Just 25 miles from the Rutgers New Brunswick campus, situated in the New York Harbour, is a tiny red and white lighthouse. Though easy to miss, the lighthouse— known as Robin’s Reef— would have quite a few stories to tell if it could. One of those stories would be that of Katherine Walker.
Katherine Walker, born Katherina Görtler, was a German woman who immigrated to the United States in 1882. Recently widowed and left with a young son, Katherine set off for America with the hope of finding a better life. When she arrived, she settled in New Jersey and found work as a housekeeper. It was during this period that she met Captain John Walker, the man that she would go on to marry. Captain Walker was a retired naval captain, and was tending the Sandy Hook lighthouse when he and Katherine married. The pair lived in the lighthouse together for a time, before the Captain was transferred to another position: tending Robin’s Reef.
During this period, Katherine learned to assist her husband with his duties. She was also raising her son Jacob, and her new daughter, Mary. It was by no means an easy position, and, at least at the start, Katherine resented the isolation that came with her husband’s line of work. Eventually, though, she adjusted to the harshness of lighthouse life.
Unfortunately, this would not be the final adjustment she would have to make. In 1886, the Captain contracted pneumonia. He did not survive the illness. Katherine was once again a widow, though this time she had two young children to care for. On top of that, she was still stationed on a lighthouse in the middle of the bay. Many women in that position would have given up; no one would have blamed her if she had abandoned the post, taken her children back to the mainland, and tried to piece together some sense of normality. But this was not the path she took.
In his final moments, Captain Walker had instructed his wife to “Mind the light, Kate.” That was just what she did. Despite not being paid adequately for the position, despite the difficulties that came with the work, despite the additional task of raising her children, Katherine Walker persevered. For more than thirty years, she tended the light at Robin’s Reef. Every morning, she would row her children to Staten Island for school. Every night, she would row them back. And in between, she maintained the lighthouse that guided hundreds of sailors to safety. During her time as the lighthouse keeper, it is estimated that she rescued over fifty men from shipwrecks.
Despite her capabilities, the state did not officially recognize Katherine as the primary keeper of the light for over four years after the death of her husband. The position was open for application during this period, but few were brave enough to undertake the great task (which, mind you, Katherine was already completing for half the standard pay and with two children underfoot). After years of a failed search, she was finally given the official position and compensated adequately.
Years later, upon her death, the New York Post wrote this: “A great city’s water front is rich in romance… There are queenly liners, the grim battle craft, the countless carriers of commerce that pass in endless procession. And amid all this and in the sight of the city of towers and the torch of liberty lived this sturdy little woman, proud of her work and content in it, keeping her lamp alight and her windows clean, so that New York Harbor might be safe for ships that pass in the night.” Now, though, she has been all but forgotten. The United States Coast Guard has a buoy tending ship named for her, but aside from this there is very little to celebrate the life of this truly extraordinary woman. A project to commemorate women instrumental to the development of New York City was scheduled to erect a statue of Walker in the St. George Ferry Terminal, but the project was sidelined by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dozens of other women in our country’s history have suffered the same posthumous neglect as Walker. The United States Coast Guard’s List of Women Lighthouse Keepers gives the names of roughly 175 women that have tended lighthouses across the nation. Most of the names on the list are completely unfamiliar to the public, however.
Is it not time that we bring these women, Katherine Walker included, to the light?