While the dwelling was painted white, Biloxi Lighthouse received a coat of black coal tar to protect it from rust. The dilapidated keeper’s dwelling was also renovated in 1866, and both the tower and dwelling were painted. As part of the restoration work performed during the fall of 1866, earth was removed from beneath the lighthouse on the side opposite the lean, and the tower gradually returned to its former vertical position. Work on restoring the tower after the war started on Septemand was completed just over two months later. A plain brick tower might have collapsed under such conditions, but Pleasonton’s iron sheath, kept the tower intact. The resulting void caused the tower to lean two feet from vertical. A 104-foot-long concrete seawall was constructed in 1854 to protect the bank from erosion, something that would have been unnecessary according to Inspector Danville Leadbetter if the tower would have been placed “100 years from the edge of the bank,” where it “would have been equally efficient and perfectly safe.”ĭuring a storm in 1860, part of the seawall collapsed, allowing the surging sea to undermine the foundation on one side of the tower.
In the 1850s, the tower stood on the edge of a sand bank, just twenty-nine feet from the shoreline. Although the light is today a good distance from the water’s edge, this hasn’t always been the case. I ascended the Tower at and after the last destructive storm when man stood appalled at the danger I encountered.” Her stipend likely continued during the conflict, as she is listed as the official keeper until 1866.įollowing the war, Perry Younghans was appointed keeper of Biloxi Lighthouse, which was now equipped with a fifth-order Fresnel lens. Pettus, Governor of Mississippi, reporting on the theft of oil from the lighthouse by “disreputable characters” and noting her diligence in tending the light: “I have ever faithfully performed the duties of light keeper in storm and sunshine attending it. Concerned that her salary would be interrupted during the war, Mary wrote to John J. After the death of her relatives, Keeper Reynolds was guardian for several orphaned children, who lived with her at the lighthouse. When the Civil War erupted in 1861, a local group of “Home Guards” ordered the light extinguished and seized the keys to the tower. Mary Reynolds was the first female keeper, serving from 1854 to 1866. In 1856, a fourth-order Fresnel lens replaced the array of lamps and reflectors.Īlthough the first keeper was a man, Biloxi Lighthouse would later earn the distinction of having been kept by female keepers for more years than any other lighthouse in the United States. Part of Keeper Howard’s job was to service the nine lamps and fourteen-inch reflectors, supplied by Winslow Lewis, that comprised the lighting apparatus.
The forty-five-foot-tall tower was completed in the spring of 1848 under the supervision of Henry Scoles, and Marcellus J. A one-acre tract for the lighthouse and keeper’s dwelling was purchased from John Fayard for $600, and metal plates, cast by Murray and Hazlehurst Vulcan Works in Baltimore under a contract for $6,347, were bolted together to form the lighthouse, which was strengthened by a brick lining. The utility of the tower was certainly proven in 1998, when Hurricane Georges toppled the masonry tower at Round Island leaving Biloxi Lighthouse the last standing of the more than ten lighthouses originally built to mark the Mississippi coastline.īiloxi Lighthouse was one of three Mississippi Sound lighthouses authorized in 1847 by legislation sponsored by Mississippi Representative Jefferson Davis.
In 1847, Stephen Pleasonton, Fifth Auditor of the Treasury Department, announced, “I intend to put a Cast Iron Light House at Biloxi and this will prove the utility which they may be of.” Following a $12,000 appropriation by Congress on March 3, 1847, Biloxi Lighthouse became the first cast-iron tower in the South.
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