Minnie Cochems, Lighthouse Keeper

A stone birdbath at the Sherwood Point Lighthouse honors Minnie Hesh Cochems, who served here as assistant light keeper for decades. Sherwood Point guards the entrance to the Sturgeon Bay ship canal in Door County, Wisconsin. Minnie married keeper William Cochems and was officially named first assistant keeper, one of the relatively few women in that era to hold the post in her own right.

For decades she helped tend the light and the fog signal that warned ships off this rocky point. She died at the lighthouse in nineteen twenty-eight after suffering a stroke. Her husband William kept the light until he retired.

Some say her presence lingers, and Sherwood Point has long been counted among Door County's haunted lighthouses.