If you mention "The Waving Girl" in Savannah, everyone immediately knows you are speaking of Florence Martus. She had become a legend in her own time when, as a nineteen year old, she greeted every ship entering the Savannah seaport and bid farewell to every ship leaving.
In 1887, Florence's father had become employed with the Lighthouse Service. The family moved into the lighthouse keeper’s house on Elba Island. Another account of the story states that Florence was the light keeper’s sister and actually moved to the island with her brother.
Florence took it upon herself to wave at each ship with a handkerchief by day and a lantern by night. She was quoted as saying, "I was never too sick to get up when one (ship) was coming in, and I could always hear them coming."Obviously, the blue-eyed girl, who never married, stirred imaginations and romantic legends about who she was and why she spent so much time at her post. On the east end of River Street in Savannah, a seventeen-foot statue of a girl waving her handkerchief, collie at her side, was erected in her honor.
Photo taken by Mike Stroud and is posted courtesy of The Historical Marker Database at http://www.hmdb.org/
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