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Although many of the eight children and numerous step-children of Great Lakes Lighthouse keeper Gustavus “Gus” Umberham had experienced plenty of tragedy and hardship in their lifetimes, none of them were prepared for the news that they would receive late on the night of February 3, 1913 – news that, as the local newspaper stated, would cast of “pale of gloom over the city.”
On that fateful February night, Gus Umberham, keeper of Wisconsin’s Algoma Pierhead Lighthouse, left work a little early so he could take his good friend Billie Adamson and two others, identified only as Mr. Ackerman and Mr. Jakubovsky, in Adamson’s gasoline powered boat, the Reliance, on a business trip of some type to Kewaunee, Wisconsin.
Gus Umberham was familiar with being on the water, having grown up as the son of a commercial fisherman. But, in 1882 when he married Jane Kihn, a widow with three children, the life of being a lighthouse keeper with steady pay and housing must have been more appealing to him than commercial fishing. So, in 1884 he secured himself an appointment as the 1st assistant keeper at Michigan’s remote Poverty Island Lighthouse. Gus and Jane went on to have four more children of their own: Bertha, Oliver, William and Jane.
In 1884, Gus Umberham was appointed the head keeper of Beaver Harbor Lighthouse (also known as St. James Harbor Lighthouse) on Beaver Island in St. James, Michigan. After being there for four years, in 1890 he accepted a transfer as the keeper of the new Cedar River Pierhead Light in Menominee, Michigan.
While there in 1891, tragedy struck his family; his wife Jane passed away. In December of that same year, he married Elizabeth Corcoran and the couple went on to have two children: Amiel and Francis. However, tragedy struck the family again when Elizabeth died on October 16, 1894.
Although his first and second wives died while he was stationed at Cedar River Lighthouse, Gus Umberham tried marriage a third time there with Maggie Writt in 1897. However, things did not work out between them, and the1900 census reported that Maggie was living with her parents, while Gus had all the children living with him at the lighthouse. Divorce soon followed.
In 1901, Gus swapped positions with lighthouse keeper Nelson Knudson, and on July 1 of that year, Gus Umberham assumed the position of keeper of the Ahnapee Lighthouse in Algoma, Wisconsin. It was here that Gus married Anna Marie Meunier Culligan, a divorcee with at least seven children. Gus and Anna went on to have two children of their own: Cora and Theodore “Teddy.”
Interestingly, Gus originally wanted to name his daughter Tuscarora after a Great Lakes freighter. However, the church wouldn’t allow the name for a baptism, so her name was shortened to Cora.
By 1910, after complaining for years, Gus Umberham’s numerous requests for a lighthouse keeper’s house was finally granted and he no longer had to rent a home. He became the first keeper to live in the new Algoma keeper’s quarters, which is still standing today. The 1910 census reflects that there were eight children living with Gus and Anna at that time: some were hers, some were his, and two were theirs. Descendant memories all seem to indicate that Anna was a kind and loving stepmother to Gus’s children.
On July 18, 1910, the U.S. Lighthouse Service officially changed the name of the Ahnapee Lighthouse to the Algoma Pierhead Lighthouse and its name has remained such since then.
On that tragic night in February 1913, as the Reliance cut its way through the bitter cold winter water of Lake Michigan, the weather suddenly worsened. As heaving waves pitched the boat, the cabin windows soon became covered in ice. The men opened the windows but still found it almost impossible to see where they were going as the cold wind blew fiercely and icy spray would splash up through the openings. They tried to use the compass, but the lantern they used to illuminate it went out. They were about six miles south of Algoma Harbor and were now navigating mostly by their wits alone, with some guidance from the few lights along the distant shoreline.
After standing his watch, Gus came inside the cabin to warm up before he was to relieve William Adamson at the helm. Suddenly, a high wave struck the boat and he must have lost his balance, pitching him into the cabin door with such force that the door came off its hinges and toppled him head-long into Lake Michigan.
Realizing what had happened, the men immediately turned the boat around to look for Gus. Twice they heard him cry for help, but in the darkness of the night they could not see or find him. They turned the engine off in hopes that they could better hear his cries, but to no avail. For the next hour, they circled around turning the engine on and off to search for him, but they soon realized that all hope was lost. The men were devastated.
In 2008, Gus Umberham’s daughter Cora, eight years old at the time, vividly recalled that night more than 80 years previously when there was a knock at the door that “was very alarming.” In a story published on August 15, 2015, The Kewaunee County Star News reported, “When the door opened, three men told her family that Gus had perished in Lake Michigan.” However, this tragedy had again struck the Gus Umberham family a final blow.
In later years, daughter Cora recalled how she and some of the other children would travel with their mother to various locations when there was a report of an unidentified body found, in hopes of bringing Gus back home for a proper burial. However, his body was not found.
An interesting twist occurred in 1920 when the Sheboygan Press in Sheboygan, Wisconsin published a story about the personal investigation that Gus Umberham’s son Amiel had launched into his father’s death. In doing research, Amiel had found a story in the Kenosha News about a body that been found in the water near Kenosha, Wisconsin in April of 1915. The story stated that officials of the time believed that the body had been drifting in the water for two years, and because of the clothing it was assumed that the man had drowned in the wintertime. Because the body had been in the water so long and was in an advanced state of deterioration, it was immediately buried in a potter’s field.
However, several days later the Kenosha branch of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows exhumed the body, believing it to be that of Joseph Peppan, one of their members who had mysteriously disappeared two years earlier. The Lodge reburied the body with all fraternal ceremonies. It was very disconcerting when, two years later, it was discovered that Joseph Peppan was alive and well in California.
So, this could very well mean that the body buried in the potter’s field in Kenosha, Wisconsin may have, in fact, been that of lighthouse keeper Gus Umberham. Perhaps if the grave could be found today, which is highly unlikely, DNA testing could be done to remove all doubt.
It may never be known to us whether Anna Umberham believed in her heart that her husband’s body was the one buried in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She died in 1952, having never remarried.
Gus Umberham was one of the many lighthouse keepers throughout history who met a tragic and untimely death in the waters near the lighthouse where he had so faithfully served. Today, Gus Umberham’s descendants number into the hundreds, all of whom should be honored by the legacy of service that he left.
This story appeared in the
Jan/Feb 2020 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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