Faulkner’s Island light has had a number of interesting keepers over the centuries. In 1818, President James Monroe appointed Eli Kimberly, a Guilford native, keeper of the lighthouse. Kimberly relocated to the island with his pregnant wife Polly and two young children, and during their thirty-three years on the island, the couple had another nine children.
Although the island was lonely and remote during the winter, there could be hundreds of visitors in the summer, and the Kimberlys were known as excellent hosts. The keeper even built a bowling alley (!) with a well-stocked bar. Unfortunately, on the Fourth of July in 1829, a group of twenty young men from New Haven drank themselves senseless at the bar, then tore up the Kimberlys’ vegetable garden, smashed some lighthouse equipment, and destroyed the keeper’s boat. Soon after, a law was passed prohibiting the sale of liquor at American light stations.