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Offshore from the mainland of Virginia’s Northampton County there was once a piece of land called Hog Island and on Hog Island there were once two lighthouses. Neither stand today.
The stories of the happy residents of Hog Island are nearly lost in the pages of time. The history of the island is mysterious, interesting, and when studying it, one wants to turn back the hands of time to live with the wonderful and industrious people that once inhabited this active island.
However, there is at least one lighthouse keeper still living who remembers life on this remote barrier island. Last year I had the opportunity to meet Charles R. Kearn and his wonderful wife Ruth. They went into great detail in documenting, for Lighthouse Digest, this lost part of American lighthouse history.
It was back in 1672 that the first real settlement on Hog Island was established. However, it wasn’t until 1904 that Hog Island Lighthouse keeper Charles A. Sterling documented the history of this island that is now buried under the Atlantic Ocean.
Sterling named each of the first settlers of the island, noting at that time, that none of their descendants could be found. The settlement, like the famous Roanoke Island colony, simply disappeared, never to be heard of again. At that time, the island was named Machipongo.
The island was again settled in the 1700’s. It was then that these settlers discovered that they were not alone on the island. They were inundated with hogs, hundreds if not thousands of them. Where the hogs came from is unknown; there are several theories, one being that they were left by the original colony that had so mysteriously disappeared in the late 1600’s.
The people who settled here had very little to do with the people on the mainland. They didn’t dislike them, but they did their best not to associate with them. They wanted their way of life protected from outsiders. In fact, not one islander volunteered to serve in World War I, feeling that it was none of their business. According to Edna M. Marstad in her book, Yesterday’s Hog Island, it was the Sears &Roebuck catalog that was most revered by the islanders. Most of their supplies in fact came from the catalog, as there was only one general store on the island.
In 1853 the first lighthouse was built on Hog Island. In later years a life saving station was also built. The islanders and “government people” got along well. The lighthouse cut down the number of shipwrecks. This also changed the building habits of the islanders who used the timbers from shipwrecks for building. By the late 1800’s the old lighthouse was in rough shape, having deteriorated badly. A new modern erector-set style lighthouse was built to replace it, being lit on January 31, 1896.
Lighthouse Keeper Sterling noted in his writings that the island people were extremely religious, that the man was the king of his castle and that they were shocked by the new ways of women on the mainland. The island had no bank, the people had little need for cash, and they kept what they had in their homes. There was never a recorded robbery on the island.
However, the mainlanders soon discovered this island paradise, and, much to the dismay of the islanders, they eventually built a hotel on the island and tourists came by the boatload. However, with the hotel on the other side of the island, the locals’ fears were soon subsided, as the tourists seldom associated with them or even came to their part of the island. Former President Grover Cleveland was a frequent visitor, coming to the island to hunt.
By the 1930’s the islanders realized that time was against them. Every year the island got smaller and smaller as the ocean took over, with the help of storms that hit the island head on. The islanders contacted the Army Corp of Engineers who sent a representative to the island. One of the sites he saw on that visit was the first abandoned lighthouse. Although still standing, it was now surrounded by water, 50 feet off shore. His report was grim; time was running out for Hog Island.
By the summer of 1934 many of the islanders started to move their homes from the island to the mainland, many literally, on barges. Then one of the worst hurricanes to hit the United States descended on Hog Island. It was the famous one of 1938. Although there is no mention of it, it was this hurricane that most likely caused the demise of the island’s first lighthouse. Many of the buildings still left on the island were destroyed or heavily damaged. Hundreds of birds flew in the beam of the newer lighthouse and heaps of their dead bodies laid at the base of the tower.
That was the final chapter. Now, the only people left on the island were Coast Guard personnel, and even their time was running out. By 1948 the government realized they needed to save what they could and the lighthouse was torn down.
Today the entire area is underwater, but unlike the Lost City of Atlantis, we know where is once was.
Mr. Sterling, the light keeper who tended the lighthouse from 1901 to 1907, also went on to serve as a keeper at Cove Point Light in Maryland and the Craney Islands in Virginia. He was awarded the Gold Life Saving Medal twice, once for saving 12 passengers off a wrecked ship and again for saving a crewman from a burning freighter.
One of the long-time keepers of Hog Island was Capt. George Doughty. There were a number of photographs of him in the book Yesterday’s Hog Island, but very little seems to have actually been written about him.
Back to Charles R. Kearn, who sparked our original interest in the history of Hog Island. Mr. Kearn, a native of Andover, Massachusetts, was one of the last modern day government people at Hog Island and never really knew most of the people that had lived their lives on Hog Island. They were for the most gone by the time the Coast Guard stationed him at the Hog Island Lifeboat Station in 1942.
Mr. Kearn spent one year and six months at Hog Island, much of that time at the lighthouse. His wife, Ruth, did not actually live with him on the island. She did visit and did spend time at the lighthouse, but that was after the storms had demolished all the houses. It was then that he volunteered for amphibious training. He became what is now referred to as part of the “Greatest Generation.” He went on to take part in the invasions of Iwo Jima, Guam, Tinian, Manila, Leyte, Subic Bay, Iloilo, Okinawa and Inchon Korea and Tsing Tao China.
He left China in December 1946 having the rare distinction of serving on board the USS LST 764 when it was commissioned and when it was decommissioned.
In looking through his photo albums of his life, one cannot imagine all that he went through and saw. However when he talks about the real heroes that never returned, the tears well up in his eyes.
Now residing in Florida, the Kearns return to Maine each year to locate and restore many of that state’s small and forgotten cemeteries. It is people like the Kearns that we all owe so much to today. They are as Tom Brokaw’s book says “the Greatest Generation.”
This story appeared in the
March 2001 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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