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A lighthouse keeper or lightkeeper is a 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. Lighthouse keepers were sometimes referred to as "wickies" because of their job trimming the wicks. [1]
Prior to being automated in 1983, the 'wickies' operated the light for 106 years. [4] This was the last manned lighthouse on Lake Michigan [8] and the last Michigan lighthouse to lose its keeper. [9] The light is now a Vega VRB-25 system. [1]
The keepers, or "wickies", hand-cranked a 160-pound weight up the lighthouse's center shaft every 75 minutes to keep the lens turning. Light was produced by a "Funck" hydraulic oil lamp that needed to be refueled every four hours and whose wicks had to be trimmed regularly.
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Dombrowski is among some of this nation's last resident lighthouse keepers. The 64-year-old and his wife have called Goat Island Lighthouse home for the better part of 30 years. Built in 1833, the ...
Alcatraz Lighthouse, 2007. The first lighthouse was 50 feet (15 m) in height, and was based on a design that was typical of early "Cape Cod style" lighthouses, in which the light tower was an integral part of the keeper's house, and was centered atop the dwelling's roof.
Walker, c. 1909 Katherine Walker (née Katharina Görtler; November 25, 1848 [1] – February 5, 1931) was a German-American lighthouse keeper.. Walker tended the Robbins Reef Light in New York Harbor for more than 30 years after the death of her husband, Captain John Walker, who had been appointed keeper of the light in 1885. [2]
The Knott family of lighthouse keepers is credited with the longest period of continuous service in the history of staffed lighthouses, commencing in 1730 [1] [2] at South Foreland, Kent, with William Knott [3] and ending in 1906 at Skerries (Anglesey, Wales) with Henry Thomas Knott (son of George Knott – see below) who died in 1910 having retired to Crewe.