Edwin Johnson HobbsĮdwin Johnson Hobbs went to California on the Kittery built Braque Martha in 1849. He was 73 years old when he died and is buried at the High Street Cemetery in Hampton.
Leavitt married Abigail Marston, daughter of Josiah Nudd. It required determination, strength, knowledge of the sea and simply good luck, sometimes. The job of lighthouse keeper was never boring. The boat popped up, bow first, near the narrows at Henderson Point.” He was picked up by a boat sent out by the diving party and taken aboard the schooner Yankee.
It finally sank leaving Leavitt floundering and exhausted. The boat overturned and swept downstream with Leavitt clinging to it. Leavitt had just been in Portsmouth for coal and provisions and was heading down the river on his way back to the island when the current swept his boat against a diving stand at Gangway Rock, where divers were working on blasting the ledge. It could have also been this incident that took place in 1885 that made him long to return to the family homestead ashore in Hampton: “In May 1885 Boon Island keeper Alfred J. It is said that he resigned from the keepers position due to an increase in responsibilities and no increase in pay. He was the lighthouse keeper at White Island on the Isles of Shoals from 1861 to 1866 and keeper at Boon Island in Maine from 1874 to 1886, retiring to Hampton at the age of 68. Alfred Johnson LeavittĪlfred Johnson Leavitt, son of Thomas and Mary Leavitt, was associated with his father in the family hotel at Great Boar’s Head, the Winnicumet. Godfrey’s Ledge off the coast at Little Boar’s Head in North Hampton is named after the seafaring Godfrey family. He developed pneumonia and died two weeks later on September 7th, 1885. He then learned that the last train to Boston, stopping in Hampton, had left and he decided to walk home in a cold rain. He piloted them to Portsmouth Harbor safely. At the end of August of that year, Godfrey was on North Beach when a passing sailboat signaled trouble aboard and asked for help. Godfrey and Theodate’s 50th wedding anniversary was celebrated by his entire clan in July of 1885. Godfrey returned to his homestead in 1865. Pierce won the election and became the 14th president of the United States, the only president to visit the Isles of Shoals. He rowed the eight miles from the Isles arriving in the morning in Portsmouth to pick up the senator. Senator Franklin Pierce out to the Isles of Shoals to campaign for president. Another story about Godfrey tells of when employed as White Island keeper that he was selected to go to Portsmouth and take U.S. Perseverance and stamina were strong in the Godfrey genes. They then walked the 45 miles to Concord and joined the 14th NH Volunteer Infantry Company D. Story has it that two of his sons, Jacob and Oliver (Jonathan had 15 children with his wife Theodate Hobbs) walked from the Godfrey Homestead on Mill Road in Hampton to North Beach and then rowed to the White Island lighthouse to ask their father’s permission to enlist in the Civil War effort. Before becoming lighthouse keeper, he was a farmer and a ship’s captain on his vessel the Black Hawk, which transported lumber and salt from the Hampton River to Boston from 1830 to the 1840s. Captain Jonathan GodfreyĬaptain Jonathan Godfrey, during the Civil War around 1861, left his family on the mainland to serve as the assistant lighthouse keeper on White Island at the Isles of Shoals. They were the “keepers of the lights” that saved many a ship and lives with the welcome beacons from lighthouses on the New England coast. Three men from Hampton became lighthouse keepers in the mid to late 1800s: Captain Jonathan Godfrey, Edwin Johnson Hobbs and Alfred Johnson Leavitt.
Consider life on a small island as a lighthouse keeper sometimes with family sometimes not, far from social contact for months at a time, in a self-sufficient world under often desperately difficult circumstances.
We think we know what isolation is like having spent months with pandemic precautions.
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