keepers
The records for the keepers at Spring Point Ledge Light Station are spotty. The handwritten log books were not signed, so it’s difficult to tell who was on duty when an entry was made. There are only a few surviving records of the keepers who served after 1912. After the Lighthouse Service was transferred to the Department of Commerce in 1903 a transition began to a more formalized method of appointing keepers. It was put under Civil Service rules and required a considerable amount of paperwork to operate.
Take the case of Assistant Keeper Daniel J. Doyle. He took the exam for the position in 1914 and was informed that he was number seventeen on the list of applicants. He moved up to number three by June 15, 1915, “due to the declination” of eligible names and was recommended to the post of Assistant Keeper as of July 10, 1915. However, before all of this he was appointed to a probationary position as a “laborer” at Spring Point Ledge at the same salary as an Assistant Keeper. This appears to have been a method to speed up the bureaucratic process when a body was needed sooner than the red tape could provide one.
In the beginning, assistant keepers at Spring Point Ledge Light were paid around $450 annually; head keepers were paid $540. This is roughly equivalent to $16,000 a year in 2014 dollars, not a lot by any measure.
Doyle was officially appointed Assistant Keeper on June 22, 1915, with a probationary period not to exceed six months! On December 27, 1915 he was finally appointed to Assistant Keeper at a recently increased annual salary of $516 effective January 1, 1916.
Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse was a light station which could not allow families due to the lack of space, a fluctuating water supply, and a certain lack of sanitary facilities. Thus, the keeper had to maintain an onshore residence for his family. Normally, a keepers’ dwelling would be furnished by the keeper, but in the case of “stag” lights, the Lighthouse Service authorized furnishings for the keepers. It is probably safe to assume that the furniture purchased was basic yet serviceable. In later years under the Coast Guard virtually everything was furnished by the service.
BREAKWATER FACTS
- Construction began in 1950; completed in 1951
- Cost of construction: $215,000
- Stone was quarried in Biddeford and Wells
- Total length: 875 feet
- Height: 15 feet at low water, 6 feet at high water
- Side slope: harborside ~1:1; seaside 2:1
- Stone: granite, 75% in 5-ton blocks, 25% in 3-ton
- Built by US. Army Corps of Engineers
Gus Wilson
The best-known keeper at Spring Point was Augustus Aaron Wilson, known as Gus, born in Tremont on Mount Desert Island on September 8, 1864. At age fifty he entered the lighthouse service and was assigned to Goose Rocks Lighthouse in Penobscot Bay in March 1915. In 1917 he was assigned to Two Lights Station in Cape Elizabeth, but a few months later he was re-assigned to Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse. He retired in the Fall of 1934 after twenty years of service and died in Gray, Maine, in 1950.
For fifty years, Gus Wilson was a prolific carver of decoys and his decoys were renowned for their detail and for the highly varied head and wing positions, a sharp contrast to decoys carved by his contemporaries. Wilson frequently sold his decoys for 75 cents apiece to the Walker & Evans sporting goods store in Portland or gave them away to friends. Many of his decoys were carved while wiling away the hours on watch at Spring Point.
Wilson’s carvings were not limited to decoys but spanned a range from African animals to smaller species of marsh birds frequently seen on the Maine coast. Beginning around 1940, Wilson’s pieces became collectors’ items. Although some decoys found their way into museum collections, many of them were highly sought after and demand sent prices soaring.
Many of Gus Wilson’s carvings began to be sold at auction. Most fetched prices in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars. Some of his best creations, however, brought eye-popping prices. In July 2005, a decoy found in a Cape Cod barn sold for $195,000. In April 2006, two of Wilson’s decoys discovered in a Cape Porpoise, Maine, fish shack fetched $148,000 and $150,000 respectively. In 2008, a rare Gus Wilson decoy was sold to an unidentified buyer at Christies auction house for $125,000.