Status Updates From Kate's Light: Kate Walker a...

This was a beautifully illustrated biography and I learned something too about the first female lighthouse keeper.

An endpiece about Kate, with more biographical information about her is included, along with other reading material suggestions. This story was very interesting.

No man could be found to take the job, and after four years, Kate was hired permanently, for only $600.00 a year. It could be a very treacherous life. She had no days off- who would do that today? No modern conveniences for that time period, either. I ask again - Why would she stay there and raise her children there? The people back then were of sterner stuff than people today, in the United Staes.

The Statue of Liberty opened while she lived there. There were packets of newspapers to read, books from the traveling library that circulated from lighthouse to lighthouse! John contracts pneumonia and Kate has to care for John, the lighthouse and her children. He told her to man the light, as he was taken in a small boat to the hospital. He did not return. Later, her son, now an adult becomes her assistant.

John Walker and his family moved to Robbins Reef, an offshore lighthouse in the New York Bay between Manhattan and Staten Island. He died shortly thereafter, and Kate had to fight to remain there. I am amazed that she would want to. There was no yard, nowhere for her child to play, surrounded by water, no neighbors, nowhere for her to go. It was very hard work manning this lighthouse in those days.

The book has end pages that are a detailed view of the Port of New York, in 1892. There are ships of all kinds represented, along with the coastline of New Jersey, Manhattan, and Staten Island. It is the story of one of the first women on the Eastern Seaboard to be put in charge of an offshore lighthouse. Kathy Kaird immigrated with her young son, Jacob, from Germany in 1882. She married a lighthouse keeper.