The cozy Annisquam village grew up on the east side of the river’s northern end beginning in 1631. The village grew into a fishing and shipbuilding center that rivaled Gloucester Harbor in its early days. The Annisquam River was considered an important harbor of refuge for vessels traveling along the coast. Charles Boardman Hawes, in his book Gloucester by Land and Sea, illustrates this with the story of a sermon delivered by a fire-and-brimstone minister at the Isles of Shoals: Suppose, my brethren, any of you should be taken short in the bay, in a northeast storm, your hearts trembling with fear, and nothing but death before you. Whither would your thoughts turn? What would you do?” he asked his congregation. One fisherman replied matter-of-factly, “Why, I should hoist the foresail and scud away for ’Squam.” Congress appropriated $2,000 in April 1800 for a lighthouse at Wigwam Point, the northwesterly point of Annisquam village, where it would “best serve the purpose of discovering the entrance of Anesquam [a common early spelling] Harbor.” The name Wigwam Point stems from the long use of the point as a summer gathering place for local Indians. Gustavus Griffin of Gloucester sold six and a half acres of land for the station to the government for $140.
Purported sea serpent sightings around Gloucester became front-page news in 1817 and 1818. On August 17, 1818, the Boston Commercial Gazette reported the following, under the title “The Leviathan of the Deep”: The famous Sea Serpent, was seen on the 16th inst. near Squam Light House, by many persons, some of whom were within twenty feet of him. He is now described as being ‘perfectly harmless, and might easily be caught.’ . . . The knowing ones in Boston have been computing the average amount which will be derived from an exhibition of the Sea Serpent. One hundred thousand dollars is the sum decided on! The serpent was said to be more than 130 feet long and to pass through the water “with the rapidity of a meteor through the heavens.” On September 5 the Newport Mercury ran the exciting headline “The Sea Serpent—Taken!” The serpent had been captured by several people near the lighthouse, according to the story, after it had dragged their boat for two miles. The newspaper The Watch Tower soon reported the disappointing news that the appearance of the serpent was “very different from when it was alive and swimming.” The creature caught was a mere 10 feet long, with a head “of a hard scaly substance, which a harpoon cannot penetrate.” The undersized monster apparently never earned its captors the vast sums of money they had hoped for. Keeper Day was still in charge when the civil engineer I. W. P. Lewis examined the station in 1842. By this time, the tower was in such bad shape that it was propped up with several wooden spars. The keeper, whose pay had advanced to $350 yearly, provided the following statement for Lewis's 1843 report to Congress:
Day's statement went on to describe the deplorable condition of the dwelling. About 10 years earlier, rats had undermined the chimney.
Arthur
G. Moore had a relatively short stay as keeper, from January 1 to
September 1, 1872. Moore's wife died in May of that year, as
mentioned in the keeper's log: May 9, 1872: Lets in with moderate S. W. winds my Wife expired at six O clock this morning May 11, 1872: Lets in Strong SE winds and rain today at half past two buried my Wife, and my peace ends this day (Thanks to Bob Donovan and the Cape Ann Historical Association for these log excerpts.) Dennison Hooper was keeper from 1872 to 1894. His son Edward was born at the lighthouse in 1879. On September 26, 1888, Edward Hooper later recalled, two schooners went aground on Coffin's Beach, across the mouth of the river from the lighthouse. One was the two-masted I. W. Hine. The crew of the Hine got ashore without assistance, and the schooner was refloated. The other wreck that day was the Abbie B. Cramer, a three-masted coal schooner from Baltimore that was heading for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Cramer went ashore at the west end of Coffin's Beach. All hands had to hang on to the vessel's rigging all day as they waited for help. The crew of the Davis Neck Lifesaving Station arrived and tried to land a line for a breeches buoy, but they couldn't hit their target with several tries. The Massachusetts Humane Society had kept a lifeboat at the lighthouse since the days of Keeper George Day. A group of volunteers took the lifeboat across the river to help the crew of the Cramer. They had to land the boat on the west side of the river and then carry it two miles to the beach near the wreck. From there, they launched it into the surf and succeeded in rescuing the entire crew of the Cramer. The schooner was a complete loss, and Hooper claimed that years later he could see wood from the schooner protruding from the sand at low tide. Around 1890, a coal schooner from Bucksport, Maine -- the Mexican -- went ashore in a September northeaster about 150 yards north of the lighthouse. The crew managed to get ashore, abandoning the vessel, but the schooner was a total loss. "Many a resident of ''Squam made a saving on their coal bill that winter through the coal they salvaged as it came ashore," Edward Hooper later recalled. In
a 1966 letter to the Coast Guard, Edward Hooper recalled the supply
boat’s yearly visits. Kerosene was delivered in five-gallon cans
covered with wood, and a barrel of lime would be supplied to make
whitewash for the tower. Keeper Hooper kept several cows in a barn at
the station and sold milk in Annisquam village to help support his
family. Edward recalled that he sometimes had to bring back the cows
when they wandered away from the station at low tide. His father also
kept an extensive garden and grapevines. In his later years at the
station he rented adjacent vacant property for a larger garden and a
place to keep his flock of chickens.
The present 41-foot cylindrical brick lighthouse tower was built in 1897, on the same foundation as the previous two towers. Four years later the keeper’s house was renovated, a 3,000-foot wire fence was added along the boundary of the station, and a stone wall was built along the beach. John Davis was keeper from about 1900 to 1936, and he and his wife, Ida (Birch), saw many changes in their years at Annisquam. Telephone service and the city water supply reached the station in 1907. In 1922 the old fifth-order lens was replaced by a more powerful fourth-order lens, operated by electricity. A foghorn was installed in 1931, but the following year it was decided that the signal would operate only from October 15 through May 15, so that local summer residents could have peaceful nights. In 1949 it went into operation in the summer, but only during the day. Al Sherman of Delaware recalls life at Annisquam Light in the early 1950s, when his father was the Coast Guard keeper. Although the light—changed some years before from fixed to flashing—was powered with electricity, the mechanism that rotated the lens still needed to be wound by hand. “I can recollect memories of scaling the rocks beneath the light and most importantly going up the light every night with my dad to wind the turning mechanism,” Sherman said in 1997.
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