page_title: Katherine Walker
section_title: Robbins Reef Light
hierarchical_section_title: Katherine Walker / Robbins Reef Light
caption_attribution_description: English: Robbins Reef Lighthouse in 1951, photo taken by U.S. Coast Guard Deutsch: Robbins Reef Lighthouse im Jahr 1951, Bild von der U.S. Coast Guard
context_page_description: Katherine Walker was a German-American lighthouse keeper.
  Walker tended the Robbins Reef Light in New York Harbor for more than 30 years after the death of her husband, Captain John Walker, who had been appointed keeper of the light in 1885. Katherine Walker was appointed the official keeper of the light by President Benjamin Harrison in 1890, four years after her husband's death. During her tenure she rescued 50 or more sailors from shipwrecks.
context_section_description: Sandy Hook Light was land-based, which allowed Walker to have a garden and plant vegetables. 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. 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. I refused to unpack my trunks at first, but gradually, a little at a time, I unpacked. 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. Captain Walker's last words to his wife, "Mind the light, Kate," motivated her to continue as the keeper at Robbins Reef. They were words Kate had often heard from her husband, and she intended to abide by them.
  Although 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. 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. Aside from this visit, Walker was left alone. Now comfortable with her life offshore, she became uncomfortable with trips to the mainland. She rarely left the station except to row her children back and forth to school on Staten Island. Of New York City, Walker once said, "I am in fear from the time I leave the ferryboat. The street cars bewilder me, and I am afraid of automobiles. Why, a fortune wouldn't tempt me to get into one of those things!"
caption: Robbins Reef Light Station, c. 1951
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