Did you know that a 19-foot lighthouse tower and a keeper’s dwelling, both made of brick, were built on Straitsmouth Island in 1835, replaced by a second 37-foot tower in 1896, automated in 1967, and is still in operation. The first keeper was Benjamin Andrews, chosen because he was not likely to “serve as a juror, or to perform military duty.” (Would love to know why.) John Davis became keeper in 1841 at a yearly salary of $350. After inspecting Straitsmouth Island Light in 1842, engineer I.W.P. Lewis called the station a “specimen of contract work of the worst kind.” Straitsmouth Island was owned for many years by the naval architect William Francis Gibbs and his wife, New York socialite and opera supporter, Vera Cravath Gibbs. The island was left to the Massachusetts Audubon
Society following the Gibbses’ deaths in the 1960s.
Good Morning Gloucester 
A Man and His Ship written by Steven Ujifusa (Simon and Schuster, 2012) has Vera Gibbs death in Rockport in 1985. William Francis Gibbs had died on September 6, 1967. The Straitsmouth Island portion of the Gibbs estate was given to the Audubon society in the 1970s.
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