The town of Plymouth, formerly known as Plymouth Landing, reportedly received its name because sailors from Plymouth, Massachusetts called there regularly for cargo. Flatboats carried products down the Roanoke River from outlying farms and forests to Plymouth, where they could be loaded on sailing vessels. Tobacco, corn, rice, turpentine, and masts were transported from Plymouth to ports as far away as the West Indies. In 1790, the U.S. Congress established Plymouth as a port of delivery with its own customs house, and by 1806 the town had twenty-five ocean-going sailing ships. Plymouth was one of six primary ports in North Carolina and ranked ninth in population.

Congress appropriated funds in 1831 for a lightship to be placed near the mouth of the Roanoke River in Albemarle Sound to guide vessels to the river and the port of Plymouth upstream. A wooden-hulled, three-masted sailing ship was converted into the lightship, which was named “MM”. Whale oil lights shining through red, blue, and green lenses served as a beacon for mariners.

When Union forces invaded eastern North Carolina in 1862, Confederates took control of the lightship and sailed it upstream to Plymouth. During the war, the ship was scuttled in the Roanoke River.

Following the conflict, work on the Roanoke River Lighthouse commenced near the mouth of the river to replace the lightship. The design of the lighthouse was very similar to others used in North Carolina's Pamlico, Albermarle, and Croatan Sounds: a square structure with a pitched roof surmounted by a lantern room that housed a Fresnel lens. The lighthouse was destroyed by fire in March of 1885 but was rebuilt and put back into service later that year. In winter, ice floes were a constant plague for screwpile lighthouses, like the one at Roanoke River. In 1886, ice severed two of the Roanoke River Lighthouse’s spindly support legs causing the structure to collapse into the sound. A replacement lighthouse was activated in 1887 and served until the station was discontinued in 1941.

The second Roanoke River Lighthouse was a two-story wooden structure with a square tower protruding from one corner of the structure’s pitched roof. This lighthouse was originally intended for Currituck Sound, but was diverted to Roanoke River to replace the lighthouse lost there. The new lighthouse had two rooms on each floor, and families lived at the offshore station for several decades before keepers started commuting to the lighthouse from Plymouth. A fourth-order Fresnel lens was used in the lantern room.

After the lighthouse was discontinued, it played host to “only Sea Scout troop meetings and clandestine card games.” In 1955, waterman Elijah Tate purchased the Roanoke River Lighthouse, along with two other Albermale Sound lighthouses, from the Coast Guard for $10 each. Tragically, Tate dropped two of the three lighthouses into the sound while trying to relocate them. Before testing his luck with the third lighthouse, Tate gave it to his friend Emmett Wiggins, who often passed the lighthouse during his work as a tugboat operator. Wiggins gave the following account of moving the lighthouse. "I had an old Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) that I used as a barge, so I went out to the light and knocked away all of the pilings except those at the diagonal corners. Then I sank the LCI down far enough to float under the lighthouse. When I pumped the water out, the barge came up under the heavy wooden sills of the main lighthouse structure. As soon as I cut away the remaining piles, everything floated free and I sailed back to Edenton with my new home. The whole job took about 36 hours." Wiggins placed the lighthouse on a piece of property he had purchased near the mouth of Filbert's Creek.

The lighthouse was used as a rental property for a few years and then served as Wiggins' primary residence starting around 1960. The bell and lens from the lighthouse were donated to the town of Edenton in the 1970s. The bell, fabricated by the Mc Shane Bell Foundry of Baltimore, MD in 1901, was removed from the lighthouse and placed on display in Queen Anne Park, but for some reason, the lens remained atop the lighthouse in a lantern room with broken window panes.

In the 1990s, officials with the Port O’Plymouth Museum discussed the future of what was by then North Carolina’s only surviving screwpile lighthouse with Wiggins. Wiggins proposed turning it into a floating maritime museum, while the officials thought it would be better to move the lighthouse to Plymouth. Wiggins agreed to sell the lighthouse, but he passed away in 1995 before a deed was signed. Wiggins’ heirs wanted an exorbitant one million dollars for the dilapidated lighthouse, much more than the museum could afford.

The museum and the Washington County Roanoke River Commission decided they could build a lighthouse for much less than that, and in the fall of 2001, pilings were sunk into a grass field along the banks of the Roanoke River in Plymouth to serve as the foundation for a replica of the 1866 Roanoke River Lighthouse. Over the next two years, work on the lighthouse was carried out using plans copied from the originals that were located at the National Archives. Much of the funding for the project was covered by $515,000 in federal funding.

“Lighthouse enthusiasts rival Civil War enthusiasts in their passion,” says Harry Thompson, Curator of the Port O’Plymouth Museum and chairman of the lighthouse project. “With this project we can become the first stop on a tour of North Carolina lighthouses.” The project may yet receive an authentic piece of history from the Roanoke River station, as the 1835 lightship was located in 47 feet of water in the Roanoke River in 1999. There are plans to raise the lightship and place it near the lighthouse, but it would be a major undertaking.

A maritime museum is located across the street from the lighthouse and together the two interpret the rich maritime history of Plymouth. Displays on the history of the Roanoke River Lighthouse and the families who lived and worked there are planned for the museum.

References

1. “Roanoke River Lighthouse Replica to be Built,” Jeremy D'Entremont, Lighthouse Digest, February 2001.
2. “Roanoke River Lighthouse Now a Beacon to Visitors,” Roanokeriver.com.

The lighthouse is open in the summer from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and by appointment. For current information, call (252) 217-2204.