1. Idawalley Zoradia Lewis was an American lighthouse keeper noted for her heroism in rescuing people from the seas.
18 Facts About Ida Lewis
1. 2.
Ida Lewis was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the second oldest of four children of Captain Hosea Lewis of the Revenue-Marine.
3.
Ida Lewis's father was transferred to the Lighthouse Service and appointed keeper of Lime Rock Light on the small near-island Lime Rock in Newport in 1854, taking his family to live on the rock in 1857.
4.
Ida Lewis expanded her domestic duties to include caring for him and a seriously ill sister and, with her mother's assistance, tending the light: filling the lamp with oil at sundown and again at midnight, trimming the wick, polishing carbon off the reflectors, and extinguishing the light at dawn.
5.
Ida Lewis rowed her younger siblings to school every weekday and fetched supplies from town as they were needed.
6.
Ida Lewis became very skillful at handling her heavy rowboat.
7.
Ida Lewis's mother was then appointed keeper, although Ida continued to do the keeper's work.
8.
Ida Lewis finally received the official appointment as keeper in 1879, largely through the efforts of an admirer, General Ambrose Everett Burnside, a Civil War hero who became a Rhode Island governor and United States senator.
9.
Ida Lewis made her first rescue in 1854, coming to the assistance of four men whose boat had capsized.
10.
Ida Lewis ran to her boat without taking the time to put on a coat or shoes.
11.
Ida Lewis's fame spread quickly following the 1869 rescue, as a reporter was sent from the New-York Tribune to record her deeds.
12.
When she was 64, Ida Lewis became a life beneficiary of the Carnegie Hero Fund, receiving a monthly pension of $30.
13.
Ida Lewis met President Ulysses S Grant, Vice-President Schuyler Colfax, General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Admiral George Dewey, in addition to many of the wealthy and prominent people who summered in Newport.
14.
Ida Lewis received numerous gifts, letters, and even marriage proposals.
15.
Ida Lewis made her last recorded rescue when she was 63.
16.
Ida Lewis died of a stroke on October 24,1911, at the age of 69.
17.
Ida Lewis was buried in the Common Burying Ground, in a prominent location, so her grave can be seen by passersby.
18.
In 2018, Ida Lewis became the first woman to have a road named after her at Arlington National Cemetery; the road is called Lewis Drive.