Colonial Businesswoman. She is credited as being the first female lighthouse keeper in the United States, enduring the position most ladies in this era would not accept. Starting in the American Revolution, she "manned" the lighthouse from 1776 to 1786. The lighthouse was known as Plymouth Light and later Gurnet Light. She was the widow of General John Thomas, who had died of smallpox in Canada during the Revolutionary War in 1776. Documented in the Plymouth County registration of land deeds, she was the lighthouse keeper. Her responsibilities were difficult as British ships were firing upon the lighthouse during the war, as well as holding her post during raging storms and rescuing nearly drowned sailors from nearby shipwrecks. Since the lighthouse actually had twin towers, which were not connected to each other, she had the tasks of repeatedly climbing the stairs to add oil several times a night, trimming the wicks on the candles; and cleaning the huge glass lens. Besides being the lighthouse keeper, she managed a dairy farm and was the mother of three young children. The lighthouse was built in 1769, and after the war in 1786, the federal government purchased for $120 the land on which the lighthouse was built. Gurnet Point Lighthouse was rebuilt in 1803, 1843, and lastly, in 1924 as automated, needing no lighthouse keeper. Her story is mentioned in a book called, "Women Who Kept The Lights." Legends have her ghost haunting the lighthouse. She was a daughter of Nathanial Thomas, a farmer, and his second wife Hannah Robinson. Upon her father's death when she was sixteen, she inherited one-third of the farm. She married her husband after the French and Indian War in 1761, and the couple had two sons and a daughter. After her husband's death, she had to fight as a shrewd businesswoman to keep her farmland and the lighthouse, which was needed to provide an income for her family. The relationship between her and her husband's Thomas family is not well-documented. In 2019 a U.S. Lighthouse Service Marker was ceremonially placed at her grave site and near her husband's Sons of the American Revolution marker.