Gay Head Lighthouse

Gay Head Lighthouse was built overlooking Nantucket Sound more than 200 years ago in the small Wampanoag community of Aquinnah at the tip of an island in the Atlantic. The Wampanoag called the island Noepe, but it is more commonly known today as Martha’s Vineyard. The Gay Head Lighthouse is one of America’s most famous beacons. From whaling days to electrification, the light has guided ships past the shoals surrounding the island, and it has twice been moved back from the eroding cliffs to continue lighting the way. It is one of the only American lighthouses with a history of Native Americans working with and even as light keepers, and it also played a part in Flanders family history.

Originally built in 1799, the octagonal wooden light tower was moved back 75 feet from the eroding clay cliffs in 1844 by John Mayhew of Edgartown, but by the early 1850s the tower was in disrepair and again threatened by the eroding clay cliffs. In 1853, lighthouse keeper Samuel Flanders (Mike’s great-great grandfather) reported to the Vineyard Gazette: “Gay Head is to have a new lighthouse, 5 or 6 rods back from the present one, and a new dwelling house is also to be erected.” Sam and his family had lived in the old accommodations from 1845 to 1849, during the administration of James K. Polk. Lighthouse keepers were political appointments, so he lost his billet from 1850 to 1853 when Millard Fillmore was in the White House, but the Flanders family moved into that new house and lived there from 1853 to 1861, when Sam, who was also a renowned storyteller on the island, served the administrations of Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. The election of Abraham Lincoln was the end of Samuel Flanders’ tenure as the lighthouse keeper.

Gay Head Light & Keeper’s House, c. 1950

Renowned storyteller Sam Flanders

In 2015, the “new” lighthouse at Gay Head was again moved, this time 135 feet back from the edge of the clay cliffs at Aquinnah. A Vineyard building contractor, Len Butler, was in charge of the move, and Mike has heard in a roundabout way that Len Butler was one of the many Vineyard residents who greatly admired Mike’s uncle, Kent Healy, a civil engineer and town selectman in West Tisbury. Kent probably could have figured out how to move the lighthouse himself.

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