Long nights on the job, surviving vicious storms, short stays at home, entertaining the family aboard: except for being fixed in one place, the keeper at a lighthouse was very much like the captain of a ship that the light was there to protect.

Family stories and articles from Gazette-Journal files and other sources tell something about the men—and about one woman—who kept the lights.

Harry Monsell

Mrs. Sidney Monsell of Cappahosic received a telegram on Dec. 19, 1918, that her son Harry’s body, clad in a life jacket, had drifted ashore at Point Lookout and was buried in Heathsville on the south side of the Potomac. A letter in the Gloucester Gazette of Feb. 6, 1919, told the sad story.Monsell, 44, kept Point No Point Light in Maryland on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The letter in the Gazette said that he got his mail across the bay at Hooper’s Island, where he had previously kept the lighthouse.

It was assumed by authorities that Monsell had gotten into a “non...