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Barbara Mabrity - Lighthouse Keeper and Hurricane Heroine
After her husband’s death, Barbara received appointment as Key West Light’s Keeper with responsibility for the lighthouse and its operation. This meant around-the-clock supervision of the facility, including cleaning, maintaining, and refueling the lighthouse’s 15 whale-oil-fueled lamps and associated reflectors. Her daily routine included climbing the narrow spiraling staircase to the lantern room and lighting the 15 lamps at nightfall and in low-visibility weather. Each morning, she ascended the stairs again to extinguish all 15 lamps and clean them. This process required her to disassemble each lantern and clean it, including its glass chimney. She also polished the light’s 15 silvered reflectors, covered them with a cotton cowl and filtered the whale oil from each lantern into a clean container. Lastly, she polished all the light’s brass appurtenances and reset each lantern wick in preparation for the next lighting.
It was the Great Havana Hurricane of 1846, which nearly took the
life of Keeper abrity. In the evening of Saturday,
Despite her losses, Barbara Mabrity continued to serve. In the aftermath of the storm, workers installed a temporary 30-foot beacon to substitute for the light. By 1847, the federal government purchased an acre on the highest ground in Key West and began construction of a new lighthouse and keeper’s quarters, completing the buildings the next year. In 1854, the U.S. Lighthouse Service allowed Mabrity to hire an assistant to help tend the light and buoys placed in the harbor. By this time, she was 72 years old and had kept Key West Light for nearly 30 years. In early 1861, Florida seceded from the Union. Key West, however, was an island cut-off from the mainland’s affairs and it relied heavily on federal institutions, such as the Army, Navy, Revenue Cutter Service, Customs Service and Lighthouse Service. Business and civic affairs continued on a wartime footing and Mabrity faithfully kept the light even though the Confederates had extinguished the rest of Florida’s lighthouses. By this time, Mabrity was nearly 80 years old. During the Civil War, Mabrity’s job was a daunting one, requiring
her to oversee the new keeper’s quarters, the larger lighthouse and
associated outbuildings, as well as certain aids to navigation
around Key West. In 1862, she was accused of harboring Southern
sympathies. She denied this charge, a denial supported by her record
of dedicated federal servic Ironically, in 1870, John Carroll, the husband of Barbara Mabrity’s granddaughter, became keeper of Key West Lighthouse. From that year until the light was automated in 1915, Mabrity’s descendants by blood or marriage had kept the Key West Light. Mabrity or someone from her family kept the Key West Light for 82 of its 89 years of manned operation. And, for most of the Mabrity years, a female family member oversaw operation of the light. Mabrity kept the light through fair weather and foul, including killer hurricanes. She served as Key West Lighthouse’s Keeper for nearly 40 years, much longer than did any other Key West keeper. No painting or picture of Mabrity has been located. However, in 1999, she was honored as the namesake of a U.S. Coast Guard 175-foot “Keeper”-Class buoy tender based out of Mobile, Alabama. Barbara Mabrity was a member of the long blue line and an unflinching example of devotion to duty. Coast Guard Gifts | Coast Guard Our Heroes, America's Best | America's Greatest Heroes | Our Valiant Troops | Veterans | Answering The Call | Uncommon Valor Honoring The Fallen | Don't Weep For Me | Remember The Fallen | Tears For Your Fallen | Our Wounded |
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