Browns Point Lighthouse Keeper's Wife Annie Tells Her Story

This summer there will be a cemetery tour at in Tacoma, and I portray the ghost of Annie Brown, the wife of the lighthouse keeper at Browns Point.  There are always way more stories than time to tell them, and I am going to have to cut the following script down by probably two-thirds.  But I thought blog readers might enjoy the whole thing.  Picture the graveyard on a shadowy afternoon. Approaching from the shade of a giant rhododendron is a woman dressed as if it were the 1930's.  Here's what she says:

I’m Annie Louise Wayson Brown, wife of Oscar Vernon Brown, the lighthouse keeper at Browns Point.  I was born in Port Townsend in 1869, the daughter of James Wayson, who was a captain in the US Revenue service, which later became the US Coast Guard.  In those days, Papa would intercept ships which sought to bypass the customs house in Port Townsend. So I consider myself sprung from a seafaring family.

Most girls married, but I didn’t, at first.  I loved sewing and worked as a dressmaker before I even finished school, but Papa suggested that I try my hand at bookkeeping.  I was accepted at the Collegiate Institute in Olympia and after I graduated, got a very good job as a bookkeeper working for a fish company. Papa was right, it paid decidedly more than dressmaking.

I was 30 years old before I met my future husband, Oscar.  At the time, he was stationed at the Dungeness lighthouse.  Prior to that he’d been out at the tiny island of Tatoosh off the NW tip of the Olympic Peninsula.  He had stories of shipwrecks and rescues from that remote, windy, rainy site.  Oscar was an accomplished musician and sang me songs while playing the piano.  He could also play the trombone, cornet, and harp. 

Soon after I met him, Oscar was transferred away to teeny Smith Island at the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, some ways west of Whidbey Island.  We were able to keep up our friendship by letter.  In those days, lighthouse tenders brought mail, food, fuel, and oftentimes even water to the far flung lighthouses, in fact they been doing it on the West Coast since 1840.  When Oscar proposed, I accepted, and we were married in 1902 when I was 34 and he was 35. 

      

Immediately I was swept away to the tiny Smith Island. When we were there, the lighthouse was 200 feet from the cliffs, but I’m told the cliffs eventually eroded away and the lighthouse fell into the water.  We were only there a year, then we were sent to the brand new Point Brown lighthouse across Commencement Bay from Tacoma.  It was already named Point Brown, so wasn’t named after us, but eventually it became Browns Point, which I believe had something to do with everyone’s fondness for Oscar. 

 

Annie and Oscar on Smith Island 1902

The lighthouse tender Heather brought us to Point Brown one cloudy day, Oct. 26, 1903, as there were no roads out there.  We were rowed ashore, but they lowered our pedigree Jersey cow over the side by sling and she was meant to swim in.  The poor thing got frightened and started swimming the wrong way, out into the bay, mooing piteously.  Her name was Timber, as she had been calved in the woods, and I stood on the shore, atop great driftwood logs, screaming, “Timber, Timber!” as if I were a deranged logger.  By this time the horse was lowered over the side.  I worried he’d swim after her, but he started toward me.  Timber saw him and tried to alter her course.  Although she possessed an udder, she hadn’t a rudder.  Some little Indian children appeared, running up the beach wondering who this woman was who could call sea monsters out of the deep, for by this time the cow had kelp trailing from her right horn, and from the left dangled a jellyfish.  Eventually, with her mooing and me calling, like star-cross operatic lovers, she made it ashore. They unloaded our furniture with less drama, including Oscar’s piano, which had to sit out under a tarpaulin for several days until we could get people over from Tacoma to help us move it into the house.

Oscar immediately set to work building a stable and chicken coop.  We laid an oriental carpet in the parlor and dining room, laid planks down the muddy swamp to the beach, plowed in front of the house and put up fences for the horse and cow.  We planted potatoes, rhubarb, onions, and lettuce.  There was no well, we had a water tank that collected rainwater up in back of the house.  Oscar eventually had a nice little orchard with apple, plum and cherry trees, selling the cherries over in Tacoma.  Oscar worked very hard clearing brush, building feed bins for the stable and making the place comfortable for us.  He chopped wood nearly every day we lived there.

Browns Point with Jerry Meeker's dock

His work as a lighthouse keeper could be demanding, but mostly he lit the lamp precisely at sunset and extinguished it at dawn, keeping track in the log book of ships that passed.  When it was foggy, work became more demanding.  We had a bell that had to be rung whenever it was foggy, day or night.  It was called the Gamewell Fog Bell Striking Apparatus, and would strike a huge bell every 20 seconds.  It had to be re-wound every 90 minutes, which kept Oscar awake most of the night, then if the fog persisted during day I took over while he slept.  However, when the Gamewell broke, which was frequently, I assisted him by keeping time, and calling out to him every 20 seconds.  He’d strike the bell as loud as he could so the ships would hear it.  It was exhausting work and our ears were ringing for days.  We got electricity in 1922.  Now Oscar did not have to light the lamp at sunset, we could flip a switch from the cottage, and the Gamewell was also electrified.  That was relief, as we had sixteen straight days of fog in January of 1926.

We were not blessed with our own children, although my brother’s two daughters Ruth and Annie Lou came to live with us.  I taught them to sew on my old hand crank sewing machine.  They liked cooking, as did I, saying their favorite was a steamed date pudding with hard sauce.  Oscar’s mother also lived with us and enjoyed gardening as much as I did, so that our little cottage was a higgledy-piggledy profusion of flowers, vegetables and three generations of family.  It is said that Mother Nature’s colors never clash, and I find that people can all get along if left to bloom where and when it suits them.

Browns Point was a panorama of passing boats all hours of the day, as there were few roads.  Enterprising men, including the local Indians, built piers and docks all up and down the shore.  Boats stopped every few miles, bringing beachgoers, sightseers, and even groceries.  When Capt. McDowell built a dance hall on one of his docks nearby, his clientele increased and I worried for my nieces.  But they turned out all right.  In World War I Camp Standby was established on Dash Point for the girls of various War Camp Community Service Clubs to let them experience the great outdoors. The WCCS was formed in 1917 to organize recreational and social activities where servicemen and women could spend off duty time together. We often saw the boats taking young girls to Camp Standby.  World War I was very good for industry in Tacoma, as lumber, salmon and food packing were high in demand.  Lumber and wheat prices climbed to record levels and new flour mills and salmon canneries were busy. Wood and steel shipbuilding grew to be second only to the lumber industry in the Northwest. Todd Shipyards in Tacoma was working nearly round the clock to provide ships for the war effort. 

Camp Standby

Tatoosh Island

Oscar saved many people from capsized boats, including three Japanese men who actually jumped in the water, thinking their companion in a rowboat would pick them up.  Evidently he didn’t see or hear them, but Oscar did, and rowed out to pluck them from the water.  He declared it no easy feat to get them in the boat.  He had lots of stories like that.  His former boss, the head lighthouse keeper out on Tatoosh Island, told how he was nearly blown off the island during one fierce gale, blown, in fact, head over heels for 300 feet before arresting himself by means of clinging to grass and vegetation before plunging over the cliffs into the crashing ocean.  The bull they kept out there was not so lucky, but WAS blown over.  They thought the bull was lost, in fact they wrote in the logbook that he was “lost at sea”.  However, the plucky bull found his way through the high surf back to the island, climbed up the steep cliffs, and demanded an extra ration of hay for privations and exposure suffered in sea and surf.  The cow however, named Mrs. Shafter, was not so ill-fated, and managed to remain sanely on shore.  Why she was named Mrs. Shafter was anyone’s guess, and one can only wonder about the original Mrs. Shafter.

Oscar and I had a fine life together in our little cottage on the point.  We loved to read National Geographic, the Sat Evening Post, Etude, Rudder and Yachtsman.  Oscar taught music lessons, I taught the girls how to cook, garden and sew.

Oscar had to retire when he was 70, and we told everyone that we were happy to move to an apartment in Tacoma because it would really be ours.  It wasn’t ours though, we rented it.  I miss our cottage, the boats passing and waving, our flowers, our chairs on the front porch, our nieces laughing and bringing me shells from the shore, showing me their fine sewing, or sniffing the aroma of  the dinner they’d cooked for me.  I miss the beacon of light that spoke of a caring lighthouse keeper who sang me love songs and gave me a beautiful little home beside the sea.

 

Remember, you are the guardians of the memories of those who have gone before.