When Lilacs Bloom |
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Lilac are not native to America, despite Whitman's use of them in his elegy for the very native Abraham Lincoln. They may have been ordered from Holland by Elder Brewster and his son Jonathan, early settlers of my hometown Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Beyond the shingled cape stands Gurnet Lighthouse, officially named Plymouth Light. The Pilgrims called this headland at the mouth of the bay 'ye Gurrnett's Nose' because it reminded them of a similar point on the English Channel named after the gurnard perch found there.
The first beacon at Gurnet was built in 1710 and replaced in 1768 by a single tower lighthouse with twin lamps. It stood on land owned by John and Hannah Thomas, who were paid the equivalent of $200 a year as its first keepers (one per lamp!). When John left to fight in the Revolutionary War, Hannah tended the light, becoming the first woman keeper. Did she think of her job as 'light housekeeping'?
The lighthouse has its own Revolutionary War story to tell. In 1776, Duxbury, Kingston and Plymouth collaborated to build Fort Andrew at Gurnet and during an exchange with the British frigate Niger, the lighthouse was in the way. It was hit by a cannonball but that piece of history disappeared when the structure later burned. The twin towers that replaced it in 1802 were rebuilt forty years later to the consternation of mariners who complained that the double lights merged into a single beam. The illusion confused Gurnet with Sandy Neck Light in Barnstable on Cape Cod. As a result, the northeast tower was dismantled in 1924.
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