Location | Southern point of present day Saint Clement's Island in the Potomac River |
---|---|
Coordinates | 38°12′27″N76°44′42″W / 38.20750°N 76.74500°W Coordinates: 38°12′27″N76°44′42″W / 38.20750°N 76.74500°W |
Tower | |
Construction | wood |
Automated | 1932 |
Shape | keeper's house with lantern on roof |
Light | |
First lit | 1851 |
Deactivated | 1956 |
The Blackistone Island Light was a lighthouse located on what is now St. Clement's Island on the Potomac River in Maryland. It is best known as the target of a Confederate raid in the Civil War. Completed in 1851, the structure was destroyed by fire in 1956 and its shell was razed; a replica was completed in 2008.
The lighthouse replica can be visited on weekends from June through October. After driving to the St. Clement's Island Museum, one may take a water taxi on weekends and walk the grounds. A 50-foot (15 m) cross is also on the island. The lighthouse is open on Saturdays and the first Sunday of every month from June through October.
Congress appropriated $3,500 for the construction of a lighthouse on the island in 1848; John Donahoo was awarded the contract, which cost $4,535. He designed an integral lighthouse, a two-story brick keeper's dwelling with a tower through its center, which sat on a 2-acre (0.81 ha) plot at the southern tip of the island. Construction was completed, and the light lit, in 1851.
The lighthouse, like many in the South, was a target for Confederate raiders. In 1864, CSA Captain John Goldsmith, a former owner of the island, led a party which destroyed the lighthouse lens and confiscated the oil used to light it; the group then declared its intent to destroy the structure. Keeper Jerome McWilliams, an acquaintance of the captain's, succeeded in convincing the men not to destroy the lighthouse because his wife was pregnant; he argued that destroying the family home would leave both her and the baby vulnerable.
The United States Navy purchased the island in 1919 and razed most structures on it, leaving only the lighthouse and building piers and a landing strip. The light was automated in 1932 and left unattended, gradually decaying over the next twenty years. Fire gutted the structure on July 16, 1956; to this day, the cause of the blaze is uncertain, but many suspect that a stray artillery round fired from the proving ground at Dahlgren, Virginia, may have been to blame. In any event, the Navy viewed the shell as a hazard and ordered it razed.
Through the efforts of the St. Clement's Hundred, a local community organization created for the preservation of St. Clement's Island, a replica of the Blackistone Lighthouse was constructed and completed in June 2008. [1]
CSS Albemarle was a steam-powered casemate ironclad ram of the Confederate Navy, named for an estuary in North Carolina which was named for General George Monck, the first Duke of Albemarle and one of the original Carolina Lords Proprietor.
St. Clement's Island State Park is a publicly owned historic preservation and recreational area that encompasses St. Clement's Island, an uninhabited Potomac River island lying one-half mile southeast of Colton's Point, St. Mary's County, Maryland. The state park features a 40-foot stone cross dedicated to the beginnings of freedom of religion in the United States as well as a reconstruction of the historic Blakistone Island Light. It is the central feature of the St. Clement's Island Historic District that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
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