At Beavertail on Conanicut Island, lighthouse keepers could live at the site with their families rather than apart from them on the mainland, and twenty-seven keepers served there, beginning with Abel Franklin in 1749. Robert H. Wheeler was appointed keeper in 1844 and served four years; after his death, his wife Damaris became Beavertail's first and only female keeper. When the current light tower was built in 1856, the U.S. Lighthouse Board built this brick keeper's residence to replace an older house. Captain George T. Manders, keeper from 1913 to 1937, recalled being thrown across the yard by a sou'easter while trying to start the fog signal. Carl Chellis was the Coast Guard light keeper at Beavertail in 1938, when the Great Hurricane of 1938 struck as his son Clayton, his daughter Marion, and six other children were returning from school; a storm surge hit the school bus on the Mackerel Cove causeway, and only the driver and Clayton survived. In 1939, management of all lighthouses passed from the U.S. Lighthouse Service to the U.S. Coast Guard, and the light was automated in 1972; five years later, a property custodian was assigned to provide maintenance and security.
