Following her many years at Matinicus Rock Abbie Burgess Grant served for 15 years as assistant keeper at Whitehead Light where she not only shared the duties of tending the lamps in the tower while serving as the mother of four children but also during very long periods of fog operating the steam boilers that supplied steam for the fog whistles. Soon after Abbie and her husband left Whitehead the Lighthouse Service decided that the work load required of their two replacements was so demanding that a third person was assigned as second assistant for this station, thus three men were needed to do the work done by Abbie and her husband.
http://www.lighthousedigest.com/Digest/StoryPage.cfm?StoryKey=3788