Ladies of the Lights: Michigan Women in the U.S. Lighthouse Service

7. Were Any Female Keepers Also Mothers?

31 g CHAPTER SEVEN g Were Any Female Keepers Also Mothers? Many female lighthouse keepers performed their professional duties while raising children, and some had very large families. Among Michigan’s most notable keepers who were also mothers are Catherine Shook with eight children and Katherine Marvin with ten. Keeper’s daughter Anna Bowen (later Hoge), standing, and Larry Lane, petting the dog, shared a hair-raising moment on Lake Superior’s Passage Island. Photo courtesy of Crane Hill Publishers/From the book Lighthouse Families ladies of the lights 32 A common challenge for all keepers was the education of their children. If their lighthouses were located on the mainland or near a city, the children could be educated in a traditional school setting. Dorotha Story Dodge, whose father kept a light on the Detroit River from 1899 to 1911, remembered how she was transported to class each day: “It was a mile over from [Mamajuda Island] to Wyandotte, and Daddy would row [me] there. And then I walked up to Gar‹eld School.”2 In less populated areas, and especially on islands, keepers g Keeper’s Kids Made Mischief on Passage Island g Left with too much time on their hands, so-called beacon brats could get into a heap of trouble. Anna Bowen Hoge, who grew up at Lake Superior’s Passage Island light station, recalled the time she and her sister convinced a young visitor to help them snag a seagull’s nest off the side of a cliff: [We] tied a rope around unsuspecting Larry and proceeded to lower him over the towering cliff. But we had one problem…we weren’t strong enough to pull him back up [and] he wouldn’t let go of [the nest] to help himself back up away from the long drop into Lake Superior. I watched as Larry’s head sank below the cliff’s horizon, then his shirt disappeared, then his upper leg, and finally his sneakers once again faded over the cliff’s edge. My sister let go of me and Larry slipped farther toward the sharp rocks below. “I’ve got you—don’t worry!” I yelled to Larry, all the time sounding much more assured than I really was. Meanwhile, my sister ran for help. As the boy dangled high above the water, Anna’s father and the boy’s uncle came running—but even they couldn’t pull poor Larry to safety. The uncle then launched a rowboat to try to save his nephew from below. Working together, the two men lowered Larry to safety, still hanging on to his prize: the seagull’s nest. “Well, my sister and I got spanked,” Anna remembered, “and Larry got shipped back to his parents on the next boat to the mainland . That was the last time we saw Larry.”1 took it upon themselves to teach their families “reading, writing, and ’rithmetic,” as well as religion.3 Starting in 1876, the Lighthouse Service aided keepers in this activity by lending them small, portable collections of reading materials . These traveling libraries included histories such as The Battle of Mobile Bay, scienti‹c works such as Newcomb’s Astronomy, and ‹ction like The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. Magazines and a copy of the Bible rounded out the collections, which were rotated from light station to light station by inspectors every three months.4 To break the monotony of maintaining the light day in and day out, a keeper and her family could engage in a number of pastimes. A common interest keepers’ families shared was music: either making it or listening to it on gramophones and, later, the radio. Playing cards and board games or engaging in hobbies helped to while away the time after the station’s many chores were done.5 If the keeper could ‹nd an appropriate replacement, she and her children could also leave the light station for daytrips and visits to friends and family. Were Any Female Keepers Also Mothers? 33 ...