Ernie DeRaps (Coast Guard keeper 1961-1962) and his wife, Pauline, recalled gales that blew spray on the upper windows. During one blizzard, Ernie tied one end of a rope around himself and the other end around his six-year-old boy, so that the young man would not be blown away as they trudged through the two-foot-deep snow to the truck Ernie used to drive him to school. “We enjoyed being together, even though we were constantly together twenty-four hours,” Pauline wrote. “We laughed together, we cried together. We paid more attention to the children.”

John Baxter (keeper in the early 1970s) and his wife Gail had their fourth child, Stephen, at Browns Head Light in 1973. Stephen was the first baby born in a lighthouse under Coast Guard control and is likely the last baby born at any light under the Coast Guard. Gail vividly remembered one storm in particular. “Once we had a storm and I watched lightning hit the rocks and it scared me to death. I was cooking one night and lightning came in and went right around the burner. And lightning hit the telephone pole at the top of the hill and split it in two.”

Browns Head with bell tower and boathouse Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

Before Browns Head Lighthouse was automated in 1987, one of the last keepers was Charles Lawson, joined by his wife Valerie and their two sons. “I thought I would hate the loneliness and the confinement,” Valerie said. But I grew to love the lighthouse, partially because Chuck was home all the time after all those years when he was away so much. It was the first time we would have had to raise the children together….We are going to miss all that.”

One of the earlier keepers, Benjamin Eldridge Burgess, who started in 1867, married his second wife at the light and reared seven children there. They even took in three grandchildren following their mother’s death. Tragically, three of Burgess’ daughters died within four years of each other. He was praised for the “exquisite neatness and order” of the station and described as a “good man, a good servant of Uncle Sam, and a saver of countless lives.” Burgess retired in 1905.

Historically, the Fox Islands were home to the “Red Paint People” who arrived 3,800 to 5,000 years ago, followed later by the Abenaki and other Native Americans. European explorers sailed by in the 1500’s, followed in 1603 by English Captain Martin Pring, who dubbed them Fox Islands for the abundant gray foxes found there. English settlements did not begin in the area in earnest until after the French and Indian Wars in 1763 and then increased quickly after the Revolutionary War. In the Fox Islands, the island and town of Vinalhaven were named for John Vinal, Esquire, who defended islanders in a 1785 court case. The other island became known as North Haven. Browns Head Light was set on the northwestern corner of Vinalhaven Island to guide trade ships navigating the Fox Islands Thoroughfare, the narrow passage between the islands.

Vinalhaven residents have always relied on the sea for a living. From the 1800s to the mid-1900s, local fishing fleets regularly brought in catches of 10,000 pounds or more. Then in 1826, Vinalhaven’s reputation for its granite began to grow. For the next century it was one of Maine largest quarrying centers. Local granite went into gun platforms at forts prior to the Civil War and was used in the Brooklyn Bridge, U.S. customs houses, post offices, federal offices buildings, mansions, and more. The use of structural steel and concrete as building materials forced the closure of the largest granite company in 1919, but the granite paving block industry operated until the late 1930s.

A $4,000 appropriation for the Brown Head Light Station was approved on March 3, 1831. David Wooster of North Haven was the first keeper to live in the station’s rubblestone dwelling and tend the light in the rubblestone tower remained there until his death at age 61, in 1841. Jeremiah Berry built both of the structures at a cost of $1,800. The tower stood twenty-two-feet-tall to the base of its octagonal, wrought-iron lantern and exhibited a fixed white light, forty-two feet above mean high water, that first shone in late summer or fall of 1832.

The local lighthouse superintendent, Collector Chandler, wrote on July 27, 1832, that there was a problem with the lamps. The lamps and reflectors were in such bad condition that he assumed they had not been plated with the required six ounces of pure silver. However, he later wrote that the problem resulted from “the workman leaving no vent hole, through mistake, and the Keeper being new did not perhaps know what the difficulty was, at first, although he will, I think, make a very good Keeper.” The lack of proper ventilation resulted in excessive smoke and heat, but the problem was quickly fixed.

John Calderman, from Vinalhaven, followed Wooster as keeper, earning $350 per year. When Engineer I.W.P. Lewis inspected Browns Head Light in 1842, he dismissed its importance, calling it “merely a local beacon.” Lewis’ standards were always high, and the station’s location and construction did not measure up. He wrote that it was sited so low “as to render no service in clearing the numerous ledges near it…” The tower was “laid up in lime mortar of very bad quality.” The mortar could be taken out by the handful and stones removed. The stairway and woodwork had rotted, and the entire tower had moved sideways from the frost. The dwelling was “exceedingly rough and defective” with cracked walls, a leaky roof, and falling plaster.

Keeper Calderwood’s attached statement confirmed Lewis’ findings: “The floor beams of the house are round, just as they came from the woods, and were cut on the site of the house. Some of the studs still have the bark on.” Calderwood claimed that if nothing was done, the tower would “certainly tumble down.” He had to travel twelve miles to Camden for supplies, and the station boat was “worn out” and there was no landing near the light. Not surprisingly, the Calderwood family left the next year, in 1843.

They were followed by Howland Dyer and his family, who would spend the next twenty-one years at the light, despite the dilapidated condition of the facilities that would not be remedied for fourteen more years. Dyer was complemented in the 1850 inspection report. “The keeper is a first-rate one, and takes good care of the government property intrusted [sic] in his care.”

A new 1.5-story, wood-frame dwelling, completed in 1857, was linked to a cylindrical brick tower by a covered passage. The new tower, equipped with a fifth-order Fresnel instead of the lamps and reflectors used previously, was rather short, measuring just fourteen feet to the base of the lantern. Joining the light as a navigational aid at Browns Head was a 1,000-pound fog bell, suspended from a wooden tower. Before its arrival, the keeper or a family member had to ring a “much magnified dinner bell” that hung near the door to the house. Eventually the fog horn was upgraded to a diaphragm horn, but in 1951, a fog bell was again put into use. That fog bell is now displayed at the Vinalhaven Historical Society Museum.

The light was changed on September 15, 1880, “from white to white and red, the red “cut” or sector defining the west channel of entrance to Fox Island Thoroughfare, between Fiddler’s Ledge and the Bay ledges”. Perhaps this confused sea goers, because in 1889, the red sector “was replaced by a white sector between two red ones, so that the white light indicated safety and the red light danger.”

Other changes to the station included a new fuel house and a 2,000-gallon brick cistern, along with a retaining wall in front of the dwelling in 1891; a boat house and boat slip were added in 1895; the intensity of the light was increased by replacing the fifth-order Fresnel lens with a fourth-order in late 1901; a stone oil house was added in 1903 along with new cast-iron stairs that improved access to the lantern.

Browns Head Light’s Fresnel lens is still active and serviced by the Coast Guard. The station's buildings were transferred to the Town of Vinalhaven under the Main Lights Program in 1998.

Vinalhaven can be reached by ferry from Rockland. While the station grounds are open to the public, the house is closed and occupied by Vinalhaven’s town manager. It is best to bring your car, as the lighthouse is several miles from the ferry landing. So why not bring your own family together and head out to Browns Head Light?

References

1. The Lighthouses of Massachusetts, Jeremy D'Entremont, 2007.
2. Annual Report of the Light House Board, various years.
3. “History of Vinalhaven, ” Vinalhaven Historical Society website.
4. “Last Born—Also the First,” Lighthouse Digest, October 1995.