FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Corolla, NC – By December 1 of this year, the Currituck Beach Lighthouse will have spent 150 years lighting what had been the last dark space on the Atlantic Coast of the United States. The Light Station had three keepers serving at any given time during its period of historic interpretation (1875-1937): a principal keeper, a first assistant, and a second assistant. All told, 24 keepers lived on site, usually with their families, filling the 1876 duplex keepers’ dwelling.
Honoring 150 Years of Light and Service
Over the past twenty years, while working for the Outer Banks Conservationists, lighthouse manager and researcher Meghan Agresto has been compiling the stories of the lives and service of these oil-carrying keepers who tended the beacon.
As part of the plans to commemorate the year, she shares her work and invites descendants, historians, genealogists, and lighthouse lovers to contribute any additional information that may enhance this record.
Call for Contributions
Do you have photos from any point in these families’ lives you would like to share? Know a cause of death that the biographies are missing? Have contact with a descendant you think you enjoy the story of their relative? See an error?
Take a look at the working draft of the biographies, which range between 2 and 29 pages, and reach out to Meghan Agresto at currituckbeachlighthouse@obcinc.org if you have pertinent information. Your contributions will help ensure that the Currituck Beach Lighthouse keepers receive the lasting recognition they deserve.
These documents reflect work with collections from:
- United States National Archives
- Maps and Light Lists publications at the Outer Banks History Center
- Coast Guard Historian’s Office
- Descendant interviews and oral histories
- Donated archives and photographs
- Cemetery research
- Historical newspaper reviews
- Digital archives via the U.S. Lighthouse Society, LighthouseFriends.com, Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, Fold3.com, and Google Books
By December 1, the 150th anniversary of the Outer Banks Conservationists/Currituck Beach Lighthouse, we will have these bios published on our website. Please share widely in the meantime.
Visit the Currituck Beach Lighthouse
The lighthouse is open daily 9 AM–5 PM, weather permitting, and until 8 PM on Wednesdays and Thursdays in the summer. Admission is $13 per person to climb, and season passes are available for frequent visitors.
The 24 Keepers of Currituck Beach Lighthouse:
- Nathaniel G. Burris
- Lewis Napoleon Simmons
- Thomas T. Everton
- Horatio William Heath
- F.W. (Fredrick William) Bell
- William Shinault
- William Scott
- Thomas P. Reid
- Amasa J. Simpson
- Fabius E. Simpson
- George W. Wallace
- Charles E. Ansell
- Lazarus G. Hinnant
- William Riley Austin
- Wesley Austin
- William Joseph Simmons
- Nathan Hooker Swain
- George Garner Johnson
- Loren Edward Tillett
- Homer Tredwell Austin
- Charles P. Morgan
- Amasa J. Quidley
- Edward B. Austin
- James Benjamin Cox
