Digest>Archives> Jan/Feb 2015

Daisy, The Loneliest Cow

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Sketch done in 1897 by W. Taber of the cow at ...

Maine’s Matinicus Rock Lighthouse, located on a 32-acre granite island 22 miles out to sea and about five miles south of Matinicus Island, was not a hospitable place to live, but for many years it was a family station. One of its most noted inhabitants was Abbie Burgess, the famous lighthouse heroine, who grew up on the island where her father, Samuel Burgess, had been the keeper from 1853 to 1861. But, by the late 1800s, another resident of the island, one that belonged to lighthouse keeper William G. Grant, was a four legged cow named Daisy. The creature was valuable because it supplied fresh milk for the lightkeeper’s family.

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Matinicus Rock Lighthouse Station in the late ...

In the June, 1897 issue of Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, writer Gustav Kobbe, who journeyed on the Lighthouse Tender Iris to visit the island and its eight inhabitants, including the keepers and assistants, wrote:

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The cover of the June, 1897 edition The Century ...

“Like the chickens and ducks, Daisy is sensibly affected by her environment. The very method of her landing upon the rocks was enough to cause her to lose faith in human nature during the rest of her existence. “She was brought over from Matinicus Island in a small boat, and when within a short distance of the rock the boat was tipped over so far to one side that Daisy lost her balance and fell into the water, where she was left to swim ashore. “Although she is the object of affectionate regard to the little community on Matinicus Rock, she does not seem to have forgotten her involuntary plunge. Often I have seen her standing upon that mass of barren granite, the only living thing in view, the wind furrowing up her hide. She would gaze out upon the wild waste of waters with a driven, lonely look, the pathos of which was almost human. “The patches of soil on the rock yield about grass enough to last her during the summer months. In winter the sear aspect of these patches adds to the desolate appearance of this treeless, shrub-less ocean home.

“She formerly found some companionship in a rabbit, with which she was accustomed to play with at dusk; but the rabbit died. The cow’s existence was again brightened by the birth of a calf. It became necessary, however to kill the little cow baby, and the mother’s grief over taking off of her offspring was so intense that she refused to eat food for three days.

“Often the cow looks across the reach in the direction of Matinicus Island, and moos pathetically, as if longing to wander over the distant pastures.”

After this 1897 account, no other mention of Daisy is ever mentioned in the history of Matinicus Rock Lighthouse.

This story appeared in the Jan/Feb 2015 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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