teen age graffiti artists at Cape Roseway

Here are a few of the inscriptions you can find up at Cape Roseway Lighthouse. I've added whatever I was able to find about these names, mostly by going to the Vital Statistics at the NSARM, which is a fabulous resource. I think that most of these particular inscriptions were made by students at Alexander Hood Cocken's school. Cocken, the second lighthouse keeper, retired in 1860. So the graffiti artists would have been hanging out at the rocks during recess, chiselling away, before that. A few of their inscriptions are dated.

J. Locke, 1856. The Locke family was very connected to McNutt's Island. In the early nineteenth century at least two inter-related Locke households were on the island, among its very first settlers, when they brought their children for baptism at the Anglican Church in Shelburne. Mostly the Lockes lived around and in nearby Lockeport and Ragged Islands, with easy access to McNutt's Island by water, just as it is today.
Robert Miller was likely a son of The Rev. George Miller (an important Methodist preacher of the era, mostly connected with the church in Halifax) and Alexander Hood Cocken's sister Frances Cocken Miller. He would have been Alexander Hood Cocken's nephew.

John Alexander Fraser Purney was born about 1845, son of a Shelburne merchant and his wife. He married Angela Muir in 1872 and became a physician in Shelburne.
J.B. Vernon.Vernon is a significant name on McNutt's Island. Captain Nathaniel Vernon of Tarleton's Legion bought the old McNutt property at the northern end of the island, as well as other lots around the island. This may be the son of Nathaniel's son, Augustus Vernon.

I haven't found anything about J.T. Morrow, though he certainly did a nice job with his name.
J.Gibbons, 1856. There is a John Gibbons who was born in Sandy Point and was a schoolteacher, married to an Annie Perry, and living at the village of Roseway, on the western shore of Shelburne Harbour directly across the False Passage from McNutt's, in 1864.

Joseph Homer, a sea captain, was born about 1842, and married in Barrington in 1870. If he was a student at Alexander Hood Cocken's school at the lighthouse, he would have inscribed his name in the late 1850s.Tottie is a well-known name in Shelburne, because of Tottie's Store, which remains on Dock Street.

You can find more graffiti here, here, and here. I have always wanted to make a map of the rocks, showing where all the inscriptions are located. But I have not gotten around to it.

a hand-made life

Here's a wonderful picture of Otis Orchard, the lighthouse keeper. Myrtle Goulden Demings took it when she lived at the lighthouse as a young woman, with her first husband, George Gribble, who was the assistant lighthouse keeper in the early 1950s.

Because they lived so remotely, and because their government salaries were insufficient, the lighthouse keepers had to homestead as well as care for the light. They kept vegetable gardens and their sheep roamed the island; and they would have kept a cow and ox as well. Otis would have cut this hay with a scythe, and now he's carrying it up to the barn. All these old buildings (except the foghorn building) were destroyed after the original lighthouse burned in 1959 and a new complex of lighthouse and buildings replaced the old.

In 1860, as he approached retirement, Alexander Hood Cocken described his nearly fifty years as lightkeeper and homesteader on the island. Otis Orchard's life would not have been very different from Alexander Hood Cocken's when this picture was taken nearly a century later.

Thanks to Myrtle Goulden (Gribble) Demings for sharing this picture. To understand the picture's context, I strongly recommend Evelyn Richardson's We Keep a Light (Ryerson Press, 1945) -- the classic description of a Nova Scotia lightkeeper's life in the first half of the twentieth century. And yes, it is very good to be home again, about which more soon.

wanted: fifty hogsheads of lime

An announcement in the local newspaper at the beginning of 1787 requests bids to build the lightkeeper's dwelling house at Cape Roseway. There's also a request for proposals for fifty hogsheads of lime delivered to the Landing-place on McNutt's Island. I think that this is the same landing place that would come to be called Ross's Landing. Shelburne merchant George Ross bought Lot No. 1 from Loyalist grantee Moses Pitcher a few months later, as the work on the lighthouse was gearing up. The provincially funded lighthouse project would have been a boon to Shelburne's economy at a time when the fortunes of the town were already receding.

This image is courtesy of Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management. To read more, visit NSARM's virtual exhibit of Nova Scotia Historical Newspapers.

pale grey day

The sky is pale grey today. The lighthouse almost vanishes,
as if it were only a ghost of a lighthouse now

instead of the real thing.

looking for a place in Halifax for January to March

Dear Reader,

Greg and I are hoping we can find some sort of house-sitting situation in Halifax for January to March, or some part of that time. Maybe you might know of a place.

I would use that time at the Public Archives to work on a history of the lighthouse. Being in Halifax for an extended time is really necessary for this project, which I am passionate about. Greg would probably spend the time writing and revising his manuscript for a next book about our island life. So you see we would be very quiet and well-behaved house-sitters. We can also walk dogs and care for cats and water plants and forward mail, and we are, for the most part, fairly responsible people. Although we are island hermits we are able to clean ourselves up sufficiently to pass muster in the big city.

I would love to find something near enough to the Archives (at University and Robie) to be able to walk there. But really we would be delighted with any situation in town, since I'm sure there's a bus.

If you can think of any leads I hope you'll let me know, at anne.yarbrough@gmail.com.

cheers,

Anne

lighthouse on the rocks

Cape Roseway Light stands atop a promontory of dramatic rocks.

Climbing on them is great fun.
Gigantic seams of quartzite run through them.
It's hard to imagine the powerful forces that have created these angles.
Our friend Tom thinks these are Greater Scaup. But Hazel and John, birders from Ontario, had a contrary view. Common Eider, they said, moulting.

Nope, says Leroy d'Entremont, who owns and manages the island sheep. They are locally called coot, and they're a kind of scaup. I give Leroy the final word.
To the east lies Jordan Bay.
Tide pools reflect the sky.
The Cape Roseway sky is often filled with wonder.

And it's always changing.
To the west lie fishing banks and the Gulf of Maine.

the lightkeeper's tale, part one

Alexander Hood Cocken was born in Shelburne after his parents came here in 1783 on the Loyalist tide. His father, Alexander Cocken, was one of the Port Roseway Associates, that group of Loyalists who organized themselves in New York, intending to get the best deal they could in Nova Scotia by negotiating as a body. Alas, there turned out to be not that much to negotiate about.

Sometimes we forget how traumatic things must have been for the people who arrived on the shore of Port Roseway in 1783. They had lost whatever it was they had in America, though at first they hoped to somehow get back what they had lost, or be compensated for it. Inconceivably for them, England had lost the war. And now England was cutting them loose. The Crown, reeling from its costly defeat, was not appreciative of their great sacrifices and failed to share their vision of a great city carved out of wilderness. Soon enough it became clear that Shelburne would not after all replace Halifax as the North American center of the English empire. Most of the refugees left this foggy, ice-bound shore as soon as they could manage it.

But some adapted, and stayed, and among them were Alexander Cocken and his wife Catherine. Alexander the father was a Scot, born in Glasgow, a mariner. His wife Catherine was a New Englander, from Massachusetts.

Alexander and Catherine had five children, and the oldest was Alexander the son. He was christened at Christ Church Shelburne in 1787, before the permanent church was even built. Of the five Cocken children christened, it's likely that only he and his two sisters lived to adulthood, and that his two younger brothers died early, since nothing more is known of them except their christenings. Their mother died in 1799, when Alexander was twelve and his sisters were five years old and an infant.

The lighthouse on McNutt's was completed in 1790, and actually lit in 1792. Cocken had already been appointed lightkeeper, and he was responsible for the building materials needed for the light and the various necessary buildings and the house for the keeper's family.

The Cocken family and all their possessions were taken out to the island in late 1789, once they had a place to live. The Archives has a bill for their transport. They moved into the new house out there at the southern end of McNutt's Island. If we remember the letter that the elder Alexander wrote in 1801 about the absence of a road across the island, maybe we can imagine how isolated and difficult life was for a family living in that harsh, exposed place.

The young Alexander was a toddler when the family moved into its new house on the wind-swept cape, surrounded on three sides by ocean waves pounding against rocky cliffs. This was a difficult time for the family. Between 1790 and 1793 his father, the first lightkeeper, wrote a series of petitions to the House of Assembly, pleading that he might be paid the salary owed to him. In a 1790 petition he describes his family as large. But in 1792 he calls his family small. Probably the two younger boys, christened in 1788 and 1789, had died by 1792, when his family has become "small." In an escalating voice of desperation, the elder Cocken writes that he faces financial ruin because his salary has not been paid and his indebtedness for the basic necessities of life so great. In his earliest years, then, young Alexander experienced the death of his brothers and the grief of his parents, as well as financial anxiety and the harsh conditions of the family's isolated and lonely life.

After a few years the elder Cocken's condition of employment changed. He was given an annual contract, out of which he was expected to manage the lighthouse, but he was not expected to actually live there full time. Maybe the Cocken family moved back to Shelburne or to one of the villages along the western shore during the winter months then, leaving an assistant to care for the light. Maybe these years were easier ones for the family. Certainly they were less isolated.

In 1811, the year before his father died, Alexander Hood Cocken became the assistant lighthouse keeper. His father, who was seventy two years old that year, was in a very feeble state of health. The son -- then twenty four years old --would have stayed at the light full time that year. When his father died, Alexander Hood Cocken was appointed in his place. He may have sub-contracted out the lightkeeping duties between 1812 and 1816, not living at the light full time, but always responsible for its daily maintenance and nightly operation.

In 1816 a law was passed that once again required the lightkeeper to actually live at the light and perform the duties himself. So for the next forty-four years he was at the light, on the island, permanently and full time.

From another source entirely, we learn that in 1821 Alexander Hood Cocken underwent an intense religious experience. James Mann, a beloved British Methodist clergyman who served the area for many years, had a great influence on Alexander. Mann's death that year occasioned a soul-searching as Cocken reached what would then have been thought of as middle age. He began to play a significant role in the local circuit of the Methodist Church, which connected villages along the western shore, on nearby Cape Negro Island and at Northeast Harbour. Eventually he became a local preacher, a position of importance at a time when regularly ordained pastors were rare. There was a small Methodist congregation on McNutt's, a part of the local circuit, around now, and the lightkeeper would have led the services there.

In 1822 he married Jannet McKenna of Carleton Village, directly across the harbour from the island. Jannet was part of a large extended family, Scots like the Cockens. Though Alexander and Jannet had no children, they had many nieces and nephews. There would have been much coming and going between the western shore of the harbour and the island, just as there still is, though they rowed and now folks start up a motor.

Here's how Alexander Hood Cocken describes life at the lighthouse: "From the great inconvenience of procuring my supplies on this island -- generally paying double, if not treble freight for almost every necessary of life brought here, and having to pay very extravagant wages to an assistant --men considering it a great privation to live in so secluded a spot and the labour being of a toilsome nature, particularly during the winter months requiring attention at all times of night, obliged me to pay extraordinary wages; and for the last 20 years of it, it has taken full half of my allowance to meet this item alone, including the person's board. Since the prosecution of the fishery on a more regular and extensive scale, it is scarcely possible to procure an assistant that can be relied on at any price."

Although he has economized wherever possible, he goes on to say, he has not been able to save enough money from his salary to support himself and his "aged partner" in their old age, though he has been lightkeeper for forty eight years now, suffers from infirmities, and wants to retire.

He has, he notes, had a school at the lighthouse for the past twenty four years. There he taught boys reading, writing, orthography, arithmetic, English grammar, history and geography. He was, it seems from all the evidence, an educated man. He charged twenty pounds per student, and, he says, this additional income helped to pay for the assistant lightkeeper. And each year at least a few boys -- say five or six -- were also living at the light. They would need to be fed and housed as well as taught. They would need to be kept busy when not at school. So there was more work, probably done by his wife Jannet. The school would have been something they took on together, for added income.

Cocken also reports that he has brought some land under sufficient cultivation to provide winter hay for a handful of cattle; he has "any number" of sheep running wild; and a vegetable garden and potato field. The initial clearing may have been done by his father, but he has continued the work.

Was there help out here, or were Alexander and Jannet doing all this work by themselves? There were other families settling on the island, not far from the lighthouse, in the early 1800s. But those families would have needed to clear their own lands, provide for their own cattle, dig their own vegetable gardens. The 1827 census tells us that Jannet and Alexander's household at the lighthouse included a servant. No doubt the scholars had chores. But it would have been a hands-on enterprise.

An official assessment conducted in 1857 described the lighthouse as barely functioning and the keeper's house as "wretched," owing not to the negligence of the keeper but to the lack of material support by the province. Repairs were recommended, and they must have been made. Cocken refers to this in his 1860 letter: "Through strong representations to the Government for some years, and delayed owing to pressing calls at other stations, the premises not long since were put, and are now, in good substantial order -- as well the Light House, as dwelling house, store & Barn ...." Until the recent repairs, the Cockens had for many years endured life with a drafty house, a leaky roof, and a poorly functioning light.

In his application for a pension Alexander Hood Cocken did not mention that over the years he had bought up a few of the island lots originally granted to Loyalists. He bought the lot we live on for instance, rented it out for a number of years, then sold it. There were at least two others. There could have been a small income stream from his island properties, or more likely maybe the rents were paid in fish and apples. Maybe Alexander Hood Cocken was not as entirely poor as he wished to appear when he crafted his appeal for a pension. Still, he had not become a wealthy man.

Eleanor Robertson Smith and Kim Robertson Walker, Founders of Shelburne, Nova Scotia: Who Came, 1783-1793, and Stayed (Shelburne: Shelburne County Archives & Genealogical Society, 2008), 30-31, 150-151; the series of petitions from Alexander Cocken to the House of Assembly can be read online in the NSARM virtual exhibit Voices of the People; T. Watson Smith, The History of the Methodist Church in Eastern British America (Halifax, Nova Scotia: The Methodist Book Room, 1877), 111; NSARM, RG 7, Vol. 43, Alexander H. Cocken to Joseph Howe, Shelburne, June 1, 1860; 1827 Census of Nova Scotia; Register of Deeds, Shelburne & Shelburne County & Indexes 1784-1880.

a day for the birds

Sue Abbott of Bird Studies Canada and Jane Alexander came to the island to make a count of varieties for the Maritimes Breeding Bird Atlas. They were also scouting possible breeding sites for the endangered Roseate Tern and Piping Plover. Warren Nickerson brought Sue and Jane by outboard skiff from Lockeport. They motored around the southern tip of McNutt's and stopped at Gray's Island, then came into the cove. From there we all went off down the main road toward the Government Wharf to look and listen. After our walk across the island, Jane and Sue and Warren went up the cove in Warren's boat to the Horseshoe, then around the eastern side of the island and back to Lockeport.
Greg and I learned so much we never knew. From Jane and Sue, we learned to identify a Winter Wren, a bird whose remarkably operetta-like song we have often heard but never identified. We learned that the tiny birds with flashes of yellow I had thought were some kind of warbler over near the McNutt House (the area called back of Louie's, in local lingo) are Kinglets. We learned the song of the Yellowthroat Warbler: wichity wichity wichity. We learned that the island has Cedar Waxwing and Swainson's Thrush.

From Warren, we learned that he's related to the Goulden family who used to own the old hotel next door, that his grandfather Nelson Goulden was one of the lightkeepers, how to look for Irish Moss, and a better way to plant bush beans.

All in all it was a most exciting day.

shorn sheep

Most of the flock spends its time around the lighthouse.We watched them there through the fog last Saturday, and they, of course, watched us.
If we would only leave they could go back to what they were doing before we interrupted them.

the lightkeeper's tale, introduction

In the year 1860, Cape Roseway's aged lightkeeper sat down at his wooden desk by the sea and began to write a letter.* Over three pages long, it was a letter of great potential consequence to him, and it was addressed to an important person. Indeed, some would say the intended recipient was the single most important person in all of Nova Scotia. I imagine the lightkeeper revised his letter several times before he was satisfied enough to make the final copy, the one in his beautiful handwriting, bearing a few inkblots but no mistakes, that's now kept in the Nova Scotia Archives.

His letter had a clear purpose. Alexander Hood Cocken wished to retire from his lightkeeping duties, and he wished to be given a sufficient pension upon his retirement. After all, he had been keeping the light on McNutt's Island for the past forty-eight years, since the death of his father (the former lightkeeper) in 1812. Cocken also wanted to explain why, from his annual lightkeeper's salary, he had not been able to save enough money to provide for himself and his wife in their old age, and why the province might feel obliged to make up the gap. The case needed to be argued with some care not to alienate the powers that be. Details must be supplied.

You can read this letter in different ways, from different angles, asking different questions of it and learning different things. Since it is such a rich letter, I'll look at it in four parts -- a mini-series -- over the next few weeks.

The first will be Alexander Hood Cocken's own story as he chooses to tell it within his letter. I have come across a few other fragments that shed light on him, and I'll be sharing them later. But for now we will focus on what he tells us about himself here.

The second perspective will be the early history of Nova Scotia lighthouses. The letter offers a fascinating account of how the earliest lighthouses were managed and supplied by the province in the years before Confederation. Since Alexander Hood Cocken's father was the first keeper of the Shelburne light, and since the Shelburne light was one of Nova Scotia's first lighthouses, his brief review of provincial policies, laws, and practices runs all the way back to the beginning.

The third angle is what the letter tells us about the island's agriculture and community during the early part of the nineteenth century.

Finally, I'll write about what happened as a result of the lightkeeper's letter. Was he allowed to retire, and did he receive a pension? None of that was automatic in those days. And the light could not be simply abandoned, not even for one night. Even at his ripe old age, Alexander Hood Cocken could not leave his post until a new man was brought on. But who want to take up such an arduous position? How was the next lightkeeper appointed? And who was it who made these decisions?

* Letter from Alexander Hood Cocken to Joseph Howe, 1 June 1860, NSARM, RG 7, Vol. 43.

a trip home

Here are a few sights of a trip yesterday from Fort Point to McNutt's Island.Sandy Point Lighthouse stands on the eastern side of Shelburne Harbour, opposite Fort Point. It marks the beginning of the inner harbour and the Town of Shelburne.McNutt's Island comes into view as you pass the conspicuous boulder at Fort Point.
View of McNutt's, from the northwest.
A view of the island's eastern shoreline, looking south along the eastern channel and out to sea.Shelburne Harbour Boat Tour's Brown Eyed Girl is coming home, too. Yesterday she sailed from Lockeport to Shelburne.
The captain of Chopper I.
The Fish House.
Coming into the dock. We are currently flying the flag of Queen Elizabeth. You are only supposed to fly it when she is in residence. She's not actually on McNutt's Island, but she is somewhere in Canada this week. So we are stretching a point here and hoping the flag police are distracted by bigger crimes elsewhere.

sale on lighthouses

The federal government has announced a lighthouse sale:

http://www.cbc.ca/video/player.html?category=News&zone=canada&site=cbc.news.ca&clipid=1516975953

Some of Nova Scotia's lighthouses are in better condition than others. The Nova Scotia Lighthouse Preservation Society has a useful survey of lighthouses in the province. Some are already cared for by their communities, like Sandy Point here in Shelburne Harbour, and Cape Forchu in Yarmouth. Iconic structures like Sambro and Peggy's Cove and others that are small, or an integral part of their neighbourhood --will probably be rescued, one way or another.

Then there's Cape Roseway. It's the second-oldest site in Nova Scotia, after Sambro. But the actual light, built in 1959 to replace the original late eighteenth century structure, is not historically compelling. The site has been allowed to deteriorate since the light was decommissioned and automated in 1985. Its buildings and grounds are actually dangerous. It's inaccessible for all but the hardiest visitors. So it seems almost inevitable that Cape Roseway light will just continue to sit out there on the edge of the North Atlantic, forgotten, as it has been for the past quarter century, and quietly, slowly disappear.

For images and history of Cape Roseway light, go to the lighthouse label in the blog's right column.

a road to the lighthouse

Alexander Cocken, the island's first official lightkeeper, wrote a letter* to the Nova Scotia House of Assembly in June 1801 about the lack of a road across McNutt's Island. In 1791 the Shelburne Court of Sessions had ordered a public road built across the island -- a very grand one hundred feet wide! -- from Ross's Landing to the lighthouse.** But for all the flourishes, the road had not been built. Now Cocken writes about

"... the very great inconvenience for want of a road across McNutt's Island owing to the extreme danger of landing oil at the light-house and indeed the impracticality of getting men or vessels for that purpose, the shore is surrounded by rugged rocks from 70 to 80 feet high and altogether broken in rough and craggy cliffs indeed in the fall of the year and winter it is so dangerous that I am under the necessity of hiring people at a very heavy expense to carry every article as well as oil upon their backs across the island, whereas if there was a road which might be made at a very small expense fit for a cart or wagon all the difficulties I have mentioned would be prevented..."

Cocken's letter gives us a peek into island life at the turn of a new century. The foundation stone for the lighthouse had been laid in early 1787. Its construction was completed in October of 1790, more than two years later. Building the lighthouse would have been a long-term job for its workers, who probably lived on the site. Local stone was quarried and dressed, trees felled and timbers hewn, supplies hauled in. It was a huge undertaking, all accomplished without benefit of a cut through the island's thick forest and swampy bogs.

After the lighthouse was built, it would be another two years before its lamps were actually lit and in operation. Once the light was lit, on September 7, 1792, someone was required at the light every night, without fail. When Cocken wrote his letter to the House of Assembly, he -- or someone he hired to take his place -- had been living at the lighthouse in conditions of great isolation for almost a decade.

Cocken's letter mentions that he has to hire people to carry every article including oil for the lamps across the island on their backs. These carriers would have been among the poorest of Shelburne's poverty-stricken population, engaged in the most arduous physical labour since even a small cart could not be gotten through the forest.

They haunt the island, I think, these poorest of people, bent beneath the weight of their burdens, carrying supplies on their backs -- along some narrow, hacked-out path, I guess, but maybe not even that -- through woods and bogs and impassable thickets of fallen trees.

They hoisted these burdens onto their backs at Ross's Landing. And where might that have been, you may ask. Dear Reader, I'm pretty sure it was right here. But that's a story for another day...

*NSARM, RG 31, Vol.2, June 24, 1801

** Marion Robertson, King's Bounty: A History of Early Shelburne Nova Scotia (Halifax, 1983) 166.

McNutt's Island Geography: Anthony Lockwood's map, 1816

Here's a map from Anthony Lockwood's A Brief Description of Nova Scotia (1818). Anthony Lockwood made a report to the to the newly established Commissioners of Light Houses in 1816. Up until then Nova Scotia's lighthouses had been under the authority of the Commissioners of Revenue. The same year the regulation of lighthouses was clarified by the House of Assembly. Lighthouse keepers would be paid an established annual salary, and would be expected to live full-time at the light.In 1816 there were only four lighthouses along the Nova Scotia coast, at Halifax, Shelburne, Liverpool and Brier Island. The light at Shelburne was the second one to be built. Its foundation stone was laid in January 1787, and it was completed in October 1790. It must have been a very arduous task to build this lighthouse. It would have required vast transportation of workers and equipment and supplies from Shelburne to the only possible landing sites, along the western cove, and then across the thickly forested island, to the cape on its southern end.

Even after the lighthouse was completed, it was not lit for another two years, first shining out of its distinctive two windows on September 7, 1792.

At the time of this map, Alexander Hood Cocken was keeper on McNutt's Island. He had taken over lighthouse duties after the death of his father Alexander Cocken, the first keeper, in 1812.

I found this map in W.O. Raymond, "Colonel McNutt and the Pre-Loyalist Settlements of Nova Scotia," Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 3rd series, vol.V, 1911, sec.II, 23-115, p.97. The map and article can be found online at www.archive.org.

Cape Roseway Light, 1857

In 1857 a newly-appointed superintendent,  very conscientious, visited nearly all of the forty-one lighthouses then in operation in Nova Scotia. Sailed from light to light, all along the edges of the province. He spent two days at the light on McNutt's Island. And the report that he submitted to the House of Assembly is a snapshot of what life was like at Cape Roseway Light then.

   

This report -- of almost useless lights, leaking roofs, "wretched" living conditions and complaints against the light -- gives us some insight into the hardship of keeping the light at McNutt's Island. Though some of the other lighthouses at the time had an assistant lightkeeper, Alexander Hood Cocken did not, at least not officially. He may have paid somebody out of his own pocket if he needed to leave the island. Or maybe his wife Jannet took care of the light if he was away, or too tired, or sick.  

According to the report, the complaints against the light were valid -- it sounds like it couldn't be seen very well from out at sea, which would be a problem for a lighthouse -- but the fault was not in the light keeper, who was doing the best he could. The fault was in the condition of the lights, which had not been maintained and repaired by the province.

The lightkeeper in 1857 was Alexander Hood Cocken. What we know about him: he was christened in the Anglican church in Shelburne in 1787, the oldest of five children born to Alexander and Catherine Cocken. Since there's no information about his two brothers except for their christening, they likely died young. His father Alexander, a Loyalist, was the first keeper appointed at Cape Roseway Light, and oversaw the slow, fitful construction that began in 1787. Remember, Shelburne was a bubble that burst fast. Even in 1787 it was already subsiding.The light was not actually put into service until several years later. That first Alexander Cocken would be light keeper for twenty-four years.

When the elder Alexander Cocken died in 1812, Alexander Hood Cocken, then about twenty-five years old, became keeper. He had probably grown up helping his father care for the light.                                                                     

So when the provincial superintendent made his visit in that summer of 1857, Alexander Hood Cocken was seventy years old. Maybe he once toddled about in the shadow of the lighthouse; maybe he spent his childhood climbing its ladders and polishing its glass. He had been the official keeper for forty-five years. This old man could surely tell the new superintendent all there was to know about Cape Roseway Light. He would continue to keep the light until his retirement in 1860.

The superintendent reported that the lightkeeper's house was wretched and ought to be torn down but maybe could be patched up and made to last for a few more years.

Altogether the Cockens -- father and son -- kept the light for seventy-three years.

You can click on the Superintendent's Report to enlarge it.

Information on Alexander Cocken and his son Alexander Hood Cocken is in Founders of Shelburne, Nova Scotia: Who Came, 1783-1793, and Stayed (Eleanor Robertson Smith and Kim Robertson Walker, Shelburne County Archives and Genealogical Society, Lockeport, NS, 2008), 29-31; and a letter  from Alexander Hood Cocken to Joseph Howe, in the Nova Scotia Archives.

The Superintendent's Report on Light Houses, 1857, is courtesy of NSARM, where you can read more at the wonderful virtual exhibit on lighthouses.

The photograph of Cape Roseway Light c.1942 is used by permission of the family of Augustine (Gus) Gough, whose connection with McNutt's Island you can read about here. 

Another lighthouse artist

Otis Dow Orchard, a keeper at Cape Roseway for many years, left his autograph on one of the rocks near the lighthouse for future generations to discover and marvel at.

Otis Orchard married an island girl, Ethel Rapp, in 1921. I imagine that her family had invited the young new lightkeeper over for supper as soon as he arrived to take up his duties. Ethel was born on McNutt's Island and grew up here, in that area along the southwest side of the island where several members of the Rapp extended family had houses and farms for generations.

Ethel's mother was Annie Perry Rapp, who was born and grew up in the house we live in now. Ethel's father, George, was born on McNutt's Island, too. Back then, the island was a small but stable community of interlocking families who fished and farmed and walked along the roads and paths that led from house to house. I wonder if in those days they ever imagined how empty the island would later become.

Otis was keeper at Cape Roseway from sometime before he married, in 1921, until the mid 1950s. In a 1950 interview in The Standard, a weekend newspaper supplement, Otis Orchard reminisced about the shipwrecks that had occurred off the island during his tenure, never with loss of life. He told the newspaper reporter that he enjoyed raising cabbage and turnips and potatoes with his wife, and making oil paintings of ships in his spare time.

He also devoted some effort to writing his name on a rock, and so left us a way to remember him, and the world he lived in.

Information about Otis Orchard and Ethel Rapp Orchard can be found in the Vital Statistics section of NSARM, and in the census records. In their 1921 marriage certificate Otis is listed as "engineer," already living on McNutt's Island.

Spring lighthouse

I wanted to walk along the main road and pick up beer cans today. It seemed like a good way to welcome spring. This ancient island sign enjoins all passersby to not drop cans. A few people just ignore it, I guess.
Picking up cans is a great excuse to walk along the main road. And to tell the truth, I only filled half a contractor bag with cans, along with some plastic water bottles and glass beer bottles. That's really not much for a five kilometer-long stretch of road.

Half-way through my walk, I hitched a ride on an ATV -- ours -- and together Greg and I zipped up to the lighthouse.
We waved at a passing skiff.
They were enjoying the first day of spring, for sure.
As you cans see, the water was quite calm today.

I counted nineteen sheep at the light. They moved along when we arrived, but they didn't bother to go too far away.
They are enjoying the warm sun and the possibility of a change in diet (not that they don't like kelp). In years past they have been pretty scruffy by this time. But their coats look beautiful this year.
Cape Roseway Light welcomed spring today.