Recently at the lighting of the recreated Tucker’s Lighthouse at Tuckerton Seaport, I was asked why I had never written anything about the lighthouse and the island on which ithad beensituated. Not having a good answer, I went to work, and here goes. LBI historian John Bailey Lloyd gave a good thumbnail sketch of the island’s early settlement in his book 18 Miles of History on Long Beach Island (Down The Shore Publishing).

“On a 1769 survey map of the Jerseys, East and West – as the state was known in the Colonial period – Long Beach Island…