With a salary of $750 per year, Lewis was for a time the highest-paid lighthouse keeper in the nation. Ida finally received the official appointment as keeper in 1879, largely through the efforts of an admirer, General Ambrose Everett Burnside, a Civil War hero who became a Rhode Island governor and United States senator. Her mother eventually died of cancer in 1878. By 1877 her mother's health was failing, leaving Ida with increased housekeeping and care-giving responsibilities. Her mother was then appointed keeper, although Ida continued to do the keeper's work. Lewis and her mother tended the Lime Rock Light for her father from 1857 until 1873, when he died. Responding to criticism that it was un-ladylike for women to row boats, Lewis said that "None – but a donkey, would consider it 'un-feminine', to save lives." She became very skillful at handling the heavy rowboat.
She rowed her younger siblings to school every weekday and fetched supplies from town as they were needed. By the age of 15 Lewis had become known as the best swimmer in Newport. Since Lime Rock was almost completely surrounded by water, the only way to reach the mainland was by boat. Lewis expanded her domestic duties to include caring for him and a seriously ill sister and also, with her mother's assistance, tending the light: filling the lamp with oil at sundown and again at midnight, trimming the wick, polishing carbon off the reflectors, and extinguishing the light at dawn. After the family had been at Lime Rock for less than four months, he had a stroke and became disabled. Her father was transferred to the Lighthouse Service and appointed keeper of Lime Rock Light on Lime Rock in Newport in 1854, taking his family to live on the rock in 1857. Ida Lewis was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest of four children of Captain Hosea Lewis of the Revenue-Marine. (Febru– October 24, 1911) was an American lighthouse keeper noted for her heroism in rescuing people from the seas. In the US, periodic maintenance of the lights is now performed by visiting Coast Guard Aids to Navigation teams. The earliest record of a named individual in a formal capacity as a lighthouse keeper was William, a member of the now famous Knott family, who was appointed to the South Foreland lighthouse near Dover, England in 1730. Electrification and other automated improvements such as remote monitoring and automatic bulb changing made paid keepers resident at the lights unnecessary. Lighthouse keepers were needed to trim the wicks, replenish fuel, wind clockworks and perform maintenance tasks such as cleaning lenses and windows. Lighthouse keepers were sometimes referred to as "wickies" because of their job trimming the wicks. A lighthouse keeper is the person responsible for tending and caring for a lighthouse, particularly the light and lens in the days when oil lamps and clockwork mechanisms were used.
0 kommentar(er)
