A hint of its coming travails was given by the need for a 144-foot (44 m) long footbridge to carry the keeper over the marshy land between the tower and his house.

Twenty years later the abandoned tower, by then in disrepair and completely surrounded by water due to erosion, collapsed during Hurricane Flossy, leaving only a pile of rubble to mark the spot.

The accused, Elisha Kent Kane, III, was a respected professor of Romance languages at the University of Tennessee and the scion of a prominent Pennsylvania family.

His wife, Jenny Graham Kane, who was from nearby Newport News, had drowned under suspicious circumstances during a visit to the beach with him.

His family tree also included Judge John Kintzing Kane, a former Pennsylvania Attorney General and close friend of U.S. President Andrew Jackson, and his namesake, U.S. Navy officer Elisha Kane, an American explorer who famously chronicled two unsuccessful mid-nineteenth century Arctic explorations in search of the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin[1] Due to Kane's family ties and position at the university, his murder trial at the Elizabeth City County Courthouse was covered by newspapers up and down the East Coast.