Maria Bray

Maria Bray was a 19th-century American maritime heroine of an incident during the first days of winter in late 1864.

Bray was married to Alexander Bray, the lighthouse keeper at Thacher Island Light, off Rockport on Massachusetts' Cape Ann. From December 21 to December 24, 1864, she and her twelve-year-old nephew tended the lights of the station, while her husband was stranded on the mainland, where he had taken an ill co-worker. The Bray family was reunited on Christmas Day.

The United States Coast Guard named a coastal buoy tender in her honor.