Emma A. Row, born 1855, daughter of Charles Row and Margaret Ann Henderson of Brockville, Ontario, Canada, was widow of Rock Island Lighthouse keeper Michael J. Diepolder.  On the morning of 16 July 1901, she found her husband dead in the shop, where he had suffered heart failure after bathing in the river:

        That same day, Emma took over tending of Rock Island Lighthouse.  She was officially registered as a "laborer" during her service but received a federal salary of $560 per annum which was equal to that of keeper. Emma finished Michael's term for that year and on September 12th, 1901, she resigned.

Register of Lighthouse Keepers, showing Emma's period of service.

        Her brief tenure was the result of tragic circumstance, but conferred on Mrs. Diepolder the distinction of being the only woman to ever serve in any official capacity at the Rock Island Station. In fact, the practice of appointing widows to tend lighthouses was long established by the time the Diepolders took over:

"Fifth Auditor Stephen Pleasonton, administrator of the Lighthouse Establishment from 1820 to 1852, had no qualms about appointing female keepers to replace related male keepers who died in service. In 1851, he wrote, 'So necessary is it that the Lights should be in the hands of experienced keepers that I have, in order to effect that object as possible, recommended on the death of a keeper, that his widow, if steady and respectable should be app't to succeed him, and in this way some 30 odd widows have been appointed.'"

Click the picture below to read a note from Emma to her step-daughter Ada.

        Emma Ron and Michael Diepolder were also the only married couple to both hold official positions at Rock Island.

        Over the next few years, Emma occasionally visited the island with her son, Lawrence Engelbert Diepolder—visits which were recorded by the next keeper in the official lighthouse log book.

        In 1917, Emma was living across from Rock Island, at Fineview on Wellesley Island. By then in her mid-60's, she was dependent on her son, who was self-employed as a gas engineer and boat pilot working out of nearby Thousand Island Park, (according to his Word War I draft registration card). Howard Gardner, whose family had a summer residence at Fineview, once wrote: "Mrs. Diepholder...was a taxidermist and had a place at Fineview and when she had a big fish to mount we usually dined on Muskie, pike and once in a great time, sturgeon."
        Emma does not appear in the censuses of 1920 or 1930 for the Fineview area, and her son Lawrence Diepolder moved to Florida by the mid-1930's, so presumably she died during that period.

A typical view of the lighthouse that Emma & Lawrence would have enjoyed while living at Fineview.