

It was a coveted federal position generally bestowed upon deserving war veterans. Foremost was that in June 1794, Long was nominated by Commissioner for Navigation George Hooper, brother of William Hooper, to be the first keeper of North Carolina’s first lighthouse.

Precisely how Long served his new country in rebellion against British oppression we do not know.Ī few clues tell us that Long must have served his young nation honorably. The births of his other children suggest that during the war Long must have remained close to his home near Smithville, now Southport. William HooperĪ few months after American Patriots and British troops clashed at Lexington and Concord in 1775, Henry and Rebecca Long welcomed their first of five children, a daughter they named Rebecca. Learn more and watch digital shorts and climate portraits. PBS North Carolina’s State of Change initiative examines the impact of climate change on coastal and inland communities across the state and how communities and individuals have responded with innovative solutions. Hooper was later one of North Carolina’s three representatives to the Continental Congress and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He assumed the anglicized version of his name, Henry Long, took a wife named Rebecca, and began a new occupation as a river pilot.Ĭircumstantial evidence leads us to conclude that Long had become a trusted friend of the increasingly influential Hooper family led by Harvard graduate and Wilmington attorney William Hooper.

The native of Germany’s Westerwald hills must have found a liking for the sands, salt marshes and healthy breezes of Cape Fear. We can deduce that Lange, by then 28 years old, chose to go no farther than the Lower Cape Fear region. At least two migrations by ship were made from Maine’s Broad Bay to the Cape Fear River from where the families embarked on the arduous overland journey to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lange and his family - his father was a schoolmaster - settled for a time on the coast of Maine but broken promises, lack of arable land, conflicts with Native Americans, brutal winters and poverty led many of the Germans to seek a better life at the Moravian settlement in North Carolina called Bethabara, near today’s Winston-Salem. Learn how you can be in the Sponsor Spotlight Eddystone Lighthouse, circa 1709įrom the deck of his ship young Lange may have pondered, how brave must a man be to serve at such a forlorn and tempestuous place? We can only imagine the impression the distant lighthouse instilled upon the heart and mind of the young boy with his life’s choices appearing ahead of him like the multitude of whitecaps on the sea.
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