Madisonville Lighthouse

LighthouseMadisonville Shining for Centuries, Illuminating through Generations

by Sandra Scalise Juneau

This 1850s sketch

of the original lighthouse was drawn by Gaston Pontalba, the youngest son of the Baroness Pontalba, when he had come

to Madisonville

during the Yellow Fever plague.

THE MESSAGE LEFT ON MY HOME RECORDER was not deleted, as so many calls from unfamiliar numbers usually are. Coming from Spokane, Washington, the message explained, “I’m calling because, in a genealogy search for my direct ancestor - Benjamin Thurston, your feature about the lighthouse in Madisonville, “Faithful Sentinel” which appeared in the January / February 2015 issue of Inside Northside, identified my 4th great grandfather, Benjamin Thurston, as Madisonville’s first lighthouse keeper. I >>

Mark and Deanne Holmes with Iris Vacante, the Madisonville Historic Museum Curator. Deanne is holding a copy of Gaston Pontalba’s sketch of the original lighthouse.

was delighted to read in your article, excerpts of direct quotes from his daily log. You also mentioned, from archives of the Madisonville Cemetery, there are buried members of the Thurston family - his descendants, including children and spouses of his five daughters. Further, learning that the original Keeper’s Log is now housed at the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum, I am planning on coming to Louisiana and would like to visit Madisonville to learn more about my Thurston family who settled there. If you would, please give me a call back.”

Intrigued, I returned the call and learned that she, Deanna Holmes and her husband, Mark would be in Madisonville in the coming weeks. With their visit date set for May 5th, I immediately began a series of phone calls and emails to gather a delegation for welcoming and informing Deanna Homes of her Thurston family connections to the Town of Madisonville.

A 10:00 AM meeting was scheduled at the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum, arranged by the Maritime Museum’s Docent and Education Director, Jeanne Brooks. Invited to attend were LPBMM Executive Director, Jim McPherson, Former Director, Donald Lynch and Mrs. Catherine Lynch. Our delegation grew to include Iris Vacante, Town Historian, Historic Museum Curator and Director, Friends of the Madisonville Cemetery, as well as Former Board Members and Madisonville residents, Gail Perry and photographer, Anthony Leone. Despite his busy schedule, our Town of Madisonville Mayor, Jean Pelloat arranged to meet Mr. and Mrs. Holmes and cleared his calendar to join us for lunch.

With cloudless blue skies, May 5th was a stunning spring day for discovery in Madisonville, and all anticipated meeting our guests from Washington State. On their arrival, Deanne

and Mark Holmes were introduced to our group, then were welcomed to the Maritime Museum by Jeanne Brooks, who gave a revealing overview of Madisonville’s history. Viewed in the Museum’s theater, the video “Treasures of the Tchefuncte” reinforced for each of us Madisonville’s importance to commerce and navigation, as informed by its strategic Tchefuncte River location, connecting trade through Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans and into the Gulf of Mexico.

After a tour of museum exhibits, the group took the short walk over to the Lighthouse Keepers Cottage, which had been moved from its original location adjacent to the lighthouse, and now resides on the grounds of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum. Mrs. Catherine Lynch, who conducts tours there for school children, often appearing as “Mrs. Thurston” dressed in bonnet and ankle length vintage costume, explained that the small wooden structure had been the home for each lighthouse keeper and their families. They lived there, planted gardens for food, and fished the surrounding waters which encircled the lighthouse.

A highlight for Deana Holmes was when Iris Vacante presented her with a reproduction of the Pontalba drawing of the lighthouse, cottage, and belltower, as they looked in 1850. The original art piece was sketched by Gaston Pontalba, the youngest son of the Baroness Pontalba when he had come to Madisonville for safekeeping to avoid the Yellow Fever plague, which had sent so many others to the Northshore from the city of New Orleans during those dreaded times. Our tour was scheduled for a visit to the cemetery after lunch. Reservations for lunch were made >>

at the private River Room, which provides stunning corner river views from east and south at Madisonville’s elegant restaurant, Tchefuncte’s. Our group of nine relished stories from his trove of Madisonville lore, regaled by our Mayor, Jean Pelloat. As a special memento of the occasion, Mayor Pelloat presented each of us with a commemorative “Tchefuncte Lighthouse” pin.

From meticulously kept family journals, Deanna Holmes provided details of her family history, which included information on Thurston descendants who settled in Madisonville. “Benjamin Thurston left Cincinnati, Ohio on 21, October 1830, with his wife, Susannah Hardy Thurston and younger children and took a

journey by flatboat down the Ohio River and subsequently down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, arriving there on December 19. The children who traveled with him were his son Benjamin, and his five younger daughters; Harriet Newell Thurston, Hannah Plumer Thurston, Cynthia Matilda Thurston, Nancy Bagley Thurston, and Eliza Thurston. On June 27, 1831, the family relocated to Madisonville.” On January 1, 1838, Benjamin Thurston was sworn in as the First Keeper of the Tchefuncte River Light Station. Thurston continued at his post, living with his family on that fragile strip of land until his death on December 3, 1845.

Led by Iris Vacante, the group visited the gravesites of Benjamin Thurston and other family members who are interred in the Madisonville Cemetery. As Vacante related, “After hours of research, it is very hard to know exactly how many descendants of Benjamin Thurston >>

are in the cemetery without doing an extensive genealogy study. The Thurston daughters married into other founding families of Madisonville, such as Badeaux, Reed, Spencer, Wilson, Gaile, and more. The most prominent descendants of the lightkeeper, Benjamin Thurston, were members of the Perkins family, who were heavily involved in teaching, and active in founding the Presbyterian Church in Madisonville after the Civil War,” continues Vacante, “under the last name ‘Thurston’ we have a headstone for only Benjamin Thurston. His wife, Susannah Hardy Thurston, who died in 1850, does not appear on any tomb, nor in the survey, though it is believed that she is buried in the family plot.”

From letters written to her family in Louisiana and the diaries she kept while traveling west on the Oregon Trail, we learned from Deanna Holmes about her 3rd great grandmother, Sarah Thurston Stewart Sutton. The oldest of the twelve Thurston children, Sara was born in Newberry, Massachusetts in 1806, and by the time her parents made the move to Louisiana she was already 24 years old and had been married to Joel Stewart for six years. Sarah and Joel moved west to Illinois and had twelve children there. According to Deanna Holmes, “Like her father Benjamin, Sara was a prolific writer. Her letters were kept and have been handed down within the family.” Most certainly, those letters to her parents and younger siblings brightened their days as they were settling into the task of building their home and work station as the first family of Madisonville lighthouse keepers.

Having lost three of her children to illness, at the age of 41 Sarah was widowed, and faced with the daunting task of raising alone her remaining nine children. It was at a Church Revival

that she met John Pierce Sutton, and they were married the following year. After several years of chronic illness, worsened by the cold winters in Illinois, they made the decision to sell what furnishings they could, outfitted three covered wagons for their family and 20 head of cattle, and on March 21, 1854, they embarked on their trek westward along the Oregon Trail.

It was from Sarah’s diaries of their journey, that copies of her journal have been preserved by the Oregon Historical Society and the University of Oregon, and Sarah Sutton was profiled in the book, “Covered Wagon Women, Diaries and Letters from the Western Trail” by Kenneth L. Holmes, 1987, University of Nebraska Press. Sarah records, “Leaving our old residence on the 21st day of March, 1854, bound for Oregon on the western shores of America, we much regret leaving behind us, our good neighbors and kind friends to see their faces no more on this earth, but we are bound to search for a healthier and milder clime than Illinois, to spend the remainder of our days, let them be many or few, for our own satisfaction and the benefit of our many children.”

Our day together in Madisonville with Deanna and Mark Holmes was a journey for each of us, reaching back through centuries, connecting us through generations, illuminating the journey of those pioneers whose tenacity and spirit still shines in the paths they forged, building across our lands from northeast to western shores and to our southern waterways. We add our gratitude for their many sacrifices, with appreciation to our guests, Deanna and Mark Holmes and to our Madisonville delegation for making possible this amazing day of discovery.

For further information on of activities, contacts, education, events, programs and support, please refer to the following: lpbmm.org louisiananorthshore.com/listing/madisonville-museum/200 madisonvillecemetery.com