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Wesley Atwood Pingree joined the U.S. Lighthouse Service as a keeper for seven years in 1892 while his father, Henry, was also serving. He spent those years assigned to Deer Island Light with the exception of one year in 1894 when he went to Boston Harbor Light to assist his father, who had taken over for Albert Horte that year. That decision proved to be fortuitous for Wesley, as he became acquainted with Albert Horte’s sister, Josephine, who also spent time on the island. She and Wesley Pingree married in 1895. The couple then returned to Deer Island Light where Wesley served another four years before moving on to work as an oiler and engineer at the Deer Island pumping station.
It was in 1916 that Wesley, along with his 17-year-old son, Phillip, tried unsuccessfully to rescue Deer Island Lighthouse keeper Joseph B. McCabe who drowned while going back to the light. The details of the tragedy are recounted in the “In Memoriam” column of the March/April 2021 edition of Lighthouse Digest. Josephine Pingree wrote an eye-witness account of the incident in a small notebook she kept, along with other personal reminiscences of her lighthouse life. Excerpts from her previously unpublished notebook are contained in The Keeper’s Wife column elsewhere in this issue of Lighthouse Digest.
Another story about Wesley was told by lighthouse historian Edward Rowe Snow: “One day Wesley Pingree encountered the famous Capt. Turner whose buried treasure at Cape Cod I later found. Wesley said that Turner was a giant in size and had a long, flowing beard. One day Wesley hiked down to Bug Light and visited Capt. Turner who was then the keeper. Turner took him back to Boston Light, and Wesley made such a fuss at not being taken ashore to the light before the keeper took him to Ft. Warren, that just off the Boston Light wharf, Turner reached over, ‘grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and before I realized what was happening, tossed me into the sea.’” (Lighthouse Digest archives)
Back to the edition of: Nov/Dec 2022
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