The black-and-white striped St. Augustine Lighthouse tower on Anastasia Island, Florida

St. Augustine Lighthouse: The 1874 Tower, the 1873 Tragedy, and Florida’s Most Haunted Light

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St. Augustine, founded in 1565, is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the United States. Across the water from its historic streets, on the north end of Anastasia Island, stands a tower with black and white spiral stripes and a red lantern room. It is one of the most photographed lighthouses in Florida, and it is still a working aid to navigation. It is also, by reputation, one of the most haunted places in the state. Unlike many haunted sites, the St. Augustine Lighthouse has a documented tragedy at its heart, and the history of the light itself reaches back much further than the tower visitors climb today.

Two Towers, One Light

There has been some form of watchtower on Anastasia Island since the late 1500s, when Spanish forces kept wooden towers to watch for enemy ships and warn vessels away from the shoals. A coquina tower was built in about 1737, and it appears in British records as a lighthouse as early as 1768. When Florida became a United States territory, that old Spanish tower was fitted out and lit officially in May 1824, making it Florida’s first lighthouse. The first keeper was Juan Andreu, a Menorcan settler.

The old tower did not last. Beach erosion steadily ate away at the island, and by 1870 its days were numbered. Congress funded a replacement, designed by Paul J. Pelz, chief draftsman of the Lighthouse Board, who later helped design the Library of Congress. Construction began in 1871 under Hezekiah H. Pittee, a superintendent of lighthouse construction from Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The new tower was built of brick from Alabama, granite from Georgia, and ironwork forged in Philadelphia, and it was fitted with a first-order Fresnel lens made in France. The lens stood nine feet tall and was made of hundreds of glass prisms.

The new tower was completed in 1874. On 15 October that year, keeper William Russell lit the oil lamp inside the new lens for the first time. Russell was the only keeper to serve in both towers. The tower stands 165 feet tall, and its light, originally fixed with a flash every three minutes, was electrified in 1936 and automated in 1955. The old Spanish tower, abandoned, finally toppled into the sea on 20 June 1880, at about five in the afternoon. By 1914, its remains were underwater even at low tide.

The keepers’ house followed the tower in 1876, a Victorian brick duplex for the keeper and his assistant. One of the longest-serving head keepers was William A. Harn, a Union veteran from Philadelphia who had commanded a battery at Gettysburg. He kept the light from 1875 to 1889, about fourteen years, living there with his wife Kate.

The Keeper Who Fell

The lighthouse’s first ghost story predates the present tower by fifteen years. In 1859, keeper Joseph Andreu, a cousin of the first keeper, was painting the old tower from scaffolding rigged against the coquina walls. The scaffolding gave way, and Andreu fell about sixty feet to the ground. He did not survive. His widow, Maria Mestre de los Dolores Andreu, was appointed keeper on 7 January 1860. She is remembered as the first Hispanic-American woman to command a federal shore installation. During the Civil War, she and harbour master Paul Arnau removed the lens from the old tower and hid it, to keep Union ships in the dark and help blockade runners.

10 July 1873

The central tragedy of the lighthouse happened during construction of the new tower. Hezekiah Pittee had come to Florida with his wife Mary and their children. The construction site used a handcart on a rail track to carry supplies from the dock to the building site. The children rode in the cart, as they had done many times before. On 10 July 1873, four girls climbed into the cart: Mary Pittee, fifteen; Eliza Pittee, thirteen; Carrie Pittee, four; and a ten-year-old African-American girl whose name was not written down in the records that survive.

The cart rolled down the track, but the wooden board that normally stopped it at the end was not in place. The cart ran off the end, into the water, and flipped over, trapping the girls beneath it. A young African-American worker on the site, Dan Sessions, saw what had happened and ran to the cart. He lifted it off the girls, but by then three of them had drowned: Mary, Eliza, and the unnamed girl. Only Carrie, the four-year-old, survived. The Pittee daughters were taken home to Maine for burial. Museum staff have not found the unnamed girl’s grave, and her identity remains unknown.

The accident halted construction and cast a shadow over the whole town. It also gave the lighthouse its most enduring ghost story. Staff and visitors have reported hearing children’s laughter and the sound of children playing on the grounds, and some say they have seen small figures near the tower or the keepers’ house. The museum itself tells these stories openly on its night tours, and the Pittee girls are the figures most often named in reports. The last keeper assigned to the station, James L. Pippin, is reported to have moved out of the keepers’ house in the early 1950s, saying it was haunted.

Fire, Restoration, and a Museum

After automation in 1955, the Coast Guard no longer needed a family on site. The keepers’ house was rented out, then left empty. In 1970, while St. Johns County was negotiating for the surplus property, a fire gutted the house, leaving only the coquina basement and a few charred timbers. The county bought the shell in 1971. Volunteers from the Junior Service League leased it, raised the money to restore the house, the tower, and the original lens, and helped put the station on the National Register of Historic Places on 19 March 1981.

What Is Documented — and What Is Not

Documented: a light on Anastasia Island since the late 1500s, with a coquina tower from about 1737; Florida’s first official lighthouse lit in May 1824; Joseph Andreu’s fatal fall in 1859 and his widow Maria’s appointment on 7 January 1860; the drowning of Mary Pittee, Eliza Pittee, and an unnamed girl on 10 July 1873, with Carrie Pittee surviving; the present tower built between 1871 and 1874 and first lit on 15 October 1874 by William Russell; electrification in 1936, automation in 1955, the 1970 fire, listing on the National Register on 19 March 1981, and transfer to the museum in 2002.

Unverified or uncertain: reports of the Pittee girls, Joseph Andreu, the Harn family, and other figures haunting the tower and keepers’ house — widely reported by staff and visitors, but never confirmed by independent evidence; the identity and burial place of the unnamed girl who died in 1873, which the museum has not been able to establish; the smell of cigar smoke and other sensory reports, which are anecdotal and have no documented source.

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