Kathleen Moore

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Kathleen Moore (c. 1794–1899), also known as Catherine Moore, Kathleen A. Moore, Kate Moore, and Catherine A. Moore, was a lighthouse keeper for the United States Lighthouse Service, the early predecessor of the Coast Guard.

She served at the Black Rock Harbor Light on Fayerweather Island in Long Island Sound for more than fifty years, starting when she was about 12 years old helping her father. She is credited with saving 23 lives. She once described nights with hundreds of sailing vessels and several wrecks.

Her duties included keeping the light lit during storms and nursing shipwrecked sailors back to health. Moore retired in 1878 and died in 1899, buried in an unmarked grave at Mountain Grove Cemetery in Bridgeport.

In 2010, the Coast Guard named its ninth Sentinel-class cutter after her: the USCGC Kathleen Moore. Built by Bollinger Shipyards, the cutter is homeported in Key West, Florida, with pre-commissioning testing conducted on March 28, 2014. A grave marker for Moore was dedicated at Mountain Grove Cemetery in 2014, shortly before the ship’s commissioning. The gravestone lists her as "Kathleen A. Moore," notes birth circa 1812, and quotes John 8:12.