Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

The Lightkeepers Although the U.S. Lighthouse Service was demanding and the job challenging, many of the men and women who joined stayed with the service for decades. Fortunately, a few accounts remain of life aboard a screwpile lighthouse. Adding the recollections of several descendants of lightkeepers and an occasional original lightkeeper, we can glimpse a picture of the dangers and joys integral to the job. Time may have blurred some details, but the flavor of life as a lightkeeper is clear.

Margaret Gerard was 93 in 2015 when she talked about her father, John Robert Edwards, a lightkeeper at Point of Shoals screwpile lighthouse near Rushmere, Virginia. Point of Shoals, built in 1855, had been a target of Confederate raids during the Civil war. Heavy ice damage forced the rebuilding of the lighthouse in 1871. The lighthouse, automated in 1932 and deactivated a year later, was torn down in the 1960s.

Image by Sheally

Image by Sheally

Margaret Gerard

John Robert Edwards

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