Edward M. Hermann was born on February 11,1878 in Tonawanda, NY the second oldest of eleven children to August and Matilda Hermann. The earliest known photograph is of Edward seated, eleven years old on the family property. Much of his early life can be constructed from the family notes and ephemera that has survived. The written story of his journey begins much later and would probably be lost to us today if he had not kept it recorded in a small day book. His sisters must be given credit for saving the photographs, postcards and correspondence. Some of the correspondence and photographs are the only records of the first lighthouse Edward was assigned as their logbooks have long vanished. And the lighthouse, now only a skeleton of itself, left to ruin, is a perching place for cormorants and gulls.
Edward's journey represents the beginning of an era and the end of an era. The War-Between-the-States had only ended thirteen years before his birth. Ships were still powered by sails or fueled by coal burning steam. They were mostly built of wood and when powered by steam they moved by side paddles. Revenue Cutters patrolled the inland seas and the oceans. Travel on land was long and difficult by horse drawn wagons and stage coaches. Railroads were slowly connecting the vast areas of the United States. The Wright brothers had not built the first flying airplane. People did not yet communicate by telephone. There was no Coast Guard or National Guard as we know it today. There was however, a horse mounted Calvary. And there were Lighthouse Keepers. There had always been Lighthouse Keepers. No one could remember a time when there were not Lighthouse Keepers.
When Edward died on June 25,1964 the world was a much different place. It was only five years later when a human landed on the moon. Edward's extraordinary journey through all this change begins on a schooner ship. On his journey he experienced a technological explosion that catapulted the world into a new century. The momentum to keep up with this new technology was a difficult race for many born at the cusp of this era.
Electricity replaced coal. Automobiles replaced horses. Telephones competed with land mail. Airplanes delivered mail and people faster and farther then could ever have been imagined. Radio beacons, the new wave of the future, replaced navigational instruments to guide ships. Two World Wars were fought with each being benefited and shaped by this great technological explosion.
Roads were built to accommodate a new type of transportation, giving rise to a new phenomenon, the summer tourist. The automobile allowed tourists to visit Lighthouses in ever increasing numbers. Perhaps their sense of ordered regularity guided not only sailors, but people in a world changing forever.
The Revenue Cutter Service, the United States Lighthouse Service and the Life Saving Service would eventually merge to form the United States Coast Guard. Keepers and Lighthouses were fined tuned to better protect and save by utilizing many of the new technological advances. Yet, in the end it would consume them, swallowing them in the belly of its own sea of technology. It was their death sentence.
When Edward began his journey Lighthouses and their Keepers had been in existence for over three thousand years. Then one by one, this guiding light, the symbol of all that was good and right, the lifeline between life and death was extinguished. And no one, not even their Keepers could save them. Finally, even the Keepers could not be saved.
Edward M. Hermann's journey began on a sailing ship and ended as the last Lighthouse Keeper at one of the most famous Great Lakes Lighthouses, Marblehead Lighthouse. Though this is his journey, perhaps what makes it belong to us all is the same principle that guides our recording of history. His journey becomes our journey. His story becomes our story. And, in the telling it also becomes our history. A history that is one generation and one story away from extinction. This is the story of the last Keeper at Marblehead Lighthouse on the inland sea, Lake Erie, Ohio.
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