Perhaps you mean Orlando Poe, West Point graduate and Union Civil War general who designed many of the Great Lakes lighthouses while he was the chief engineer of the Lighthouse Board right after the war. He was instrumental in designing Spectacle Reef, one of the Great Lakes' first off-shore lighthouses.
(By the way, you can read my profile of him here.....)
http://letstalklighthouses.blogspot.com/2008/01/biography-orlando-metcalfe-poe.html