Ida Wilson Lewis, Lighthouse Keeper 

1. One of the world’s best-known lighthouse keepers is Ida Wilson Lewis of the American state of Rhode Island. Over the course of her career, she saved somewhere between thirteen and twenty-five lives, including some soldiers and even a sheep
2.   Ida Wilson Lewis was born in 1842. In 1853, her father was appointed the first lighthouse keeper at Lime Rock, an island in Newport Harbour, Rhode Island. A few months after his appointment, he was stricken by a paralytic stroke. As a result, Lewis and her mother carried out the lighthouse duties in addition to their everyday household chores.
3.  Performing numerous lighthouse and domestic duties groomed Lewis for her eventual appointment as the official lighthouse keeper of Lime Rock and set her down the path to becoming a renowned rescuer. Lewis was an expert oarswoman and had developed exceptional boat-manoeuvring skills from making countless trips back and forth between the island and the mainland to transport supplies and her four siblings. 
4. Lewis came to the aid of four men whose small boat had capsized. But it was the 1869 rescue of Sergeant Adams and Private McLaughlin of Fort Adams that made her famous. Because Lewis saved these two men from drowning in the midst of a squall, she was deemed the Grace Darling of America, after Grace Darling, the famed English lighthouse keeper’s daughter who helped save several people from a shipwreck in 1838.
5.  For her bravery, Lewis was awarded a silver medal from the Life Saving Benevolent Association of New York and presented with a new boat by the citizens of Newport. She was featured on the cover of Harper’s Weekly magazine, becoming the only lighthouse keeper ever to receive such a distinction. Lewis received numerous other awards throughout her life, including the Gold Lifesaving Medal (awarded to an individual who attempts rescue at the peril of his or her own life) and the American Cross of Honour. 
6. Ida Wilson Lewis’s career ended only when she died at the Lime Rock Light Station on 24 October 1911 at the age of 69. In 1924, the Rhode Island legislature renamed Lime Rock to the Ida Lewis Rock. The Lighthouse Service then officially changed the light station’s name to the Ida Lewis Lighthouse, the only time an American lighthouse has been renamed for a keeper. The lighthouse was converted to a yacht club in 1928 and is still known as the Ida Lewis Yacht Club. 
7. Many of Ida Wilson Lewis’s personal items, including her Gold Lifesaving Medal, were bequeathed to the Newport Historical Society following her death. And as for that sheep she saved? In 1877, a sheep jumped from the wharf during a gale. Three men attempted to rescue the sheep, but when their boat met with trouble, Lewis rescued all four. 

Adapted from the National Archives, ‘Ida Wilson Lewis, Lighthouse Keeper and Fearless Federal Worker’