On July 23, 1715, the General Court of Massachusetts passed the Boston Light Bill. Beacon Island, now known as Little Brewster, is attached to Great Brewster by a sand bar. After visiting several of the harbor islands and conferring with the area’s most experienced shipmasters, Tailer reported that the best site for the lighthouse was “the Southernmost Part of the Great Brewster called Beacon Island.” Several islands in Boston’s outer harbor are collectively known as the Brewsters, after the Elder Brewster of the Plymouth Colony. Early in 1713, a prominent Boston merchant and selectman named John George, representing the business community of the city proposed to the General Court the “Erecting of a Light Hous & Lanthorn on some Head Land at the Entrance to the Harbour of Boston for the Direction of Ships & Vessels in the Night Time bound into the said Harbour.”Ī committee headed by Lieutenant Governor William Tailer planned for the lighthouse. Clough’s New England Almanac of 1701 hinted at the need for a lighthouse at the entrance to the harbor.
At that time, all large vessels had to enter the harbor between the Brewster Islands in the outer harbor and Point Allerton in the town of Hull.
The highest elevation of about 18 feet is at the eastern end of the island, where the lighthouse is located.īoston’s deep and spacious harbor led it to become the commercial center of America in colonial days.
The rocky island-about a mile north of Hull and about 8 eight miles east of Boston-is only about 600 feet long with a maximum widthand at most of 250 feet wide, with a total area of only one acre above the mean high water mark.
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