Jenifer Taylor had apparently offered to sell the land at a lower price, if he would be appointed as the first keeper, but this role was awarded to James Davis, who first exhibited the light on September 30, 1830. Just over two months into his tenure, Davis died, leaving the keeper’s duties to his daughter, Ann Davis. Despite being admonished early on that she could not sell liquor on lighthouse grounds, Ann proved to be a capable stewardess of the light and kept it until her death in 1847. Her successor, William Wood, was somewhat derelict in his duties. During his watch, a cat fell into a barrel of lamp oil, contaminating 56 gallons of the valuable fuel. Wood was also responsible for breaking two dozen glass lamp chimneys that were stored in the basement. Because of these indiscretions, Wood’s wages were garnished in 1849. Another female keeper, Pamelia Edwards, served as keeper from 1855 to 1869, which timeframe spanned the turbulent Civil War years.

Point Lookout Lighthouse in 1925 Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

Before the war, the station received a number of upgrades. In the 1850s a fourth-order Fresnel lens with an arc of 300 degrees was placed in the lantern. In 1855 the Lighthouse Board reported that the keeper’s dwelling received general repairs, but “the posts and rails of the old fence are almost all decayed,” and needed to be replaced. An 1858 inspection noted that the bricks of the house had been painted yellow and that the tower was now white, while the red shingle roof remained the same.

Point Lookout had been a rather pleasant place before the War Between the States. Originally it had been part of St. Michael’s Manor, owned by the first governor of Maryland while it was still a colony of Great Britain. The point enjoyed the status of a summer resort, possessing beach cottages and a wharf, and the addition of the lighthouse had only added to the charm of the region. The war, however, would leave permanent, gruesome marks on the landscape.

The U.S. Government leased land on the point and built Hammond General Hospital in 1862 to care for wounded Union soldiers. The following year small numbers of Confederate prisoners began to be assigned to the confines of the hospital. These were primarily residents of southern Maryland charged with aiding the South. After the Battle of Gettysburg, though, the North built prison camps to hold a greater influx of detainees. Point Lookout was strategically proximate to many major engagements, yet it was also set apart making it hard for prisoners to escape. Called Camp Hoffman, the prison had a capacity of 10,000, and forts were built to protect it from Confederate attack. The earth works of one of the forts, named after then U.S. President Lincoln, can still be see on the point.

The prison held about 4,000 Confederates in 1863, but by the following year this number had ballooned well beyond normal capacity to over 20,000. The prison grounds were filthy. It was unsafe to drink from the wells, and during the winter many died in their tents from exposure.

About 4,000 men died at the camp, and their remains were interred near the lighthouse grounds. When threatened by erosion, the graves were relocated to a spot alongside Route 5, just north of Point Lookout State Park. The trauma and death associated with the prison camp possibly explains the large number of strange, paranormal events that have been reported by visitors to the lighthouse. Point Lookout is, in fact, the only light station on the Chesapeake that has been subject to the services of paranormal psychologists. These investigators were able to record twenty-four distinct voices emanating from various parts of the lighthouse. The voices were of both men and women engaged in speaking and singing. One voice remarked “fire if they get too close to you,” which is thought to be the words of a Union guard in the prison camp. A happier ghost is believed to be that of former keeper Ann Davis, who said the words “my home.” The figure of Ann Davis has also reportedly been seen, clothed in a blue skirt and white blouse, standing at the head of the stairs.

Point Lookout Lighthouse in 1930 Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

After the war, one of the first reported upgrades to the station was the construction of a fog bell tower in 1872. This structure housed a 1,000-pound bell cast at the Mencely Foundry in New York. In 1883 the roof of the keeper’s dwelling was removed and an extra story was added. This addition, along with two porches attached to the front and back of the house, provided enough room for two lighthouse keepers and their families. Also in 1883 the station was made into a buoy depot, receiving coal and buoy sheds and a wharf. Being taller than the bell tower, these new structures interfered with sound propagation, and soon the tower was relocated to a more advantageous position.

In 1888 Point Lookout was subjected to a problem shared by other lighthouses on the Chesapeake - erosion. The Lighthouse Board reported that “water had encroached so far upon the river front...as to cover one end of the foundation of one of the buildings of the depot.” An emergency breakwater was quickly thrown together with hundreds of barrels of broken cement. The Board requested $500 for a permanent bulwark made out of large timbers and stone, and this was built the next year. In 1894 an oil house capable of holding 1,000 gallons of mineral oil was added.

Major changes were made to the lighthouse starting in 1927, just a few years before its centennial. The dwelling was enlarged to its present size and remodeled to provide two separate apartments, each with six rooms and a bath. A “wind-electric generating plant” was also added to the station, the first such installation by the Lighthouse Service in the United States. The electricity generated by the windmill was stored in an array of sixteen batteries and provided light for the lighthouse beacon and the two apartments.

The station was transferred to the Coast Guard in 1939, although civilian keepers continued to exercise stewardship over the light. As early as 1951, the U.S. Navy started buying up the land around the lighthouse, and shortly after the Point Lookout Lighthouse was replaced by an offshore steel tower in 1965, the station was turned over to the Navy. The State of Maryland leased the lighthouse for some time, though this arrangement was cancelled in 1980 when the Navy refused to a fix a problem with the water system. The Navy was uninterested in maintaining the lighthouse, and the structure’s only upkeep after 1980 was a superficial cleaning made by volunteers of Point Lookout State Park prior to an annual open house. At other times, the lighthouse, contained within a fenced establishment that was part of the naval air station’s radio tracking system, was off-limits.

In 2002, the Navy did contract for a thorough restoration of the lighthouse’s exterior, and the structure was painted using the color scheme it had in 1927. In a land swap deal, the lighthouse was turned over to the State of Maryland in 2006, and six months later, Laura Berg, the last person to live in the lighthouse, co-founded the Point Lookout Lighthouse Preservation Society to raise funds for restoring the lighthouse and making it accessible to the public. Occasional daytime open houses are now available as well as nighttime “Paranormal Investigations.”

References

1. Bay Beacons, Linda Turbyville, 1995.
2. “Who’s Afraid of Ghosts?,” Dorcas Coleman, The Natural Resource, Fall 2001.

The lighthouse is open the first Saturday of the month between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. from April through November. Call Point Lookout State Park at (301)-872-5688 or visit the Point Lookout Lighthouse Preservation Society website for more information and for a schedule of Paranormal Investigation Nights.