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ROCKPORT — Members of the Thacher & Straitsmouth Islands Association, along with representatives from the U.S. Coast Guard Station Gloucester, will soon two people who tended Thacher Island’s lighthouses next month.
Honored will be Alexander and Maria Bray. Alexander Bray served as a keeper on Thacher Island from 1861 to 1869.
The ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. Nov. 15 at Beechbrook Cemetery, 401 Essex Ave. in Gloucester. During the gathering, a small bronze U.S. Lighthouse Service marker and flag will be placed near the graves of Alexander and Maria Bray.
Markers will eventually placed at other lighthouse keepers gravesites, including for Addison Franklin Tarr, who served for 36 years from 1878-1914; John Farley, who died at age 23 in 1891, when he was flung from a boat landing and died instantly of head injuries; Corporal Felix Doyle, who served as Alexander Bray’s assistant from 1865 to 1866; and Albert Giddings Hale, who was the first head keeper in the newly built twin lighthouses in 1861. Hale served as a keeper until 1864.
“We’re honoring different keepers at Thacher Island,” Paul St. Germain said. “The main one is Maria Bray.”
St. Germain is president emeritus of the non-profit volunteer Thacher & Straitsmouth Islands Association, which he led for the 23 years preceding current President Bill Whiting.
Maria Haskell Herrick Bray was a 19th century writer, editor and phycologist, who was known for tending Thacher Island Light — especially during a winter storm that lasted from Dec. 21-24, 1864.
St. Germain tells this story of the storm: Maria Bray and her nephew Sydney Haskell were trapped on the island while her husband, Alexander, was stranded on the mainland taking care of an ill co-worker. During the storm, she had to walk back and forth between and climb the more than 150 steps of each lighthouse to keep the flames lit.
“She not only had to refill the lamp, she had to clean the Fresnel lens,” he said.
The Bray family was reunited on Christmas Day in 1864.
Dr. Syd Wedmore, chairman of Rockport’s Thacher & Straitsmouth Islands Town Committee, said the recognition is long overdue.
“I think it’s a great recognition for a woman who was steadfast in the face of adversity,” he said. “Live-in lighthouse keepers have been unheralded for what they did.”
During her lifetime, Maria Bray was recognized as an expert in marine algae. In 1876, she exhibited her herbarium collection in the Women’s Building at the Centennial Exposition in held in Philadelphia.
She was a member of the Essex Institute in Salem, which merged in 1992 with the Peabody Museum of Salem to form the Peabody Essex Museum.
Maria Bray is also the namesake of the U.S Coast Guard cutter Maria Bray, which is a keeper buoy tender. Launched in 1999, she is home-ported in Atlantic Beach, Florida.
Hundreds of other lighthouse keepers have manned the twin lighthouses on Thacher Island, St. Germain said.
“We picked five keepers to recognize,” he said. “There are five plaques for five keepers. It was just our little way of honoring these people.”
The bronze markers to be placed at the gravesites are approximately 6 by 6 inches.
“Other associations like ours, in Maine and other places, have honored people with the same plaque,” St. Germain said. “We might do more eventually. We’re just trying this out.”
Stephen Hagan may be contacted at 978-675-2708, or shagan@gloucestertimes.com.
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By Stephen Hagan | Staff Writer
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