History of the Edgartown Lighthouse
The following is from New England Lighthouses, A Virtual Tour, reprinted with permission from the author, Jeremy D'Entremont. If you are interested in lighthouses, it's a great site.
The first white settlement on Martha's Vineyard was established in 1642, and those settlers called the area "Great Harbor." The well-protected harbor at Edgartown was one of the island's best.
Martha's Vineyard, like Nantucket, developed a booming whaling industry in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Between them, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard owned one quarter of America's whaling fleet just before the Revolution. By the 1800s, more than 100 Edgartown men were captains of whaling ships. The magnificent houses built for these captains are still among the most beautiful in New England.
The whaling industry was going strong in 1828 when the U.S. Government purchased a plot of land from Seth Vincent for $80 for the purpose of building a lighthouse at the entrance to Edgartown Harbor.
A two-story house with a lantern on the roof was built for about $4,000, with a fixed white light visible for 14 miles. The building was erected by a Mr. Bowker, working for contractor Winslow Lewis. The house had three rooms on the first floor and two on the second. This type of lighthouse building was commonly known as "Cape Cod style," but today no such structures survive on Cape Cod, with the exception of the much changed Bass River Lighthouse.
Edgartown Light sat offshore on a stone pier; the keeper had to row a short distance to the mainland. In 1830 a wooden causeway was built to the lighthouse at a cost of $2500. The walkway became known locally as the "Bridge of Sighs" because men about to leave on whaling voyages would frequently walk there with their wives or girlfriends.
The first keeper of Edgartown Light, Jeremiah Pease, was an accountant and surveyor in addition to his lightkeeping duties. Pease kept the light for 13 years, earning $300 a year. He later returned to serve six more years as keeper. Both times Pease, who was a Democrat, was removed for political reasons by the Whigs. Politics played a large role in the appointment of keepers before the formation of the Lighthouse Board in 1852.
In 1838 a lighthouse inspector wrote:
"...It cannot be long before Government will have to reconstruct this breakwater and Light-house, as the worms have made great havoc with them, and the sea threatens them with total destruction."
Sylvanus Crocker became keeper in 1841 for $350 per year. Crocker had been employed in the construction of the lighthouse as a carpenter. In October 1842 Keeper Crocker reported:
"The whole structure was badly done. The light-house originally stood on a wooden pier; three years ago it was necessary to replace this with one of stone, the old pier being entirely decayed and rotten. The frame of the house was light and weak, and the building always leaky. The lantern stands upon the roof of the house, and is shaken by the force of storms, causing other leaks in the roof... The causeway has been knocked to pieces five or six times, and has been an expensive concern to keep in sufficient order to cross it with safety. It is my opinion, the whole establishment was very badly built in the first place."
In 1847 a new stone breakwater was built for $4700, replacing the old wooden one. An 1850 inspection reported that Keeper Crocker was not living in the lighthouse, but had moved into another house close by, undoubtedly because he considered the lighthouse unsafe.
The lighthouse and walkway were damaged and repaired many times through the years. The Hurricane of 1938 pretty much finished off the old building. The Coast Guard took over the Lighthouse Service in 1939, and they wasted no time in demolishing Edgartown Light.
Plans to erect a beacon on a skeleton tower were objected to by residents, so the Coast Guard came up with an alternate plan: the relocation of an 1873 cast iron tower from Crane's Beach in Ipswich. The lighthouse was disassembled and brought by barge to Edgartown. The 45-foot tower received a modern automatic light flashing red every six seconds. The days of lighthouse keepers in Edgartown had ended after 111 years.
The Coast Guard refurbished the lighthouse in 1985. They sandblasted and repainted the tower and repaired damage done by vandals, some of it from gunshots.
The lighthouse was leased to the Vineyard Environmental Research Institute (V.E.R.I.) in 1985. A new plastic lens was installed in 1990 and Edgartown Light was converted to solar power. In 1994 the license was transferred to the Martha's Vineyard Historical Society.
**Additional Notes: In 2001, the deteriorating base of the lighthouse was rebuilt and the cobblestones for the Children's Memorial integrated into it. In 2007, the Town of Edgartown voted to allocate community preservation monies to the restoration of the lighthouse. The lead paint was removed or encapsulated, the painted wooden boards in the windows replaced with actual windows and a spiral staircase installed.
With a generous donation from the Blum family, the edgartown lighthouse, once again, has a lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse is open to the public during the day on weekends and holidays in the summer.