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Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution mandates that a census be taken every ten years so that representatives to Congress can be apportioned based on a recent enumeration. A census has accordingly been taken every ten years since 1790 to provide a snapshot of the nation’s population. In compliance with the “72-year Rule” passed by Congress in 1978, the decennial census records, which contain personally identifiable information about individuals, are not released for seventy-two years from when they were taken. The most recent census release occurred on April 1, 2022, when the National Archives and Records Administration made the 1950 Census available digitally.
Census records, along with station logbooks and official personnel folders, are valuable tools for learning about lighthouse keepers. I was excited to see what information the 1950 Census would provide on lighthouse keepers, but found that data sheets for quite a few staffed lighthouses simply said “NO POPULATION.”
The information requested in each census is not exactly the same. The 1930 Census, for example, included where a person’s mother and father were born, but this information was not collected in the 1940 or 1950 censuses. The 1940 Census had a valuable field that showed where a person was living on April 1, 1935, midway between two censuses, but such a field was not part of the 1930 or 1950 censuses.
Although the 1950 Census was a bit of a disappointment for me, census takers still made valiant efforts to reach some of the more remote lighthouses. The story of census taker Helen Leslie Mabbott calling at Farallon Island Lighthouse, situated roughly thirty miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge, appeared in hundreds of newspapers throughout the country! Helen’s trek was remarkable not only because of the remoteness of the Coast Guard station she visited but also because it resulted in the first precinct being tabulated in the country that year. The census was not supposed to start until April 1, 1950, but Helen was allowed to take advantage of ideal weather conditions and visit the island on March 28.
During the past two centuries, the Farallon Islands have served varied purposes: from a seal-slaughtering station and a lighthouse to bird-breeding grounds and even a source of fresh eggs for gold miners. Today, for most San Franciscans, the remote, rocky islands are simply a convenient marker for clear weather. If you can see the islands, it’s a clear day.
What brought the Census Bureau out there in 1950 was the people living on the islands. The voyage to the Farallon Islands illustrates that census takers were willing to undertake even the most challenging journeys to track down the country’s estimated population of 150,388,000.
Even on calm days, reaching the islands can be perilous. Often, the Coast Guard tender on its weekly trips found the water too rough to land supplies. At Christmastime in 1948, groceries had to be dropped by parachute after weeks of failed landing attempts.
The census trip of 1950 was made on an 83-foot Coast Guard cutter, with Helen Leslie Mabbott, the enumerator, being accompanied by district supervisor John F. McCloskey, reporters, and photographers. One reporter noted that Helen must not have been briefed on the difficulty of the trip as she “wore a costume that would have been most becoming on the Lurline (a luxury cruise ship) – short camel’s hair jacket, a black crepe dress, red high-heeled shoes, and a matching red handbag.”
Upon nearing the main island, the cutter hove to, and a dinghy was launched. The boat, with Helen and a few others aboard, was lifted forty feet in the air by a boom and swung onto the island. Reporters noted there were seventeen people on the island – nine men, four women, and four babies – though the population swelled to thirty, if nobody was ashore. Betty Daniels, wife of Engineman First Class Eugene Daniels, was with her family in Washington, expecting the arrival of the couple’s second child. Two weeks after the baby was born, Engineman Daniels planned on bringing his family back to the island, thus increasing the island’s population by one.
Comprised of three clumps of volcanic rocks jutting out of the ocean, the Farallon Islands are no Pacific Island paradise. South Farallon Island, the largest and only inhabited island at the time of the 1950 Census, is strewn with large boulders and pitted with holes made by burrowing birds. The wind is constant, and when fog fills the air, the sounding of the foghorn coupled with pounding surf and squawking birds made the island noisier than San Francisco’s Market Street.
Despite the harsh conditions, the married coastguardsmen stationed there, along with their wives, expressed satisfaction with the assignment and hoped they could stay beyond the normal eighteen-month tour. The single men were not quite so enthusiastic and would escape to the mainland whenever possible. A few of the married men counted in the census had not been to the mainland in over six months.
“For a Coast Guardsman, it’s a wonderful assignment,” said Eugene Daniels. “It’s the only Coast Guard assignment I know which lets you be with your family all the time.” Cooking three meals a day and looking after children kept the wives busy. “I’d like to take up crocheting,” said one of them, “but I just don’t seem able to find the time.” In the little spare time they did have, the island occupants enjoyed fishing, gathering shells, listening to the radio, playing pool, taking their children to see the sea lions, watching movies three evenings a week, and chatting with each other. And what did they talk about? “Oh, we talk about the same things as you people on the mainland do – atom bombs and flying saucers,” Mrs. Robert Taylor, a pert, nineteen-year-old brunette told a reporter.
Each family lived in a three-bedroom apartment in a frame duplex, while Chief Bos’n Mate and Officer-in-Charge Raymond L. Newton had a frame house just for his family. The island also featured thirteen other buildings in 1950, including the historic lighthouse atop the island’s 350-foot peak.
For her ten hours of work, Helen earned $2.59 – seven cents for each person counted and seven cents for each of the seven dwelling units recorded. After she got through having her hair washed, her jacket cleaned, and buying a pair of new stockings, Helen found herself $2.60 in the red for her day at Farallon Island Lighthouse. But now her name will be forever coupled with the Farallon Islands.
Helen Leslie Mabbott wasn’t the only census taker to make the news for venturing out to a lighthouse for the 1950 Census. On the opposite side of the country, Denver D. Scott made a trip out to Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, a tall, skeletal tower offshore from Miami. It wasn’t Scott, however, that received most of the coverage but rather Rose Mallory, a reporter for the Miami Daily News who was accompanying him to the lighthouse along with Walter Davis a staff photographer for the paper.
A Coast Guard vessel took the group out to Fowey Rocks, and then a small rowboat had to be employed to shuttle each member of the party the final 100 yards to the lighthouse. Weldon P. Poucher, officer-in-charge (OIC) of the lighthouse, was at the oars of the rowboat as Rose stood on the stern of the boat and prepared to jump onto the lighthouse’s landing platform with the assistance of coastguardsman Clarence Simmons. Just as Rose reached for the landing platform, a wave struck, making the rowboat shoot out from under her and causing Rose to plummet into the ocean.
“Falling in the ocean, fully clothed, wrist watch and all, and being fished out is no picnic, take it from me,” Rose wrote in an article detailing her experience. “Not that I was scared – not even with all those barracuda around. But it was such a loss of dignity. Everybody thought it was real funny, except me.”
Rose claims that as she was tumbling into the ocean, she caught a quick glance of Davis who was a picture of indecision on the stairs. Should he rush to her rescue or take the picture? Being a professional, Davis captured the picture.
OIC Poucher provided a large T-shirt for Rose to change into along with a pair of Simmons’ jeans, which proved to be two sizes too small but had to do. George T. Luke, the third coastguardsman on the light, snickered so hard on seeing the reclothed reporter that he had to leave to get a drink of water. He later returned and kindly offered Rose some dry paper for her note taking.
Thanks to the efforts of census takers like Helen Leslie Mabbott and Denver D. Scott, the names of numerous coastguardsmen serving at lighthouses in 1950 were captured and can now be found in the archives of the U.S. Lighthouse Society: https://archives.uslhs.org/people.
This story appeared in the
Nov/Dec 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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