Harriet Colfax, part 2

Linda’s Monthly Monday Morning Moaning’s

Harriett Colfax served as the keeper of the Michigan City Lighthouse for 43 years from her appointment in 1861 until her retirement at age 80 in 1904. The oldest, stanchest and most reliable lighthouse keeper in the United States is a women. A little, fragile, pretty maid of more than 80 years broke the records of all the lighthouse keepers in the country in length of service, in age, and above all in the fact that her light never failed, never went out between the hours of sunset and sunrise during the forty-three years that she tended it.

Her cousin, Schuyler Colfax, United States Representative and former Vice-President of the United States, suggested the lighthouse of the little port in which she lived as a way of earning her living. She assumed control of the lighthouse and the old harbor beacon in the spring of 1861. At eventide each day during the navigational season for forty-three years she would replaced the warning lamp with a fresh one; at dawn for forty-three years she had quenched the beacon and realized that the unfailing light brought safety to many ships and small boats in the rough waters of Lake Michigan.

Miss Harriett Colfax was a native of Ogdensburg, New York where she had been a teacher of voice and piano. She moved to Michigan City in the 1850’s with her brother who had founded a local political newspaper. Miss Colfax worked as a typesetter on the paper as well as a music teacher. Her brother sold the newspaper and moved from the area but Miss Colfax remained in Michigan City with her companion Miss Ann Hartwell, also a teacher and native of Ogdensburg, New York.

At age 37 Miss Colfax took up the position of lighthouse keeper. Harriett Colfax and Ann Hartwell who were known to their friends as ‘Ann and Tat’, spent the rest of their lives together, primarily in the Michigan City Lighthouse. In the late 1800’s after twenty-five years of teaching, Ann Hartwell ran a newsstand and bookstore in downtown Michigan City. Her bookstore had Michigan City’s first circulating library. Miss Hartwell was a founding director of the Michigan City Branch of the Needlework Guild of America, an organization providing clothing to those in need. Miss Colfax and Miss Hartwell were supporter of the Library Association and construction of the Michigan City library which opened to the public on October 9, 1897. Confidants and companions for seventy years when, Harriett Colfax died on April 16, 1905, it was shortly after the death of Ann Hartwell on January 22, 1905. Taken from an article written after the deaths of the two friends.

On that ‘wee note’ see you next month, February 7, 2022

---

Courtesy to the Michigan City Old Lighthouse Museum.

Thank you for visiting and reading today. Beside to share with your friends using the share button below. If you haven’t already please enter your email address in the form below to receive my stories by email.