|
Lighthouse keeping was often a family business. The lists of keepers at many long-established stations show multiple keepers with the same last name, who when researched, have close familial ties. It is assumed that the reason for lighthouse keeper dynasties and multi-generational service is because children were raised in such isolated circumstances that they knew no other life. They often married within the lighthouse community and carried on the tradition into succeeding generations.
But could there be another reason beyond just the environment of one’s upbringing? Might there be an actual lighthouse gene that gets passed on? Wilbur I. Brewster could be a case study in point.
Keeper Wilbur I. Brewster is best known for his time at Maine’s Cape Neddick Lighthouse, his final station assignment, where he served from 1948 to 1951. Leon F. Jackson profiled Brewster in the March 1951 issue of The Shoreliner magazine, describing how the keeper lived alone on the tiny island with his “ever faithful companion” Brutus, a bloodhound, along with a parrot and lovebirds. The parrot, fond of conversing with visitors, would often interject, “I’ll have a cup of coffee,” endearing itself to all. Besides caring for his domesticated birds, Brewster also befriended the island’s wild birds and tried to prevent them from falling prey to hawks and owls. Jackson wrote that a fishing trip with Brewster was “a never-to-be-forgotten experience,” as the keeper knew the best locations and exactly when the fish would be biting.
Brewster retired from the Coast Guard in 1951, but his career as a keeper began more than twenty years earlier when the United States Lighthouse Service was still responsible for the country’s navigational aids. His first lighthouse was on Isles of Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire, where he served for six years as an assistant before being placed in charge of the station in 1936.
In 1941, Wilbur decided to join the Coast Guard rather than remain a civilian lighthouse keeper. As part of the enlistment procedure, he obtained a copy of his birth certificate and was shocked to read that he had been born under the name of Wilber Irving Gott. The news must have made Wilbur question his own identity. He immediately contacted his mother and later provided the following sworn statement to the Coast Guard:
I, Wilbur Irving Brewster, being duly sworn, according to law, on oath depose and say that until recently I always supposed that my true name was Wilbur Irving Brewster, but when I was requested to furnish a certificate of my birth for purpose of enlistment in the Coast Guard Service, I discovered that my true name was Wilber Irving Gott, and that I was the son of a man that I had never before even heard of, as my mother divorced him when I was less than two years of age, and remarried. The name of her second husband was James E. Brewster, and I was brought up under the name of Brewster, and always supposed that was my real name. My school records were under the name of Brewster; my mother took out insurance on my life under the name of Brewster; I was married under the name of Brewster, and have brought up my children under the name of Brewster. I enlisted in the Fifth Infantry, U.S.A. in 1923 for a three-year enlistment under the name of Wilbur Irving Brewster. Upon ascertaining that the name I was christened under was Wilber Irving Gott, I immediately contacted my mother, who had remarried again after the death of my supposed father James Brewster, and learned the true facts from her.
Keeper Brewster obtained sworn statements from his mother and her sister as additional documentation for his enlistment. His mother’s statement reads in part:
Know all men by these presents that I, Mrs. Lucie Elva Nutter. . . being duly sworn, do depose and say:
That I am the mother of Wilbur Irving Brewster… and that he is a member of the United States Lighthouse Service and is stationed at the Isles of Shoals, Portsmouth, New Hampshire;
That said Wilbur Irving Brewster was born at Tremont, Maine on April 12, 1906 under the name of Wilber Irving Gott;
That his father was Montell D. Gott to whom I was married at that time;
That in January of 1908 I secured a divorce from said Montell D. Gott and was awarded custody of said Wilbur;
That in March of 1908 I married James E. Brewster and from the time of said marriage to said Brewster I called my said son Wilbur Irving Brewster;
That I never had his name officially changed, not knowing that it was necessary;
That my said son never knew that Montell D. Gott was his father.
While Wilbur had no memory of his birth father, the two did have something amazing in common: they both became lighthouse keepers! Montell D. Gott served as a keeper at Duck Island Lighthouse and Matinicus Rock Lighthouse in Maine from 1918 to 1929, and Wilbur joined the service a year later in 1930. What are the chances that a father and son, separated not long after the son’s birth, would both end up serving as lighthouse keepers? Is it mere coincidence or is there something more genetically involved in such a choice of career? Wilbur was never raised at a lighthouse station in a lighthouse family, so there can be no environmental factor to explain it.
Shortly after Wilbur joined the Coast Guard, he was transferred from Isles of Shoals to Maine’s Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse in 1942. Two years later, Wilbur was assigned to Petit Manan Lighthouse, where he spent a year before being placed in charge of Halfway Rock Lighthouse in 1945. After more than three years at Halfway Rock, Keeper Brewster was transferred to the highly desirable Cape Neddick Lighthouse, where he finished his career.
In 1965, Wilbur Brewster died at the age of fifty-eight in Medford, Oregon—just two years after his biological father passed away in Maine. It is unfortunate that they never had the chance to sit down together as father and son and share experiences from their lighthouse service years with one another.
Starting as early as 1932, research on sets of twins regarding hereditary career choices has shown a strong correlation for specific job preference in categories that represent major skills and activities involved in those positions. No one has specifically looked at the multi-generational lighthouse service community and done any kind of statistical analysis on it as of yet. There were many families who sent their children off for other family members to house during their school years as well as keepers who spent their careers at stag stations and were not permitted to have their families with them at all. How many of those children joined the Lighthouse Service or Coast Guard later in life when their childhood exposure to a lighthouse was minimal? As scientific technology and discovery progresses, who knows if there may yet be an inherited genetic code discovered for lighthouse keeping!
| 