As we approach the end of the Government Services Administration process to dispose of the Stratford Point Lighthouse, we can’t help but meet the conclusion of this process with a great deal of trepidation. While we have no idea who will be awarded the lighthouse, we hope that who or whatever it is, will open the lighthouse to the public in some consistent manner. Mel Allen, long time editor of Yankee Magazine, wrote the following in 2015: “Lighthouses have become icons of our yearning, speaking to us of lives spare and romantic at the same time. We wished we lived there; we know we cannot. So we carry the light inside, no matter where we live.”
The lighthouse has been an icon of our town’s yearning for 144 years. It’s a special, beautiful, and historic structure. However, its appearance has seen a number of changes over the years.
In 1969, the Coast Guard purchased a new fourth order Fresnel lens to replace the light at the top of the lighthouse. They removed the cupola in order to remove the old light and install the new one. When they attempted to replace the cupola over the new Fresnel lens, they realized the cupola was too small to place over the lens.
The Coast Guard offered to donate the cupola to the Stratford Historical Society. The Society lacked the funding to accept and care for the cupola, so the Society offered the cupola to the Town, and Town Manager Richard Blake accepted it. The cupola was relocated to Boothe Memorial Park, where it remained until 1990. Everyone in town was certain the lighthouse would remain topless forever.
In 1990, the Coast Guard found a new light for the lighthouse which was much less expensive to operate than the Fresnel lens had been. The Coast Guard mounted the new, smaller light and realized the cupola could once again be placed atop the lighthouse covering the new light. The Coast Guard asked the Historical Society and the Town if the cupola could be returned so that it could once again be mounted atop the lighthouse. The Society and the Town both agreed, and the cupola was moved to Stratford Point at the Coast Guard’s expense.
A rededication ceremony was scheduled for the lighthouse for July 14th, 1990, since the cupola had been placed on top of the lighthouse on July 5th. Daniel McCoart, Stratford Point’s second longest serving lighthouse keeper (1946-1963), attended the rededication of the Stratford Point Lighthouse in 1990. Asked if he had seen anything unusual around the waters at the lighthouse as his predecessor, Theodore Judson (who claimed to have seen sea serpents and mermaids), had seen, McCoart drew long and hard on his pipe and said, “I could tell you some things…” Then he turned to face out toward the silent rolling waters of the Sound.
Town Historian Lewis Knapp was asked to speak at the rededication service. He recounted the history of the lighthouse and the U.S. Lighthouse Service and Coast Guard’s interaction with the Town of Stratford over preceding decades. Lew gave a wonderful speech which is too lengthy to recount here. (You may download his entire speech at https://5il.co/3pb3k if you’d care to read it). However, I’d like to share just a few interesting passages from Lew’s speech.
In 1789 U.S. Senator William Samuel Johnson, from Stratford, voted with his colleagues to establish a federal lighthouse service. Johnson travelled between New York and Stratford by packet boat, and knew the need for beacons.
In 1821, the U.S. Lighthouse Service bought two acres of land at Stratford Point from the widow Walker, and contracted with Judson Curtis to build the first lighthouse and keeper’s cottage there. He built well. A hurricane on September 3rd destroyed the lighthouse at Black Rock, but Curtis’ half-built wooden frame survived.
In 1880, Captain Theodore Judson took over. A new lighthouse tower was erected in 1881, with the same third order Fresnel lens that had been installed in 1863, set inside a new iron framed lantern cage. It had the same clockwork-driven fog bell from 1864 mounted outside. This was the tower we see today, and is the oldest cast iron pre-assembled lighthouse tower still in use.
For 40 years, Judson tended light and bell alone, and his habit of talking to himself on the lonely job earned him the title “Crazy” Judson.
In 1939, the year the Lighthouse Service joined the Coast Guard, a historic event occurred in Stratford. On September 14, Igor Sikorsky’s VS-300 helicopter first lifted off the ground, behind the aircraft factory on the river. In November of 1942, Coast Guard Commander Frank Erickson observed the VS-300 take off from water on its floats, and recognized its great potential. Soon the Coast Guard purchased its first helicopters.
I’ve never lived, nor will I ever live, at the Stratford Point Lighthouse. However, I have spent many a peaceful, pensive hour there. For me, the lighthouse is an icon of my yearning, and I hope it remains so for Stratford generations yet to come.
