Although most lighthouse keepers were married, at many small lighthouses they lived a solitary life while their families remained on the mainland. Beavertail, being on Conanicut Island, allowed the keepers and their family to live at the site.
There were 27 keepers at Beavertail. The first was Abel Franklin who was appointed in 1749. In 1844, Robert H. Wheeler was appointed keeper. He served four years. After he died, his wife Damaris became Beavertail's first and only female keeper.
When the current light tower was built in 1856, the U.S. Lighthouse Board constructed this brick lighthouse keeper's residence to replace an older house.
Carl Chellis was the Coast Guard Light Keeper at Beavertail in 1938. When the Great Hurricane of 1938 hit, Chellis' son Clayton, his daughter Marion, and six other children were returning home from school. As the school bus crossed the Mackerel Cove causeway, a huge storm surge hit and only the bus driver and the keeper's son Clayton survived.
In 1939 management of all lighthouses transferred from the U.S. Lighthouse Service to the U.S. Coast Guard. the light was automated in 1972, five years later a property custodian was assigned to provide maintenance and security.
When a sou'easter screeches through here you see some weather. I remember the night a few years ago when a sou'easter came through and raised plenty of trouble. I went out to set the fog signal running and the wind threw me right across the yard, into a wall. I crept over to the whistle house on my hands and knees.
Captain George T. Manders, Lighthouse Keeper, 1913 to 1937
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