SOCIAL STUDIES/TECHNOLOGY – Learn about the history of women lighthouse keepers, five of whom worked in Rhode Island. Students will take the local example of Ida Lewis, “the bravest woman in America,” to discuss nineteenth century gender ideals and how and why some women came to hold the official government position of lighthouse keepers.
EDUCATION STANDARDS
New RI Social Studies Standards:
GRADE 4 – LIVING AND WORKING TOGETHER IN RHODE ISLAND Having looked at how people live and work together in a variety of contexts, fourth graders now turn their attention to the state of Rhode Island.
- Inquiry Topic 1: Geography and Environment
- Compelling Question: Where are we?
- SS4.1.1: City/Town Geography
- SS4.1.2: Geography of Rhode Island
- Inquiry Topic 5: Immigration, Labor, and Industry
- Compelling Question: How did industry affect who wanted to live and work in Rhode Island?
- SS4.5.2: 19th and 20th century industries and peoples
- SS4.5.3: Peoples and industries in Rhode Island today
- Change / Continuity (H.CC) Students act as historians as they…
- Identify historical events that are culturally relevant to global, national, and local histories and connect to students’ intersectional identities and lived experiences.
- Explain multiple causes and effects of historical events, centering and representing the voices and experiences of individuals and communities who were agents of change and resistance.
- Analyze multiple sources to compare and contrast historical events through the lenses of identity, power, and resistance.
- Argue how social change, intersectional identities, and lived experiences are crucial to the study and practice of history.
Common Core Standards:
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.7 – Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.2 – Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.9-10.2 and CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2 – Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
Women Lighthouse Keepers in RI:
- Mrs. Abbey Waite (sometimes Abby) – 1832-1838: Warwick Neck, RI
- Mrs. Demairs Weeden – 1848-1857: Beavertail, RI
- Ida Lewis – 1857-1911: Lime Rock, RI
- Mrs. Mary Ann Heath – 1868-1873: Newport Harbor, RI
- Mrs. Sally Ann Crandall – 1879-1888: Watch Hill, RI
Beginning Task:
- Start by explaining to students what lighthouses are and why they were used historically and why they are still used today using the narrative below.
- Explain the geography of Rhode Island, Newport, and Lime Rock Island to your students using the maps and image below.
Lighthouses are structures, usually with a tower, that are built onshore or on the seabed that serve as an aid to maritime coastal navigation. They can warn mariners of potential hazards, help them to establish their position, and guide them to their destinations. Lighthouses have been around for millennia. The first being one of the seven ancient wonders of the world — the Pharos of Alexandria, which was over 300 feet tall and built between 284 and 246 BC. In 1716, the first lighthouse in the United States was built in Boston, Massachusetts.
Although the development of electronic navigation systems has had a great effect on the role of lighthouses, among some mariners, there is still a natural preference for the reassurance of visual navigation. Lighthouses or lighted buoys can be used by vessels with no special equipment on board, providing the ultimate backup against the failure of more sophisticated systems. The role of lighthouses may have decreased, but there has been an increase in minor lights and lighted buoys, which are still necessary to guide ships through busy and often dangerous coastal waters and harbors.
Middle Task:
- Using the narrative below, explain to students what the job was like being a lighthouse keeper.
- Explain the gender norms of the nineteenth century and the separate spheres for men and women.
- Discuss how and why women were allowed these federal jobs as lighthouse keepers.
Lighthouse keepers performed work that was critical to national security: lighthouses, administered by the federal government, aided navigation and helped protect the nation’s coastlines. Lighthouse keeping was one of the few non-clerical federal jobs open to women in the 19th century. The Lighthouse Service, overseen by the Treasury Department was established in 1789 as part of Congress’s first Public Works Act, but was merged into the Coast Guard in 1939. No official policies prevented women from being lighthouse keepers, although most took on the role after the death or incapacity of their husbands. Between 1828 and 1905, at least 122 women held the official government position of lighthouse keeper.
Women lighthouse keepers seemingly did not challenge the traditional notion of femininity of the time. Their duties appeared to be domestic: lighting the lamp, watching over the coastline, and maintaining the lighthouse itself and did not disrupt the notion of “separate spheres” or the cult of domesticity for women in the nineteenth century. Yet Ida Lewis’s life reveals a more complex story. Of the five female lighthouse keepers in Rhode Island, she is the only one who was not appointed after a spouse was unable to perform such tasks. She also never had children. Pushing her slightly outside of the realm of lighthouse keeping being work women could perform because it was seen as work inside the home.
Perhaps the most famous lighthouse keeper in all the United States, Ida Lewis became known as “the bravest woman in America.” She was born Idawalley Zorada Lewis on Feb. 25, 1842, in Newport, Rhode Island, to Hosea Lewis, a Revenue Cutter Service captain, and Ida Zordia Lewis. Her father was appointed lighthouse keeper at Lime Rock in Newport in 1854. Just four months later, he would suffer a deliberating stroke leaving the job to his wife. Although it was officially her mother’s post, Ida Lewis did most of the work tending the flame in the stone tower. This work consisted of climbing the tower, filling the lamp with oil at dusk and again at midnight, trimming the wick if necessary, polishing off reflectors, and then putting the light out at dawn.
During this time on Lime Rock, Ida also rowed her younger siblings to school daily. She also brought back provisions needed from the town. A skilled rower and swimmer, her first rescue came about a year after unofficially resuming duties at the lighthouse. She saved four teenage boys from drowning after they accidentally overturned the small catboat they were sailing.
However, many did not know of her until March of 1869, when she rescued two soldiers from drowning in their attempt to return to Fort Adams. The New York Tribune and other big publications picked up this incredible story and catapulted Ida Lewis into the national spotlight. That spring and summer, she appeared in hundreds of local newspapers, on the covers of national magazines such as Harper’s Weekly, in photographs reprinted on postcards and calling cards; and even in songs, like “The Ida Lewis Mazurka” and the “Rescue Polka Mazurka,” that had illustrated sheet music.
Questions about her marital status were ongoing. This newspaper clipping below asks why she is still single. Briefly married to a sea captain, Ida Lewis spent two years away from the lighthouse, but returned to her work. Even though women could be lighthouse keepers, questions about the traditional roles women played in the late nineteenth century come through in depictions in journalism and in physical representations. The most popular photograph of her (shown above) depicted her wearing a fine dress and jewelry but holding an oar. The clothes she wore would not have been conducive to her actually rescuing anyone or using the oar. One scholar has argued that the clothing and pose “served a different function: underscoring her propriety and traditional femininity.” Female lighthouse keepers were generally depicted in nineteenth century American culture as heroic, but also “proper” white, middle-class women.
In May of 1869 the Rhode Island General Assembly adopted a resolution officially recognizing Ida’s heroism. Two months later, the city of Newport honored her further during their Independence Day celebration. The city presenting her with a rowboat appropriately named Rescue. Official records show that she saved 18 people, but unofficial records put the number closer to 36. She served as an official lighthouse keeper for the U.S. Lighthouse Service (later absorbed into the Coast Guard) from 1879 until her death, at age 69, in 1911. She eventually became the highest-paid lighthouse keeper in the nation, earning $750 per year.
The Coast Guard renamed Lime Rock Light the Ida Lewis Lighthouse in 1924, the only lighthouse named after a keeper. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the Ida Lewis Yacht Club maintains it as a clubhouse. Until 2020, she was the only woman to receive the Coast Guard’s Gold Lifesaving Medal, the nation’s highest lifesaving decoration.
Commissioned April 12, 1997, the Coast Guard Cutter Ida Lewis is a 175-foot “Keeper Class” coastal buoy tender. She was the first of 14 ships of that class named to honor famous lighthouse keepers from the U.S. Lighthouse Service. USCGC Ida Lewis is responsible for a total of 374 aids to navigation. She also conducts search and rescue, domestic icebreaking, and ports, waterways, and coastal security from Long Island Sound, New York to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Arlington National Cemetery dedicated its 27-acre Millennium site in 2018. Lewis became the first woman honored with a road in the cemetery named for her.
Assessment or Group Discussion:
- What is a lighthouse and what is its role for mariners?
- What are some ways technological developments have reduced the need for lighthouses?
- Why might lighthouses or lighted beacons still be important today?
- Explain why women often became lighthouse keepers.
- Why do you think the federal government allowed women to work in this role? Why did it differ from other jobs of the time?
- How does Ida Lewis fit into the attitudes of the nineteenth century?
Additional Resources
Search the J. Candace Clifford Lighthouse Research Catalog.
Download: Little Kinnakeet, NC Educational lesson plan for teachers. This lesson is based on the National Register of Historic Places registration file for “Little Kinnakeet Lifesaving/Coast Guard Station” and primary sources about the station’s activities. Little Kinnakeet was written by Chris Eckard, former Historian at Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The lesson was edited by Fay Metcalf, education consultant, and the Teaching with Historic Places staff. This lesson is one in a series that brings the important stories of historic places into the classrooms across the country.
Mary Louise and J. Candace Clifford, Women Who Kept the Lights: An Illustrated History of Female Lighthouse Keepers (Cypress Communications, 2001).
Check out the Educational Materials from the United States Lighthouse Society.
Read more Lighthouse History from the American Lighthouse Foundation.
