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There are no plans to place a Lighthouse Keeper Grave Marker at Isham Wyatt Hawkins’ grave since no official U.S. Lighthouse Service Records exist on him.
Here is what we know about Isham Wyatt Hawkins. He was born on March 28, 1830, in Greenville, South Carolina, where his father was a farmer. In 1850, he was a farm laborer at his sister’s husband’s farm in Spartanburg, South Carolina. By 1852, Isham had moved to Georgia and on June 17, 1856, he married Rebecca Frohock in Glynn County, Georgia. At the time, John F. Carmon was the St. Simons Island Lighthouse Keeper and is listed as such in A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval in the Service of the United States dated 1859. Then John F. Carmon seemly disappears, with no further records of him found.
In the July 2, 1860, St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia, US Census, Isham W. Hawkins is listed as a Lighthouse Keeper and lived in the Keeper’s Cottage with his wife and their two young daughters. Six months later, on January 19, 1861, Georgia voted to secede from the Union.
Macon’s Jackson Artillery got the assignment to guard the entrance to St. Simons Sound, and they wasted no time getting there. Ten days after Georgia seceded, it was reported in The Weekly Georgia Telegraph that Jackson’s Artillery had set up camp next to the St. Simon Lighthouse. Their commander demanded the Keeper surrender the lighthouse and then took over the keeper’s house for officer lodging. The lighthouse was to be used as a powder magazine.
There isn’t a record of Isaac W. Hawkins resigning from the Federal post of Lighthouse Keeper, nor are there records that he was a Confederate Keeper, yet he kept working. In the Confederate Papers Relating to Citizens, Isham W. Hawkins, Principal Lighthouse Keeper St. Simon’s Lighthouse, constructed a magazine on the St. Simons Battery from August 5-9, 1861. Isham submitted a bill for his services as carpenter and was paid $12.50.
As the Union Blockade ships made their way south, the St. Simons’ Fresnel lens. which had been installed in 1857, was dismantled. It was removed “to the interior” and was never found. On September 29, 1861, the Glynn Guards Infantry Company blew up the lighthouse to keep it out of the hands of the Union Navy. Keeper Isham W. Hawkins recorded in his log that “the light tower was blown down” by Confederate forces and the navigational buoys marking the approach to St. Simons Sound had been sunk.” He was therefore relieved of his duties.
Isham W. Hawkins is next found 150 miles west of St. Simons in the 1867 Georgia, Returns of Qualified Voters and Reconstruction Oath Books in Brooks County, Georgia. Isham returned to farming and on January 2, 1907, he died. He was 76 years old and is buried Elam Community Baptist Church Cemetery in Quitman, Brooks County, Georgia.
William H. Thiesen, Atlantic Area Historian, U.S. Coast Guard has admitted that pre-Civil war records are spotty and without Federal Lighthouse Service records, Isham Wyatt Hawkins may never be recognized as Lighthouse Keeper.
This story appeared in the
May/Jun 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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