I have heard that name for the light. I think it might be an example of 18th-19th century spelling. I don't know if this happened because of that being the way that the word was actually pronounced, or that the person who was writing it was not from the area or wasn't a spelling bee champ.

If you look through these types of old documents, you find a multitude of these words. One of my favourites is "lanthorn", which was on a Sandy Hook-related document - I think one dealing with its 1850s renovation (with the dawn of the Fresnel lens, many of the US lights were renovated in the mid-1800s to improve their optical quality with the removal of birdcage lanterns and their replacement with larger, "modern" ones).

Very interesting find...