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Photographs of keepers and or family members of the lighthouses on Maine’s Kennebec River are extremely rare and nearly impossible to locate.
However, Shirley Morong recently sent us a few photos of her short stay at Perkins Island Lighthouse while her husband was stationed there as a temporary keeper when the regular keeper got ill. The photograph here shows her husband Clif Morong and their two sons Jerry and Bobby on the steps at the lighthouse in 1946.
Their short time there was in the winter months and during the first few weeks they had no heat because the furnace was broken. The only heat was from the downstairs wood-burning stove, which they lived and slept by at that time. There was also no electricity and no bathroom in the keeper’s house. The outhouse was in a separate building reached by a boardwalk that also served as a workshed. She remembers her husband would keep a lighted lantern there to keep the frost off the toilet seat.
The Morong’s only spent two months there until keeper Fred Osgood was transferred there to become the station’s last keeper.
During their lighthouse duty the Morong’s also served at Cape Elizabeth Light, Maine and Race Point Light, Massachusetts.
The Perkins Island Lighthouse tower is now licensed to the American Lighthouse Foundation. Unfortunately the keeper’s house and other buildings are owned by the state of Maine, which has not taken care of them and they are in a total state of disrepair.
This story appeared in the January 2001 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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