Temperatures in Monmouth County were in the high 90s the second week of July in 1876, when local residents were still celebrating the 100th birthday of the nation the week before. By July 21, the weather was down in the 80s, probably because of heavy rain the night before.
Newpaper reports wrote of the severe thunder showers, as one reporter put it, “the hardest thunder in six years.” Markets reported blackberries were selling for 8 to 10 cents a box in New York, and 13 to 15 cents a box in Newark. The yacht Mohawk capsized in New York Bay and three persons were drowned.
But at the Twin Lights in Highlands, where lighthouse keepers kept their logs carefully and precisely, recording the weather three times a day, once at each shift, the report on July 21, 1876, also included the notation: “A.B.Johnson, chief clerk of Lighthouse board, in Washington DC, visited this station and made an inspection through both towers and found them to be in good order except the damper chimney in the north tower.”
Succinct in their logs, the keeper gave no more information, nor what was wrong with the damper chimney or if it was rectified.
Even when the lighthouse is on land, and other keepers are living in the same building, a lighthouse keeper’s life was lonely and at most times humdrum and mundane.
