Mystery at Sand Point Lighthouse
Author: Kathy S. Mason
Original Publication Date: September/October 2003
On Friday, March 6, 1886, tragedy struck the Lake
Michigan port town of Escanaba. Sometime before 1:00 A.M., fire broke out at
Sand Point Lighthouse, which had stood at the harbor entrance for nearly
eighteen years. By the time rescuers reached the light, the structure was
engulfed in flames. The lighthouse keeper, Mary L. Terry, was nowhere to be
found. Once daylight arrived, the community's worst fears were
confirmed―Terry had perished in the building. Evidence Suggested that foul
play may have been involved, and an investigation into her mysterious death
was promptly launched.
Mary and John Terry moved to Escanaba in 1863. Four
years later, John was appointed keeper of the Sand Point Light, which was
under construction at the end of the peninsula that forms Escanaba's natural
harbor. However, John died of tuberculosis in April 1868, before he could
assume his duties. According to the History of the Upper Peninsula of
Michigan, Terry was appointed lighthouse keeper after her husband's death.
She received the appointment over "strong opposition" from "Government"
officials because a "majority" of the citizens of Escanaba endorsed her
appointment.
The town of Escanaba, located on the west side of Little
Bay de Noc, became prominent as a port after 1863, and the Sand Point Light
was constructed to aid navigation. By 1883, Escanaba had become so important
to iron ore shipping that one booster proclaimed the town "The Iron Port of
the World." The light itself boasted a fourth-order Fresnel lens, and its
fixed red light had a radiating power of eleven and one-half miles.
When Terry became the keeper of Sand Point Light, she
was one of only a handful of women to hold such a position officially. Fewer
than 3 percent of all lighthouse keepers and assistant keepers on the Great
Lakes were women. Nationally many women lighthouse keepers including Terry
had replaced their deceased husbands. However, a few used political
connections to get their jobs. Michigan City, Indiana, light keeper Harriet
Colfax probably prevailed upon her cousin, Congressman (and future
vice-president) Schuyler Colfax, to secure her appointment in 1861. In a
similar case, Anna Garraty, the daughter of a keeper, received an
appointment as keeper of the Presque Isle Range Lights on Lake Huron. Her
father, Patrick Garraty, had been the keeper of Old Presque Isle Light, and
her brothers became lighthouse keepers as well. Anna served at Presque Isle
from 1903 until 1926.
The scarcity of female keepers underscores the general
perception in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that light
keeping was an occupation for men only. Married men in particular were
encouraged to take such positions at less-remote stations because men with
families were viewed as stable and reliable. The families of keepers also
provided unofficial assistance in tending the light and made an often-lonely
job bearable. In some cases, wives and children assumed the burden of
tending lights for ill or disabled male heads-of-households.
Although few in number, female keepers served with great
distinction. Harriet Colfax tended both a lighthouse on shore and a beacon
light on a pier at Michigan City well into her eighties. Elizabeth Whitney
Van Riper became the keeper of the Harbor Point Light on Beaver Island in
1872, after her light keeper husband was killed while attempting to rescue
shipwrecked mariners. She later married Daniel Williams. In 1884 she secured
another appointment at Little Traverse Point Light on northern Lake
Michigan, where she served for twenty-nine years.
All lighthouse keepers in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries were expected to follow a regimen of cleaning, maintaining and
repairing equipment, buildings and light apparatus. Some were called upon to
perform lifesaving duties. Ida Lewis, keeper of Rhode Island's Lime Rock
Light, achieved national fame for saving at least eighteen lives and was
celebrated in popular newspapers and magazines. While Harper's Weekly
questioned if handling a boat was an activity befitting a woman, it
concluded that Lewis's use of a rowboat in lifesaving was a true display of
feminine virtue.
Several accounts indicate that Mary Terry had a
distinguished eighteen-year career as a light keeper. In its newspaper
reports on Terry's death and the Sand Point Light fire investigation, the
Escanaba Iron Port stated that Terry was known for her "cool headedness" and
hailed her as a "methodical woman, very careful in the discharge of her
duties and very particular in the care of the property under her charge."
While a cynic might suggest that the writer did not wish to speak ill of the
dead, other accounts of Terry's accomplishments, published before her death,
suggest that she was highly regarded in her community. An 1884 editorial
published in both the Escanaba Iron Port and the Marquette Mining Journal
argued that Terry was "a living illustration of the capacity of women to do
honest hard work." According to the article, Terry had been "doing her duty"
for sixteen years "to the satisfaction of the authorities in Washington, and
in a manner not to be excelled by any masculine 'he' in the country." Terry
was also profiled in the History of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Published in 1883, the book included a section of biographical sketches for
Delta County, in which Terry was the only woman featured. Even though
lighthouse keeping was a profession dominated by men, the community (and,
apparently, the federal government) permitted Terry to hold this position
because she did her job well.
Indeed, Terry's reputation for levelheadedness and
competence fueled speculation that she may have been murdered rather than
killed in a tragic, accidental fire. Terry had saved some money over the
years and owned property in Escanaba. It was not inconceivable that she was
robbed and killed, and the lighthouse set ablaze to conceal the crime. The
Escanaba Iron Port declared that, because she was a woman of means, "it is
easier to believe that the burning of the house and her death is the outcome
of a scheme of robbery than to believe it an accident."
Probate judge Emil Glaser led a coroner's jury to look
into Terry's death. Glaser, a German immigrant who had served the U.S. Army
with distinction during the Civil War, was one of Escanaba's early settlers.
The jurors were P. Coffee, C. J. Provo, S. F. Edwards, Charles H. Scott,
John Lawrence and Henry McFall, who was the city marshal, coroner and deputy
sheriff in 1883.
The jury's task of determining a cause of death was
difficult. The lighthouse itself was almost destroyed; only the spiral
staircase remained of the tower. Little evidence could be gathered from an
examination of the human remains. After the jurors viewed the fragment of
skull, some bones and the "small portion of the viscera" that had been
discovered in the ruins, Terry's remains were turned over to sheriff David
A. "Sandy" Oliver. the Escanaba Iron Port noted that the remains were not
found in her bedroom on the north side of the building, but in the southeast
corner. Had the fire broken out there? Had Terry attempted to fight the
blaze herself? Had she confronted an intruder in that part of the building?
The jury also considered the testimony of handyman
Bordman Leighton, who had done some work for Terry the day before the fire.
According to Leighton, he noticed that firewood near the furnace was hot.
When he reported this to Terry, she told him "she expected to be burned out
by it, some day," but added that she "slept with one eye open." In
retrospect, it seems striking that this conversation occurred the day before
the lighthouse was gutted by fire. If Leighton was not manufacturing this
story to make himself more important to the investigation, perhaps he was
unconsciously exaggerating the details of a mundane conversation--an
exchange that now looked important in light of recent events. If Terry was
murdered, there is a possibility that Leighton supplied this story to cover
up his own involvement in her death. The Escanaba Iron Port never suggested
that Leighton was a suspect, nor was any evidence presented that linked him
to wrongdoing.
The south door to the building supplied the most
compelling piece of evidence to suggest that Terry met with foul play. The
door was discovered standing open but "with the bolt shot forward as though
the door had been forced, not unlocked." Nonetheless, the investigation
revealed no evidence that Terry had been robbed. Charred remains of property
deeds and other important papers were found in the ruins of the building.
Indeed, gold pieces were located "where they would have fallen from the
cupboard" during the fire. Without any other evidence to suggest that
Terry's death was anything but an accident, the jury ruled that the cause of
death was "unknown."
Charles H. Scott, who served on the coroner's jury,
appraised Terry's estate at $3,830, before fees and debts were paid. Terry's
twenty-seven-year-old nephew, David Thurston, a resident of Escanaba, served
as the executor. David and eight other children of Terry's deceased older
brother, George Thurston, were her heirs. One of her nephews, William
Thurston, was also deceased and so his twelve-year-old daughter, Wilhelmina
Mary, received his share of the estate.
After the fire, the lighthouse was restored and used for
another fifty-three years. In 1939 the Coast Guard shut down the light and
converted the building into housing for its personnel. The roof of the
residence was raised four feet, the lens and lantern room were removed from
the tower, and the tower itself was lowered ten feet. When the Coast Guard
discontinued its use of the building in 1985, the Delta County Historical
Society leased the structure and restored the lighthouse to its original
state. In 1990 the historical society opened the lighthouse to visitors.
The exact circumstances surrounding Terry's death remain
an intriguing mystery even today. Nevertheless, the story of her career
provides some insight into the world of female lighthouse keepers on the
Great Lakes. Only a handful of women held such positions, and like many
female keepers, Terry received the job out of sympathy and perhaps
convenience after her husband died. While lighthouse keeping was viewed as a
distinctly male occupation at the time, her ability to retain her for
eighteen years demonstrates that some women were accepted as keepers if they
did their jobs well. Mary Terry should be remembered in Great Lakes maritime
history for her successful career as well as her tragic death.
Michigan's Women Light Keepers
After her husband went to fight in the American
Revolution, Hannah Thomas became this country's earliest known female
lighthouse keeper when she replaced him as keeper of the Gurnet Point Light,
near Plymouth, Massachusetts. While Hannah's appointment would have been
unusual in almost any other predominantly male profession at that time, she
was one of many women who, during the next century and a half, replaced an
absent, ill or deceased husband or father in an official light keeper
position.
The combination of convenience, previous experience and
sympathy for these women allowed light keeping to become, according to the
U.S. Coast Guard's Historian's Office, one of the first nonclerical U.S.
government jobs open to women. Historian John A. Tilley writes in "A History
of Women in the Coast Guard" that "The position of keeper did not require
much education, training, or mechanical skill; it demanded dedication,
stamina, patience, and a willingness to work for a low salary. It was just
the sort of job, in the social atmosphere of Victorian America, for a
woman."
According to researchers Mary Louise Clifford and J.
Candace Clifford, in the United States 138 women lighthouse keepers and
about twice that many assistant keepers served after the Coast Guard began
assigning positions. Michigan's lights received their share of womanly care.
According to Thomas Tag of Great Lakes Lighthouse Research, there were 49
female keepers and assistant keepers in Michigan.
Many women keepers took care of a sick husband, managed
a household and raised children while performing the strenuous,
around-the-clock tasks of tending a lighthouse. Caroline Litogot served from
1874-1885 at the Mamajuda Light on Grosse Ile. She had performed the duties
for her invalid Civil War veteran husband for many years, then became the
official keeper after he died.
Light keeping could be considered patriotic, as in the
service of Anastasia Truckey. She watched the Marquette Harbor Light after
her husband, Nelson, went to fight in the Civil War in 1862. Her job was
especially important because the safe shipment of iron ore out of the harbor
was vital to the war effort.
Appointment to light keeper was not always a secure
position for women--many served for less than a year. They could be replaced
by returning veterans awarded for their service, or were placed temporarily
until a suitable male keeper was obtained. Julia Toby Brawn assumed her
husband Peter's duties at the Saginaw River Front Range Light in 1873 after
he became crippled and died. She was demoted to assistant keeper in 1877
after marrying George Way, who became the keeper. In 1882 her assistant
keeper position was eliminated altogether, although she most likely
continued her duties.
In-depth stories about individual woman keepers are
rare. However, Elizabeth Whitney Van Riper wrote a book about her
experiences entitled A Child of the Sea and Life Among the Mormons. As a
child, her family fled Beaver Island in fear of Mormon leader James Strang.
She and her family later returned and, in 1869, Van Riper's husband was
appointed keeper of Harbor Point Light. Three years later, Elizabeth took
over after he died during a shipwreck rescue. She served twelve years on
Beaver Island and twenty-nine at Little Traverse Light in Harbor Springs,
where she wrote her book.
Van Riper's memories display a sense of responsibility
and a love for light keeping. She wrote, "My husband having now very poor
health, I took charge of the care of the lamps, and the beautiful lens in
the tower was in my especial care. On stormy nights I watched the light that
no accident might happen. We burned the lard oil, which needed great care,
especially in cold weather, when the oil would congeal and fail to flow fast
enough to the wicks. In long nights the lamps had to be trimmed twice each
night, and sometimes oftener." Later, describing the tragedy that took her
husband, she realized "there were others out in the dark and treacherous
waters who needed the rays from the shining light of my tower. Nothing could
rouse me but that thought, then all my life and energy was given to the work
which now seemed was given to me to do."
KATHY S. MASON is an assistant professor of history at
the University of Findlay in Ohio. The author wishes to thank Debbie Rose
and the Delta County Historical Society.
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