8/13/2023 0 Comments Lighthouse keeper jobs 2021Roscoe and the children quickly gathered driftwood while Mary tore her petticoat into strips. Rescue might be days away and the light positively had to be lit that night, so something had to be done. Once, the Chandlers were picnicking on a nearby island and one of the children failed to properly secure the boat, which was far from shore by the time anyone noticed. Living at offshore light stations bred ingenuity in the Chandler family. In the 1920s, when Keeper Chandler was needed onshore, a woman across on the mainland would hang a black suit outside her house as a signal. Lacking a telephone, the families at Green Island devised unique modes of communication. It was worse than learning about Santa Claus. My mother, Catherine, was well grown before her older brother told her what was happening. Then, they would have fresh meat for some days. Late in the year, a certain man would visit and the lambs would disappear. “Each spring,” says Joseph Kelly, “the sheep would have little ones. The Chandlers also kept a couple of sheep on the island. On a summer camping trip in the 1920s, Keeper Chandler and his family caught almost 300 pounds of cod, hake, and cusk nearby. Like other keepers at the station before him, Roscoe Chandler augmented the family’s food supply by fishing and hunting in the area. The winters must have been long and cold for Roscoe Chandler. In his booklet on the history of the light station, 44✡5’N 68✣0’W: The Blue Hill Bay Lighthouse, Mark Baldwin wrote that “catching and milking the cows, and rounding them up by dory when thunderstorms spooked them into the bay, was a chore for the children.”īaldwin also wrote that the children wintered on the mainland, where they attended school, with their mother Mary. According to Joseph Kelley (Catherine’s son), the cows were particularly important because Keeper Chandler had ulcers and needed a good supply of milk. Along the way, they stopped at a farm each day and swapped the cow’s milk for lodging and a meal.Įventually, two cows were pastured on nearby Flye Island to provide milk for the Chandlers. In their early teens, they obtained a cow and walked her from Monroe all the way to Blue Hill Bay Light. Two of Roscoe and Mary’s children, Catherine and Everett, lived at the farm while attending high school in Monroe. The Chandlers also owned a farm in Monroe, Maine, just north of Belfast. Roscoe Chandler became the light’s keeper in the 1920s. A relatively comfortable light station not too far offshore, Blue Hill Bay had a fairly short list of keepers in its 76 active years. In the mid-19th century, the town of Ellsworth on Blue Hill Bay was said to be the second busiest lumber port in the world, so the lighthouse was established on the west side of small, low-lying Green Island in 1857. The Blue Hill Bay Lighthouse on Green Island near the town of Brooklin, Maine may not be among the best known in the state, but it was vitally important to local trade in its time. His first assignment was Franklin Island Light in Muscongus Bay, followed by a transfer to Blue Hill Bay Light. Chandler left the seafaring life and became a lighthouse keeper so that he could spend more time with his family. Roscoe married Mary Manion (or Manning) in 1911, and they eventually had seven sons and four daughters. He didn’t return home for two or three years.” Roscoe biked home, got his father’s signature, and sailed. “The captain agreed - if he could get his father’s permission. “Roscoe, not much more than 12 at the time, asked if he could join instead,” according to his grandson, Joseph G. It seems his older brother planned to sign on to serve on the Revenue Cutter Woodbury but changed his mind. Chandler first went to sea at a very young age. Thankfully, his descendants have chronicled much of his life. Born “way Down East” in the coastal town of Addison, Maine in 1889, Roscoe Chandler – mariner, lighthouse keeper, and fisher, spent his entire life in close proximity to the ocean.
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