Barbara Mabrity was the longest serving, and possibly the most interesting, keeper of the Key West Lighthouse. She began her career as the wife and assistant to the first keeper in 1826 and ended it 38 years later by being fired for her political views.

The first lighthouse in Key West was built in 1825 on the coast line at Whitehead Point after Lt. Comdr. Matthew C. Perry recommended that it was needed to warn ships off treacherous shoals. It was a whitewashed brick tower, 47 feet high from its foundation to the base of its black iron lantern. With the height of lantern and the dune on which it stood the light was 67 feet above mean sea level, the tallest structure on the island.

Michael Mabrity, a mariner and harbor pilot from St. Augustine, Florida, was appointed temporary lighthouse keeper and his wife, Barbara, his assistant. They lived near the lighthouse.

At dusk, January 13, 1826, the Mabritys adjusted the 15-inch diameter silvered reflectors and lit the 15 whale-oil-fueled Argand lamps for the first time. Four days later President John Quincy Adams signed the formal papers officially appointing Mabrity as keeper. It was a primitive light, and keeping it was labor intensive. The lamp wicks needed to be trimmed four times each night. Because the lamps emitted so much soot, the Lanthorn Glass also had to be cleaned every four hours. Mabrity was civic-minded person and was elected to the city council. Soon he moved his family into a house nearer the center of Key West, hiring a man to live in the keeper's quarters and tend the light. But the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, which was responsible for lighthouses, frowned on Mabrity's behavior. He was forced to move back into the keeper's quarters, but his $400 salary was raised to $600 a year. Although he gave up his political career, Mabrity still socialized frequently and entertained such figures as John James Audubon who arrived in Key West in 1832 to study birds.

When Mabrity succumbed to yellow fever, a common disease in the summer of 1832, William Adee Whitehead, the Collector of Customs, appointed Barbara Mabrity to succeed him. Not only was she well qualified, Whitehead said, but she needed the modest salary to support her six fatherless children.

Life was good in Key West for Barbara Mabrity, but not idyllic. Further north the Second Seminole War was in full swing, and on July 23, 1836, Indians sacked the Cape Florida Lighthouse. Key West was in near panic.

The U.S.S. Constitution, the famous "Old Ironsides", was brought into Key West harbor for protection, and Whitehead Street was extended from the harbor to the lighthouse, giving the Mabrity family a way out in case of an emergency.

Mrs. Mabrity's record of light-keeping diligence was good. In 1843 a new collector of customs and superintendent of lighthouses for Key West reported that the Key West Lighthouse was "as usual, efficient and well kept."

Also that year a citizen's group wrote to Washington that, "Mrs. Mabrity, the keeper of the light upon this island, has for a number of years performed the duties of her office with fidelity…" They stated that she "still practices rigid economy in her mode of living and yet has not been able to accumulate any property to support her in old age…. a just appreciation of her past services and her present situation give her an equitable claim upon the government for assistance."

The government, however, took no notice of the petition.

In 1845 construction of a new fort, later to be called Fort Zachary Taylor, was commenced between the lighthouse and the harbor, something that Mrs. Mabrity welcomed. But disaster was on the horizon.

On a remarkably warm day, October 6, 1846, Barbara Mabrity climbed the narrow wooden spiral staircase to begin her daily routine of turning down the wicks to extinguish the 15 oil lamps. She removed the glass chimneys when the lamps had cooled and began the wiping down the silvered reflectors, covering them with cotton cowls. Then she filtered the whale oil from each lamp into a clean container and disassembled and cleaned each lamp, before putting it back together. Next she polished all the brass and reset the wicks for the night.

Before leaving the tower, she swept out the remains of thousands of dead insects that had been attracted to the light during the night, and she cleaned the lantern windows of the salt spray that constantly assaulted them.

All these were vital chores that needed to be done each day to keep the light in good service. It was almost noon by the time she finished.

All day hardly a breath of air moved and seas were calm. It was pleasant almost summer-like, until late afternoon when erratic waves began to build off the coast and punctuate the waters near shore.

In those days there was only slow communication, so no one in Key West knew a severe tropical hurricane was sweeping across Cuba and preparing to devastate Havana only 90 miles to the south.

Whether she noticed the sudden drop in the barometer near dusk is not known, but dark gathering clouds probably warned Mabrity that a major blow was approaching. Certainly, like many Key Westers, she was weather sensitive and realized that such an uncharacteristic calm day was known as a "weather breeder," an atmosphere that portended bad weather.

And when she mounted the steps to light the lamps that evening she most assuredly noticed the gathering gloom in the West and a menacing line of black storm clouds to the south marching ominously toward Key West.

But Mrs. Mabrity was a veteran. She had weathered hurricanes in 1835, 1841 and 1842. Through each the sturdy brick lighthouse had survived unscathed.

During the night the winds increased and monstrous waves beat against the shore. When Mrs. Mabrity climbed the lighthouse stairway on October 10, it was quite a different day than the previous morning. With the storm raging around her, this day she did only those tasks that were absolutely necessary. Though it was 10 a.m., it was dark as night. Visibility in the driving rain was reduced to zero and the winds were violent and escalating.

Below her, a few Key West residents began to arrive at the lighthouse believing its brick structure to be safer than their wood frame houses.

Then the full hurricane hit and blasted the key all day and until after midnight.

Lieutenant William C. Pease on board the naval vessel U.S. S. Morris in Key West harbor wrote that the "air was full of water, and no man could look windward for a second."

The tides rose, and waves soon flooded into the keeper's residence, forcing people to seek shelter in the lighthouse itself. Then a huge wave struck and everything washed away: the keeper's quarters, the lighthouse, everything.

Not far away the partially completed fort also was wiped clean of all structures except the cistern, the smithy and the stables. Ships in the harbor were laid on their beam-ends, three brigs were dismasted, three schooners sunk. Sand Key Light about five miles away was gone along with the small key on which it stood. Key West was in ruins.

Where the sturdy lighthouse had stood, only a beach remained.

A local scribe later wrote that the hurricane of 1846 was "the most destructive of any that had visited these latitudes within the memory of man. The lighthouse at Whitehead Point on our island was totally destroyed, with all the members of the keeper's family, seven in number. Not a soul escaped."

But he was wrong.

Near the lighthouse some 14 bodies were recovered including those of all six of Barbara Mabrity's children. But by some miracle or fluke, Mrs. Mabrity had survived.

Despite her grief, Mabrity continued to serve as lighthouse keeper when a new larger lighthouse was constructed in 1847 at its present location inland at Truman and Whitehead Streets.

In 1854 her duties were somewhat lightened with the appointment of William Richardson as assistant lighthouse keeper. He served until 1860 when Edwin Halseman took his place.

Also in 1858 the new lighthouse acquired a third-order Fresnel lens, shipped from Paris, which greatly improved the efficiency of the light and reduced the labor involved in its maintenance.

During the Civil War, Fort Zachary Taylor, still not yet fully completed, remained under federal control, and thus Key West was technically a Union city. Nevertheless, many of the Key West residents were sympathetic to the Confederacy and often made no bones about it.

Barbara Mabrity, too, had pro-South leanings but kept her views pretty much to herself. She took her lighthouse duties seriously. She never failed to keep the light functioning, though many of the lights further north along the southeastern seaboard were extinguished to thwart navigation for the Union ships maintaining a sea blockade.

In fact, the Key West Lighthouse was the only Florida light station not to fall into the arms of the Confederacy during the war.

Nevertheless, in 1864 Mrs. Mabrity was accused of making remarks disloyal to the Union and was urged to retire. Mabrity, now 82 years old and no weak woman, was staunchly defiant. When she refused to step down, she was fired after 38 years of service, 32 of them as head keeper.

Three years later she died at age 85, but the Mabritys had spawned a lighthouse dynasty.

A Mabrity granddaughter, Mary Armanda Fletcher, married John J. Carroll from New York, who became assistant lighthouse keeper and then keeper in 1866. Mary Carroll served as assistant keeper to her husband from 1876 until 1889, when he died. She then was appointed keeper, but she herself died three months later of typhoid.

Earlier, Barbara Mabrity's daughter, Nicolosa, married Capt. Joseph Bethel in 1831. Capt. Bethel served at the Dry Tortugas light station on Garden Key and then as keeper of Sombrero Lighthouse from 1858 to 1879. Their son William Bethel became Key West keeper after Mary Carroll's death in 1889: His wife, Mary Elizabeth, was named assistant keeper. He earned $720 a year, she $420.

When William Bethel died in 1910, Mary Bethel assumed his duties, remaining at the light with her son, Merrill, as assistant until 1915.

Thus the Mabrity family and their descendants were associated with the Key West Lighthouse for more than 70 years.

Until Barbara Mabrity became official keeper, women very rarely were appointed to lighthouse positions. Subsequently more women found the job appealing and several have given exemplary service.

For more information, contact the Key West Art & Historical Society, 281 Front Street, Key West, FL 33040 Phone (305)295-6616 FAX (305)295-6649 (Internet site) http//kwahs.com