Arthur R. Railton

Standing on the extreme northeastern tip of Chappaquiddick Island, Cape Poge Lighthouse, even today, is remote and isolated. In 1801, when the first keeper, Matthew Mayhew, and his family moved into the tiny dwelling provided by a parsimonious Department of the Treasury, it must have seemed as isolated as a frontier outpost. Their enemy was not the "Savage," but the savage sea. Keeper Mayhew felt so insecure that even a quarter of a century later, in 1825, he wrote to Henry Dearborn, Superintendent of Light Houses for Massachusetts: "...