Let There Be Light
For 136 years, the Point lookout Lighthouse
helped generations of Chesapeake Bay
mariners avoid shoals, navigate through dense
fog, and find the Potomac River’s mouth. The
beam shone until 1966, when an automated light off Point Lookout assumed the job of the original wood-and-masonry lighthouse.
Trailblazing Women.
Lighthouse keeping was one of the first
non-clerical government jobs available to
American women. In 1830, when Point
Lookout’s first keeper James Davis died after three months of service, his
daughter Ann replaced him, working on for
17 years. Then came short tenures for three men followed by two years for Martha Edwards. Her daughter Pamelia kept the light from 1855-1869.
A haunted lighthouse?
Isolated wind-swept buildings often attract
ghost stories, if not ghosts, and the point
Lookout lighthouse is no exception. Decades-old tales about strange sounds and sightings led a parapsychologist to study the lighthouse in 1980, and the Maryland Committee for Psychical Research held a séance there.
The committee reported the image of a Confederate soldier. But proof remains elusive.
“[Grandfather] would fix us baked turtle
for dinner which I didn’t look forward to.”
Recollection by Mildred Lucy Goldhborough
Voight, granddaughter of William Yeatman, lighthouse keeper for 37 years.
During Yeatman’s lengthy tenure
(1871–1908) the light was expanded
and modernized, a buoy depot built, and the house raised one story, with a new tin roof and porches added.
(caption) The Point Lookout Lighthouse, built by John Donohoo, began operations on September 20, 1830.
Marker is on Point Lookout Road, at its southernmost tip (Maryland Route 5), on the right when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
