On a sultry day in September, 1832, thirty-three-year-old Felix Dominy was perched high above the rocks of Montauk Point, at the far eastern tip of Long Island, removing the copper dome of the Montauk Lighthouse. The son and grandson of highly skilled cabinetmakers and clock makers who ran a small shop in the nearby village of East Hampton, Felix had never done this kind of work before. He was a woodworker—not a coppersmith. Why was he now in such a precarious position?
Felix’s story is part of a remarkable piece of 1960’s scholarship, With Hammer in Hand, by Charles F. Hummel, then curator of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. This 424-page book catalogs the history of four generations of the Dominy family through a firsthand look…
