The Apostle Islands have the largest collection of lighthouses in the country. For over a century, the structures provided safety and navigation for boats traveling on Lake Superior. Now, they serve as a memorial to the area’s rich maritime history.
Part of that history are the people who helped keep the light on from sunset to sunrise through the shipping season, including a number of women in official and unofficial roles. In the late 1800s to the early 1900s, wives, daughters, and nieces stepped in to help while their male counterparts were attending to other matters or even lost to the lake. In honor of Women’s History Month, we took a look at the lives of a few women who were essential in maintaining the lighthouses at the time and for generations to come.
Ella Luick
(Photo of Ella and Emmanuel Luick. Credit: Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.)
Ella Gertrude Richardson Luick is the first wife of Emmanuel Luick, the Sand Island lighthouse keeper. She married Emmanuel at the age of 16 and spent the next 10 years splitting her time between Sand Island and their off-season home in Iron River, Wisconsin. Ella frequently took over for her husband and tended to the Sand Island Lighthouse when Emmanuel made overnight trips to Bayfield for supplies. Ella served officially as a temporary assistant lighthouse keeper when other assistants were not available. She was paid for her work only twice, in 1903 and 1904. In November 1901, Ella took care of the Sand Island lighthouse for nearly three weeks after Emmanual fell ill and was confined to bed. Ella and Emmanuel eventually divorced, and she went on to nursing school in Baltimore, Maryland. (Mackreth, Bob, "Ladies of the Islands," Apostle Islands Fact Sheet, 2023, rev. 2024.)
Anna Carlson
(Photo of Anna Carlson. Credit: Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.)
Sometimes, lighthouse keepers and their families would spend winters in the islands. That was the case for Robert and Anna Carlson and their three children. They stayed on Michigan Island in the winter of 1849. Anna was a city girl and didn’t like being left alone on the island. Little did she know about the experience she was about to have that would test her inner strength.
In late February or early March, Robert and his brother went ice fishing but failed to return. Anna, thinking her husband was lost to the lake, took care of the lighthouse, her two-year-old daughter, and twin nine-month-old boys for four days. Anna recalled this nerve-wracking time in her life to a reporter for the Detroit News a number of years later. (Source: "The Heroine of Michigan Island," Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, 2015)
“Women who wait in brightly lighted cities with people all around within call of the voice have no conception what it is to sit and wait for your man on a deserted island, with snow and ice everywhere and no light but the stars."
Robert and his brother were trapped on a drifting piece of ice until they were able to make their way to Madeline Island, and then back to Michigan Island.
“I was doing some tasks about the Kitchen that afternoon when I heard my husband’s voice. ‘I’m all right, Anna’ he called to me, ‘Don’t be afraid.’” The Carlsons never spent another winter at an island light station. (Busch, Jane C. Ph.D, "People and Places: A Human History of the Apostle Islands," Prepared under contract to Midwest Regional Office, National Park Service United States Department of Interior, 2008)
Other wives who were appointed as assistant keepers for longer terms include Hellen Pendergast, Mary Haloron and Matilda Rumrill on Michigan Island, Anna Larson and Mary Snow on Raspberry Island, and Fannie Hall on Outer Island.
Gertrude Wellisch
(Photo of Gertrude Wellisch. Credit: Bayfield Heritage Association)
One notable woman was Gertrude Veronica Wellisch, also known as “the woman who saved the Sand Island Lighthouse.” Gert, the daughter of a well-to-do manufacturer from St. Paul, Minnesota, spent her childhood summers on Sand Island. (Source: "History Mystery: Emmanuel Luick photos document life of the Sand Island Community and beyond, Friends of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, 2021)
In 1920, the Brownstone lighthouse became the first automated beacon, and it remained vacant until 1925. Gert used her father’s political connections and secured permission to lease the lighthouse for $25 per year. She made Sand Island her summer home and maintained the old building. Gert was the first of several private lessors to occupy the lighthouses between automation and the advent of the National Lakeshore. She set a precedent that was critical in preserving the lighthouses.
To learn more about the women of the Apostle Islands, check out Ladies of the Islands, an Apostle Islands Fact Sheet written by Bob Mackreth, a retired Ranger for the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
