The 1886 Roanoke River Lighthouse
The 1886 Roanoke River Lighthouse is the last and grandest of fifteen screwpile Light Stations on North Carolina sounds and rivers. On February 6, 1832, William Biddle Shepard (1799-1852) petitioned the U.S. House of Representatives for a light station to help sailors find safe entrance to the Roanoke River. In 1834 the U.S. Congress provided $10,000 to construct a light vessel at the mouth of the Roanoke River. A 125-ton, three-masted sailing ship was stationed across Albemarle Sound from Edenton Bay. Whale-oil lights covered with red, green, and blue lenses, visible for 13 miles, hung 43 feet above the water. During the Civil War, the Confederacy controlled the light vessel, designated MM, until Union forces captured Plymouth in late March 1864. Trying to block the Union ironclad, Ram Albemarle, the Confederates scuttled the lightship 40 miles up the Roanoke River. In 1866 the government built a one-and-a-half story screwpile lighthouse. Fueled by whale oil, it was first lit in January 1867. A fire damaged the structure in 1885. After ice on Albemarle Sound cut lighthouse pilings in February 1885, this two-and-a-half-story lighthouse was authorized in 1886 and built in 1887. The US Coast Guard deactivated the Lighthouse in 1941.
In 1955 the Coast Guard sold this and two other surviving North Carolina sound lighthouses to Elijah Tate for $10 each. Tate (1902-1985), a Coinjock resident, was a former lighthouse Service employee. While Tate was moving the Roanoke Marsh Lighthouse, the barge tipped and dumped that lighthouse. In rough weather, in Currituck Sound Tate also lost the second lighthouse, which was probably the Wade Point Lighthouse. After this bad luck, Tate sold this 1886 Roanoke River Lighthouse to Emmett Wiggins (1921-1995) for $10. Because Wiggins had a marine salvage business, perhaps he had been moving the first two lighthouses for Tate. Wiggins moved Tate’s third Lighthouse across Albemarle Sound to Edenton. In 1946 Patsy Ann Chappell Brown (Miss Pattie), widow of M. G. Brown, sold him land at the mouth of Filberts Creek in the Albania neighborhood west of Edenton. Wiggins sank the Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) on which he had moved the Lighthouse and filled marshland around it with riprap. He lived in this Lighthouse until his death.
In May 2007 Edenton Historical Commission bought the Roanoke River Lighthouse for $225,000 and paid $75,000 to move it to Colonial Park in Edenton. A Lighthouse bell, cast in 1901 by the McShane Foundry in Baltimore, sits in the Town of Edenton’s Queen Anne Park. The Coast Guard also gave the Town of Edenton a fourth-order Fresnel Lighthouse Lamp. Edenton Historical Commission is raising funds to protect the Lighthouse. We want to hear stories from descendents of Lighthouse keepers.
Edenton Historical Commission at the Barker House gratefully accepts tax-deductible donations for Lighthouse support. Mail or deliver checks to Barker House, 505 S Broad St, Edenton, NC 27932
Contact: Becky Winslow 252-482-7800 or email us.
