Lighthouse's Legacy Is Restored

Blackistone Beacon Is Rebuilt on St. Clement's

On a small island in the Potomac River in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Josephine McWilliams Freeman tended the Blackistone Lighthouse. It was an unusual job for a woman, but she held it for nearly 40 years.

But Freeman died, the lighthouse burned down and the caretaker's legacy survived only in the memories of her descendants.

Then, on a stormy afternoon Sunday -- the type of day when a lighthouse is important -- more than 360 people took water taxis to St. Clement's Island for the official opening of the reconstructed lighthouse. The renovation was undertaken by members of a group called the St. Clement's Hundred to fulfill the dying wish of Freeman's granddaughter.

The original Blackistone Lighthouse was built in 1851 and guided boats on the Potomac until it was decommissioned in 1932. Vandals started the fire that destroyed the building in 1956.

The new lighthouse is about 150 yards away from the original structure's site, which has been eroded. The reconstructed building is historically correct in every other way, said Dick Gass, president of St. Clement's Hundred. The nonprofit organization was started in 1993 to beautify the island -- site of the first landing of English colonists in Maryland -- with trees and flowers and by picking up trash.

"She felt history had passed her grandmother by," Gass said of Josephine Mattingly, the granddaughter who left half of her small estate to the St. Clements Hundred when she died in 1998. "She said, 'I trust you to do something in her memory.' "

One early idea for a memorial was to build a metal structure that would give island visitors an idea of what the lighthouse looked like. "It was resoundingly turned down with the thought that 'If you can't build it right, you can't build it at all,' " Gass said. "The rest was history."

It took nearly two years to complete the lighthouse. The roughly $800,000 price tag was funded by county, state and privately raised money, with several large donations of time and resources from local building companies. Officials at the St. Clement's Island-Potomac River Museum said they hope more people will visit the museum, on the mainland near the island, then take a water taxi to see the lighthouse.

Gass had worried that the ceremony Sunday was going to be rained out, as storms pounded the area early in the day. But the weather was clear as the invited guests rode boats out to the island, listened to speakers and explored the lighthouse. It wasn't until later, after the last boat had returned to the mainland, that a storm hit the island.

"It was sort of a miracle with the weather," Gass said. "It was perfect."