From the time it was founded in 1984, the United States Lighthouse Society has maintained an Archive of lighthouse data including photos, documents, and many other items pertaining to lighthouses, lightships, and related subjects. Starting in 2016, J. Candace Clifford, the Society’s Historian, and Tom Tag, the Society’s Technical Advisor, began researching ways of making the Archive more easily accessible to the public. Their work culminated in a database that is now on the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s website as the J. Candace Clifford Lighthouse Research Catalog.
Among the major components of the lighthouse research catalog is the lighthouse-related collection of the National Archives. Many of the photos and other items from the National Archives have been added to the Society’s research catalog. The National Archives and Records Administration is the primary repository in our country for lighthouse records.
The interview for this special edition is Jack Del Nunzio. Jack is 22 years old and a full-time Master of Arts student in public history. He currently lives just outside of Baltimore. He has several part-time jobs. He’s a graduate ambassador at American University in Washington, D.C., a digital editor with the journal Law & History Review, and a crossfit coach. He’s also been a researcher & cataloger for the U.S. Lighthouse Society since February 2019.
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U.S. Lighthouse Society Historian Jeremy D’Entremont is the author of 24 books and hundreds of articles on lighthouses and maritime history. He is a past president of the American Lighthouse Foundation and founder of Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouses, and he has lectured and narrated cruises throughout the Northeast and in other regions. He is also the producer and host of the U.S. Lighthouse Society’s weekly podcast, “Light Hearted.” He can be emailed at Jeremy@uslhs.org
Lighthouse photos from Archives II (A-2) have been digitized and are here:
https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=lg-26&f.materialsType=photographsandgraphics
Use Internet Explorer as your browser if you want to download the high resolution images.
Candace Clifford made up a nice finding aid several years ago for National Archives research here:
https://uslhs.org/resources/finding_information/libraries_archives/national-archives