Personal Copy of Lighthouse Keeper “Isaac H. Grant”

21550d. THIRTIETH ANNUAL LIST OF MERCHANT VESSELS OF THE UNITED STATES WITH OFFICIAL NUMBERS AND SIGNAL LETTERS…. FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED JUNE 30, 1898. Wash. GPO. 1898. 406 p. Blue government cloth boards with gilt lettering. Stamped in two places for Lighthouse Keeper “Isaac H. Grant”, at that time Storekeeper at Portland Lighthouse Depot.

Provides complete listing of merchant and U.S. Government vessels operating and includes all steam, sailing, iron and steel and unrigged vessels giving official number of vessel, signal letters, rig, name, tonnage, dimensions, year and place of building, home port and more. In addition to merchant vessels, includes tenders of the U.S. Light-House Establishment, Revenue Cutter Service, US Navy, Quartermaster’s Department of the Army, Coast and Geodetic Survey, US Fish Commission, Marine Hospital Service, and more. Extremely important reference. Clean, tight, only light wear.

Isaac H Grant was the son of Keeper John H Grant at Matinicus Rock Lighthouse, and brother of Keeper John F Grant, Keeper William G Grant, and Keeper Mary B Grant.

Isaac H Grant served as Assistant Keeper at Matinicus Light from 1864 to 1875, then as Principal Keeper at Whitehead Light from 1875 to 1890. Finally he served as Storekeeper at the Portland Lighthouse Depot from 1892 to 1910.

Isaac Grant married noted Maine female lighthouse keeper Abbie Burgess [Grant] (1839-1892), who was born in Rockland, the fourth of nine children born to Samuel and Thankful Burgess. She lived and went to school in Rockland until she was fourteen years old when she and her family moved to Matinicus Rock, where her father became a lighthouse keeper. In 1861 her father Samuel lost his job at the lighthouse because of politics. Abbie was heartbroken. The Grant family, who were friends, moved onto the Rock to replace the Burgess family. Abbie, loving her home so much, asked to stay and train the new lighthouse keeper. Soon she fell in love with the Grant’s youngest son Isaac. They later married and lived on the Rock for another fourteen years. Abby was named his official assistant. Isaac and Abbie had four children on Matinicus Rock.

Two other signatures on front endpaper include: Royal Sullivan. Also Ross Stuart Thompson, the former owner of this book. He was a Southport, Maine resident and donated the book to the Southport Library, where we obtained it. Ross Stuart Thompson was one of the founders of the Southport Historical Society and he may have been gifted it.

(VG+).    $275.

From Bob Trapani, Jr. WWW account:

“….We thought it would be appropriate to share a heroic rescue undertaken by keeper Isaac H. Grant – husband of the famous Maine heroine Abbie Burgess Grant, when the couple was stationed at Whitehead Lighthouse.

The rescue occurred on the date of August 7, 1881, and for his gallant efforts, keeper Isaac H. Grant was later awarded a prestigious lifesaving silver medal.

 [Account from: Annual Report of the Operations of the United States Life-Saving Service]

“During the year medals have been awarded in four cases for heroic acts of life-saving.

The instance first in order was that of Mr. Isaac H. Grant, the keeper of Whitehead Lighthouse, on the coast of Maine, who, on the 7th of August, 1881, was the hero of a remarkably prompt and gallant rescue.

At about 8 o’clock in the morning of that day two men, named Thomas Wilson and John Lynch, mate and seaman on board the schooner “Vicksburgh,” of Bangor, Maine, went out in a yawl from their vessel, which was at anchor in Seal Harbor. There was a dense fog, a strong breeze, with frequent squalls and a heavy sea, and at 9 o’clock, when the boat had been absent from the vessel an hour, and was about a mile to the eastward of Whitehead Lighthouse, she suddenly capsized.

The men contrived to get astride of the bottom, and clung to the keel, but were repeatedly torn off by the violent seas, although they as often managed to regain their position. Their cries for help were drowned by the roar of the waves, and the dense fog prevented alike their being seen from or seeing the shore.

In this pitiable condition of suffering and struggle they continued for three hours, a strong current caused by the ebb tide meanwhile bearing them out to sea, and the prospect of their being lost rapidly becoming imminent, when the fog fortunately lifted and disclosed them to the keeper of the lighthouse as they tossed, clinging to the yawl’s bottom, far out on the rough waters.

Keeper Grant acted at once with admirable forethought and energy. He dispatched his daughter with the alarm to the keeper of the life-saving station, about a mile away, and while the girl sped on her errand launched his own boat, with the aid of his son Frank, and put out to the rescue.

So stormy was the sea after getting past the lee of the lighthouse that he was forced to throw over sail and ballast to keep the boat from swamping. He soon found that the nearest way to the perishing men was across a dangerous shoal, and time being precious, he risked this peril, and after a hazardous pull came up with the sufferers, who by this time were so helpless that they had to be lifted into the boat.

They were in a frightful condition, exhausted, benumbed with cold, their trouser-legs chafed off at the knees by the abrasions of their struggles in keeping their hold of the boat’s bottom, and the skin and flesh excoriated for spaces each as large as a man’s hand, forming ghastly wounds.

The keeper of the life-saving station soon came up in a boat better than that by which the rescue had been effected, and to this they were transferred and taken to the lighthouse, where their hurts were bandaged and every attention was bestowed upon them. The silver medal of the Life-Saving Service was bestowed upon Mr. Grant in recognition of his humane and gallant service upon this occasion.””