✨Women’s History Month & Minorcan Heritage Month✨ First Female Lighthouse Keeper In Florida — Maria Mestre de Los Dolores Andreu She kept the light burning — Minorcan woman became Coast Guard trailblazer! From a story in The St. Augustine Record: Maria Andreu of St. Augustine became the first Hispanic American woman ever to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard, decades before women could vote and many years before they joined the workforce. The Minorcan, known as Maria Mestre de los Dolores before her marriage to Joseph Andreu, became the St. Augustine Lighthouse keeper in 1859. She remained the lighthouse keeper through 1862. That’s the year the light was extinguished in preparation for the Civil War. She assumed the job when her husband fell to his death white washing the lighthouse. “Monday last ... (Joseph Andreu) was engaged in white washing the tower of the Light House when the scaffold gave way and he fell 60 feet, dying almost instantly,” the St. Augustine Examiner reported on ...