortunately. But she really lived a fantastic life.
• [00:22:37.74] After her position as the keeper, she went to work in office management, office administration. And she did that for another 30 years. So quite a character.
• [00:22:51.93] There were some tragic ladies in the ladies of the lights history. As I mentioned, Mary Terry, starting off, who was discovered after a fire at her lighthouse. And as I said too, even to this day, that has not been solved. And this is a picture of Julia Sheridan. That's the Sheridan family of the west side of Michigan who served in so many lighthouses. She was an assistant to her husband, Aaron, at South Manitou Light.
• [00:23:20.27] And I'm not quite sure why they were in a boat in March on Lake Michigan. But they left the island with their youngest son, Robert. And they made it to the mainland, did their business, there came back out onto the water, and their boat was capsized. And they fought for some time. There was a fourth passenger who owned the boat. And they fought for some time to hang on to the boat. It was upside down. They were trying to hang onto each other and hang onto the boat. But the cold water really did them in. And only the man who owned the boat survived.
• [00:23:55.14] They had five other children. And those boys, they were all boys, and they were all on the island waiting for them to come back. One of her children actually became a lighthouse keeper after that. Was a very sad story for the Sheridan family.
• [00:24:11.41] Anna Garrity, that we saw a picture of earlier, the sadness in her career was that, even before she became a keeper, she was assaulted by her father's assistant keeper. She was a young teen at that time, living at the New Presque Isle Light with her family. And one of the men, she told her father that one of the men had assaulted her. And he actually wrote in his log book in a very almost clinical way that she had been raped, and that man was going to the sheriff's, and we'll see what happens.
• [00:24:49.54] Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any record of what happened to him. Except that he was dismissed from the lighthouse service. But despite that terrible start, to what was a very long career, she persevered. And she was a 23 year veteran of the lighthouse service.
• [00:25:12.36] And then we have our triumphant ladies. As I mentioned, Elizabeth Williams served 41 years. Just as a point of reference too, the national female national record holder was 51 years. Anastasia Truckey, this woman here, she managed to Marquette Harbor Lighthouse during the Civil War. Her husband joined, I think, it was the 27th Michigan infantry. And he served for three years.
• [00:25:42.88] And during that time, she really kept that light going. And that was a very important light. That was the light that lit the harbor for the ships that were coming in to pick up the iron ore from the iron mines near Marquette. And that iron was then sent off to various areas of the Eastern United states, and was used to make railroad ties-- is that what I want to say? Railroad ties-- the barrels for guns, the barrels for cannons, and ammunition. So it was very important that she was the one making sure that that light stayed lit and those ships sailed in safely and out.
• [00:26:26.40] Jane Enos, she served at St. Joseph Lighthouse. She was one of two women who served there. She was the first woman allowed to have male assistants. That was not very typical. When there were women lighthouse keepers, they typically served at a smaller light, didn't need an assistant. She served at a larger light, needed assistants, and actually managed two in her career. And Anna Garrity also managed a man up at the Presque Isle Lighthouses.
• [00:26:58.16] And there were a number of women who really managed that very big responsibility of maintaining a light while having large, large families. I mentioned Catherine Shook. She had eight children. Katherine Marvin had 10 children. Not all of them were at home by the time she became a keeper. But still. And a number of others had six to eight children. So the big families of the day didn't stop these women from doing their duty.
• [00:27:24.02] This is a picture of Mary Corgan. And she married into a lighthouse keeping family. The Corgans of Lake Superior. And she and her husband were serving on Gull Rock, hardly any soil there. It's mostly just a rock and a lighthouse near the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula. And she went into labor. So they got into the steam-powered launch that they were provided as keepers. She was assistant to her husband, James. In before they made it to the doctor on the mainland, she gave birth.
• [00:27:59.93] And her husband, in his logbook, described their adventure on the lake in this way. "Principal keeper started 8:00 PM in the station boat with wife for Copper Harbor, distance 14 miles, with anticipation of increase soon after arriving. When one and a half miles east of Horseshoe Harbor, Mrs. Corgan gave birth to a rollicking boy. All things lovely. Had everything comfortable aboard. Sea a dead calm." I like that he ends with the weather. She also gave birth to a child who later became a lighthouse keeper.
• [00:28:40.80] And there were some second acts in the lives of these keepers. Obviously, someone like Elizabeth Whitney Williams served basically her entire adult career at the two lighthouses and retired at the age of 71. And a number of women were in that age frame when they retired from the lighthouse service.
• [00:29:01.02] This is a photograph of Caroline Antaya and her son, Edward. She had married a man, again one of the disabled Civil War veterans. He died shortly after they had gone to serve at Mamajuda Lighthouse. She took over for him. And she had a little difficulty. The lighthouse inspector didn't think that she should serve there, that a woman should serve there. And she actually had the support of the surrounding communities. And they appealed to the U.S. senator, Zachariah Chandler. And he took their appeal to the Lighthouse Service directly in Washington. So she was able to succeed her husband and provide for her children. She had boys at that time.
• [00:29:48.24] So after he died, she served as a widow for some years. Then she married again. And her second husband, he owned a business up in Port Huron. And I don't know if they had a long distance relationship. But he maintained that. And she maintained her position at the lighthouse down river. Finally, she had another child with him. And about a year after that, she wrapped it up and said, I'm going to move to where my husband is. So right, in her second act, she started a second family with a second husband.
• [00:30:24.85] Many of the women who were widowed, they remarried. And we've lost track of them, unfortunately. Their names changed. They don't show up on the census in the area. So we're not quite sure what happened to most of those 52 women. And I hope by producing this book and having these talks that I may find out about more about some of these women over time. Because it's a shame that they served so long and so well without much recognition, and less and less as the years go by.
• [00:31:00.00] But that wraps up the history, briefly, that I've covered in the book. And I always like to give some acknowledgment to those who helped me with it. I don't know if any of you have seen a presentation by Diana Stampler. She gives a presentation both on Michigan lady lighthouse keepers and on ghostly light, she calls them, haunted lights of Michigan. Terry Pepper of The Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association. That's sort of a Great Lakes area primary organization that serves those with lighthouse enthusiasm.
• [00:31:36.82] And then Phyllis and Thomas Tag of Great Lakes Lighthouse Research. Some years ago, they went to the National Archives and wrote down every lighthouse keeper in every light in the Great Lakes. And they composed several books based on, one for each lake. And that is just invaluable information for anyone who's interested in the lakes and their keepers, the lighthouse keepers. Otherwise we'd all have to travel to Washington and do that work. So had a lot of information from there.
• [00:32:10.12] But that sort of wraps up the main part of my presentation. Are there any questions I can answer about-- I guess we have a microphone back that's moving around.
• [00:32:26.97] CLAIRE DAW: Thank you. I'm Claire Daw. I'm a history teacher, retired from here. And I've been to loads of lighthouses along the Great Lakes. Would you mention something about the incredible difficulty these women had in terms of trying to keep that flame going and the wicks going? And it was not just a matter of surviving on an island, it was brutal, brutal work. And I'd also like to know if you've ever slept in, stayed in one of the lighthouses for a while?
• [00:32:53.48] PATRICIA MAJHER: I have not. On our last trip to the UP, we looked into-- I'm trying to think. The one that's above Ontonagon. Can't think of the name of it. Sand Hill. Yeah. And whoa, not cheap. So we haven't yet. But we are-- I'm speaking up in Paradise at the Whitefish Point Lighthouse this summer. And so we'll get to stay on the grounds then. So I'm excited about that.
• [00:33:19.23] AUDIENCE: And the working conditions?
• [00:33:21.42] PATRICIA MAJHER: The working conditions. They were the same as they were for men. But as many of these women were widowed, obviously, they were handling this by themselves. Or having their children help in some ways, as they could. The primary duty, obviously, was keeping that light lit through the night. And that could be difficult depending upon the equipment they were provided with.
• [00:33:44.34] In the early days, these lamps that they had to light keep lit with oil, which had to be carried up the stairs. But in bad weather, in rain or wind or whatever, that could also impact the ability to keep the lights lit. And there was a separate-- I know everyone knows this-- but there was a separate part of the federal government that dealt with lifesaving. So most keepers, at least as time wore on, weren't responsible for saving lives. But many did in the early years. So there was that difficulty.
• [00:34:26.04] Then there were foghorns that needed to be blown if the fog really settled in. So they had to both keep the lights lit and keep the foghorns going, or bells. Little Traverse Light has a bell, for instance. A fog bell instead of a foghorn. So it really was an all night affair for these women. And then get up and maintain the lights, and keep your family fed and clothed and whatever.
• [00:34:54.75] So there was quite a bit of-- the Lighthouse Service was very particular about the condition of the light stations. Keeping things painted and polished. And. keeping logs of the weather and the supply of oil. And just a very labor-intensive but, at the same time, a lot of paperwork to the job too.
• [00:35:18.84] AUDIENCE: Yeah. My grandfather tried to unload a lighthouse tender and sell them to Beaver Island. And it's like 50 up. He'd have to load up a wheelbarrow and go up this hill 50 feet. And I don't know how many times he had to do that. But I can't imagine.
• [00:35:39.21] PATRICIA MAJHER: Obviously, the lighthouse tenders were the ships that were coming to resupply the lighthouse. And obviously they had crews. So that hopefully they would help with that. I know at Marquette Harbor, they had an actual almost like a track that brought materials up to the lighthouse because it also is located high up on a cliff. Did you have a question?
• [00:36:13.21] AUDIENCE: In terms of the kinds of writing that you encountered besides just the keeping of the logs. Could you talk about one or two of the writers, just the quality of the writing. What they wrote about besides just the technical keeping of the light
• [00:36:33.07] PATRICIA MAJHER: In terms of women? Or just in broad--
• [00:36:35.09] AUDIENCE: Yeah, the women, just the women and their journals or letters or whatever you found.
• [00:36:41.43] PATRICIA MAJHER: The only two writers that I've really come across or Elizabeth Whitney Williams, who wrote an autobiography talking about her life as a keeper and her life on Beaver Island.
• [00:36:52.28] The other person was Grace Holmes who served at Port Sanilac Light. And there's a woman right now in that county who is transcribing her diaries, ultimately to publish them. Because not only did she keep track of the things that lighthouse keepers were required to keep track of, the weather and ship traffic and you know any unusual happenings. But she recorded what was happening in her community. Not in a gossipy way. But in almost a scientific way, as like an anthropologist. So there are some quotes about what she observed in the book. So that was a really valuable tool for that county as far as life during that period that she and her husband served.
• [00:37:43.59] But the logs were really, they were really required to keep them in a very methodical, basic way. They were told how to do that by the Lighthouse Service. And some people were a little more poetic than others. Mary Corgan's husband, James, in other log entries that I've seen of his, he just has a way with words. He was a teacher at one point in his career. And it just is reflected in the way he kept his logs. But some were just very basic. One line. Two lines.
• [00:38:24.37] AUDIENCE: Could you say something about raising children in the lighthouse? I mean where did they go to school, for example?
• [00:38:30.80] PATRICIA MAJHER: If they were in a mainland light-- like for instance, Marquette, which is not far from the community. Or wasn't at that point far from the community that it served, they would go to school in that community. But there were others that were more remotely located, or were on islands. And that was impossible.
• [00:38:51.38] The Lighthouse Service recognized that at one point and started to provide libraries of books that would get rotated in and out with the tenders as they brought supplies. And those libraries would have things like a Bible, books on geography, history, song books, literature, what was concerned the fine literature of the day. So that was their effort to help in essence home school the children.
• [00:39:24.32] A lot of the more modern children's accounts that you read, children who were growing up in the '30s and '40s in the lighthouse in a lighthouse family, they just talk about it being almost a paradise. That they just loved to run free on the islands, or around the light station. And fished and swam and got it all kinds of mischief.
• [00:39:51.07] Sometimes too, children would be schooled on the mainland while their father stayed at a lighthouse and their mother would travel with them. And their father would stay at a lighthouse. So they might be out there for just the summer, actually on the grounds of lighthouse. So it was a variety of things. Some got home schooled. And some got more traditional schooling.
• [00:40:15.99] There was one woman who her father was a lighthouse keeper at Mamajuda, which happened to be the light in the Detroit River where Caroline Antaya had served earlier. And her father would row her across the river into Wyandotte for school every day. And then pick her up at the end of the day. So that's how they handled that.
• [00:40:41.11] AUDIENCE: There were evidently no rules against women being lighthouse keepers. And was some rule to that effect put in later to shut them out at all? Or were was it always open?
• [00:40:54.14] PATRICIA MAJHER: Not initially. It wasn't open to women. I mean, there were very few jobs that were open to women in the 1830s when the first lighthouse opened in Michigan. Most women who were working at that time were domestics in some way. But the person who oversaw the Lighthouse Service in the 1830s recognized that the women who were assisting their husbands in an informal way or off the books that they, if the husband died, they were likely the best candidate to serve after him. They were there. They were trained. They knew that they would, especially if they had a family to raise, they knew that they would be good employees.
• [00:41:40.64] So there was actually a comment by that person, his name was Pleasanton, saying that if there is a widow, then give her the job. And as I mentioned, when the Coast Guard took over and when the technology changed, then so did the attitudes. Some felt that the women couldn't handle the more technically difficult engines that were required to run the foghorns. So they just ended up phasing them out at that point.
• [00:42:15.68] AUDIENCE: Was there a rule passed against them though at some point? I seem to remember something that.
• [00:42:20.96] PATRICIA MAJHER: Yeah. Not an official. There was neither a rule at the beginning, nor at the end. It was more of a practice that became a rule, if you will. And it was really the first federal position open to women.
• [00:42:44.63] AUDIENCE: What materials or resources did you use to do your research? I mean, obviously, there were the logs from the lighthouses and what not. But I'm just curious what all you had to-- where you got your information from to do this book.
• [00:42:58.76] PATRICIA MAJHER: Yes. Obviously, those records in the National Archives, whether it's the logs or the lists that were derived from the Lighthouse Service records. Those have been an incredibly valuable. The books, there are several books written. There's a book written called Women Who Kept the Lights, which is a national look at women lighthouse keepers. And that was a good starting point for me. And looking at the sources that those two authors used. Oh. There it is. There's a copy of it. The Cliffords.
• [00:43:34.99] That's kind of the Bible of that. And I think there are two women, two Michigan women that are prominently featured in there. Mary Terry and Elizabeth Whitney Williams. So that was kind of the starting point. And I just read everything I could get my hands on about lighthouse keeping. And usually those authors would write at least a chapter about women. And so that.
• [00:44:00.98] But that list from the article that I mentioned early on that was about Mary Terry, that list was really the starting point for in Michigan. Who was involved in this? But there are a lot of-- I drew from a lot of newspaper accounts. A lot of help from librarians and historical societies in different parts of the state. But I hope to find out more. I hope somebody will come and say, well I've got a photograph of that a person. Or I'm related to that person.
• [00:44:33.00] The Shooks, Catherine Shook, the first lighthouse keeper, she has a huge family that has spread out through the decades. Her family is in sort of the Thumb area and Bay City, Saginaw, Midland. I've met two of her relatives. And I was able to interview a number of descendants.
• [00:45:01.47] AUDIENCE: Speaking of the photographs, I think it was Elizabeth Whitney Williams whose husband was a professional photographer wasn't he?
• [00:45:07.67] PATRICIA MAJHER: He was.
• [00:45:08.14] AUDIENCE: So didn't he leave a good record of--
• [00:45:11.83] PATRICIA MAJHER: Not that I'm aware of. In contacting the Beaver Island Historical Society, they couldn't provide much more than two photographs that I have in the book. There are a couple of women we have several photographs for. Caroline Antaya is another one because she was the aunt of Henry Ford And so at Benson Ford Research Center, they have a family file on her original married name, which escapes me right now. Barney something-- I can't think of his last name. Antaya is her second name. But there's a whole file on her. There's probably half a dozen photographs of her.
• [00:45:54.88] And then Elizabeth Whitney Williams we have a few photographs of. but most of the other photos in the book was all I was able to find. One of each of these other women. And many that we could find no photographs for.
• [00:46:09.41] Though the men in the Lighthouse Service were photographed formally in their uniforms. The women were not, which sort of signals a little second class citizen treatment there. They also did not have uniforms. The men had formal uniforms. The women did not. Probably just a reflection of not fully accepting or a recruiting women for the service.
• [00:46:33.23] AUDIENCE: Did women get service awards?
• [00:46:35.47] PATRICIA MAJHER: They did. I know Elizabeth Whitney Williams received an award in her service. None of the women were involved with any shipwrecks that we know of. And just the one, Frances Marshall, the last lady of the light was known to have saved people from her swimming skills.
• [00:46:59.37] AUDIENCE: I haven't looked at your book yet. Do you have a bibliography in it? And then you mentioned--
• [00:47:04.61] PATRICIA MAJHER: Footnoted and everything.
• [00:47:07.40] AUDIENCE: You mentioned a presentation do you know if that on on a website? Or--
• [00:47:12.94] PATRICIA MAJHER: Well, the exhibit is a physical thing. It's not an online exhibit. But a physical exhibit. And it's rentable from the museum where I used to work. I've got the brochures over there. The Michigan Women's Historical center.
• [00:47:27.83] AUDIENCE: And did any of these women have like a government pension or any benefits from their service?
• [00:47:33.34] PATRICIA MAJHER: That's a good question. I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure. So often after they served, the record, whether it's in newspapers or books or whatever, of their lives just is incomplete. But I would think they would have been provided with something. They were legitimate employees of the Lighthouse Service.
• [00:48:03.39] AUDIENCE: In the record, are there any Native American or African American women that were lighthouse keepers?
• [00:48:09.12] PATRICIA MAJHER: No.
• [00:48:11.44] AUDIENCE: And what was the main way the lighthouses were supplied with food and necessities?
• [00:48:19.28] PATRICIA MAJHER: The tenders that he mentioned. The lighthouse supply ships would come by in some periodic fashion, every couple months or whatever. But if it was a remote lighthouse and the person actually left the lighthouse in the winter, than when they returned, they would be returned with supplies that would last them for some duration. A sufficient amount of oil and canned goods and whatever.
• [00:48:45.66] Some of the lighthouses had-- the land around there could be tilled for some kind of gardening, or raising livestock. But a lot of lighthouses were on rocks or rocky soil or sandy soil that wasn't conducive to that. It really varied from location to location.
• [00:49:09.87] Any other questions? Well, thank you for coming out. I appreciate It.