Since publishing a story in the December 2000 issue of Lighthouse Digest by Ted Panayotoff of the Abagadasset Point Range Lights we have heard from Marilyn Bennett and Winona Woerter, both of whom are descendants of its last keeper, Dexter W. Baker.
Marilyn remembers going with her great-grandfather to tend the lights when she was a young child. She said that she recalled the tower that he would put the light in and how it seemed so big and tall, but that might well have been because she was so small at the time.
She recalled how they used to walk a path from her great-grandfather’s house. In her “mind’s eye” she says she can recall where the tower was. She said she does not recall there ever being a “Keepers house,” since they always walked from her great-grandfather’s house to the light. Being a man of modest means, she imagined that money didn’t come easy in those days and her grandfather’s job as a lamp lighter was of a financial help to him and did not require long distances of travel. She recalled stories of how he was reported to have a reputation of being honest, reliable and very religious. Unfortunately he died in 1934 when Marilyn was about 8 years old.
Lighthouse Digest is still looking for photographs of the lost Abagadasset Point Range Lights and keepers that took care of them until their demise sometime after 1934-35.
|