Austin family lore tells about young Raymond Kelly, who put a homemade parachute on an unfortunate cat and launched it from the top of the Currituck lighthouse. The cat ended up far down the beach. This story cannot be verified, but there has to be a grain of truth. We don't know the connection to the lighthouse keeper. There are Austins who were keepers for generations, and an Ansell was assistant in the 1800's, but there is no known relationship to the family.
From Mike:
According to the family historian, there is no way to verify the
cat story…and unless the lighthouse keeper was a distant relative or a family
friend with a different last name, there is no connection…we did have ancestors
that were stationed at the Wash Woods lifesaving station… Wash Woods has been verified…story about his wife feeling the cottage moving …turns out the local wild horses were scratching their butts on the outside of the place…
In that my grandfather, the parachute kid, was a Kelly, it is my
assumption that the keeper at that time was a Kelly but I am probably wrong…My
grandmother was an Ansell, and they resided in the Hickory area of Chesapeake…
When Mike and his brothers were growing up, his aunt Shirley Petty (nee Kelly) owned a tiny cottage at Duck by the water tower, where the Austin family would spend summer vacations with their cousins in the 1960's. The cottage was later moved a few hundred feet away and has been transformed into a quaint gift shop, sitting in the middle of a popular shopping area.
