In 1879 The greatest annual loss of life in the New England fisheries occurred, with 29 vessels and 249 fishermen lost at sea.
During that year many women found themselves on lonely widow walks with and eye on the horizon hoping for the return of their loved one.
A widow’s walk (or roofwalk) is a railed rooftop platform, typically on a coastal house, originally designed to observe vessels at sea. The name comes from the wives of mariners who would watch for their spouses to return. In some instances, the ocean took the lives of the mariners, leaving the women as widows; who would often thereafter gaze out to sea wishing beyond hope that their loved ones would return home and hence the name widow’s walk was born.