Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

Brooks married Clara Sadler from Hudgins, Virginia, in 1907. They had one daughter, Brandal’s mother. Before and after his lighthouse career, Brooks ran a store in their home in Hallieford. During the hurricane of 1933, Brandal’s grandmother stayed on the Stingray Point Lighthouse. “I remember stories that all the railings were blown off the lighthouse and a work boat had to come out to rescue them,” Brandal said. Claudius “Claude” Foster Sutton, from Mathews, served as the lightkeeper at Pages Rock Lighthouse, a hexagonal screwpile in the York River five miles from Yorktown, from 1898 to 1932. The 41-foot-high lighthouse, prefabricated at Lazaretto Point in Baltimore, stood on wooden screwpiles that were sleeved in iron and driven six feet into the river bottom. Sutton bought 15 acres nearby from his father-in-law and established his family on a farm there close to Gloucester. He apparently enjoyed people stopping by the lighthouse and always had a few stories for them. His assistant keeper from time to time was Albert Dudley, whose wife, Grace, spent nights out in the lighthouse too. She noted that the lighthouse was clean and spacious with eight nice rooms. The Coast Guard took wood and coal to the lighthouse. Sutton, however, had to row his boat two or three miles to the southern shore of Queen’s Creek and then walk another two miles or so to the store to buy food.

Enos Brooks and Clara Sadler Brooks

Claudius “Claude” Foster Sutton, Lightkeeper at Pages Rock Lightouse

bedrooms upstairs. Gutters funneled fresh rainwater into barrels in a corner of each of the downstairs rooms for washing and drinking. The outhouse was on the south side of the station to avoid the north winds.

Sutton manned the fog bell and kept the light’s fourth-order Fresnel lens burning 24/7. He also maintained all of the beacon lights from Yorktown to West Point. The beacons were on pilings and he had to keep each one lit, stopping by weekly to refill the kerosene and clean the wicks.

When the weather was foggy, Mercer was awake every hour to rewind the mechanical bell.

Later, an automated light on a steel skeletal tower replaced the lighthouse that had been deactivated in 1967. 9

Geneva Brooks Brandal of Phoebus, Virginia, is the granddaughter of Enos Brooks, keeper at Stingray Point, Thomas Point, and Wolf Trap Lights. Brooks was from Hallieford, Mathews County, Virginia. Brooks died when Brandal was only two years old, but she remembers stories of him having to polish the lens every day “to perfection.” She also remembers her mother talking about Brooks packing up his food and clothes and going to his sister’s house in Hallieford, where he kept his boat. He would be on the lighthouse for two weeks at a time.

Norton Hurd was 98 and still running his hardware store in Deltaville, Virginia, in 2015 when he shared his stories about the Stingray Point Lighthouse located at the entrance to the Rappahannock River near Deltaville, Virginia. The story goes that Captain John Smith named Stingray Point in 1608 after a stingray stung him, nearly fatally, while he was fishing there. Stingray Point is noted by name on Smith’s map published in 1612.

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