![]() The street cars bewilder me, and I am afraid of automobiles. Of New York City, Walker once said, "I am in fear from the time I leave the ferryboat. ![]() She rarely left the station except to row her children back and forth to school on Staten Island. Now comfortable with her life offshore, she became uncomfortable with trips to the mainland. Aside from this visit, Walker was left alone. Once a year, a lighthouse official would stop by the lighthouse to drop off a few tons of coal, barrels of oil, and an envelope containing her wages. Īlthough Walker had been working for $350 in annual wages as assistant keeper while her husband was alive and had proven herself capable of the required work, it was four years, after multiple men had declined the job, before she was officially offered the keeper position for $600 a year. They were words Kate had often heard from her husband, and she intended to abide by them. Captain Walker's last words to his wife, "Mind the light, Kate," motivated her to continue as the keeper at Robbins Reef. After a while they were all unpacked and I stayed on." Walker ultimately stayed on for 33 years after her husband's death from pneumonia in 1886. I refused to unpack my trunks at first, but gradually, a little at a time, I unpacked. Later in life she told a visitor to the lighthouse of her first impression of her future home: "When I first came to Robbins Reef, the sight of the water, whichever way I looked, made me lonesome. Such a garden would not be possible at Robbins Reef as the structure was surrounded by water, a fact that made Walker threaten to leave her husband. Sandy Hook Light was land-based, which allowed Walker to have a garden and plant vegetables.
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