Background
He was born on July 22, 1862 in Springfield, eldest of the three sons of Elias Briggs and his first wife, Julia Cornelia (Crampton) Baldwin. His father, a western farmer, of New York parentage and English stock, rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Federal army during the Civil War.
Education
Evelyn received the degree of A. M. from North-Western (later North-Central) College, Napervill.
Career
He was principal of a high school and superintendent of city schools in Kansas, 1887-91; and observer of the United States Weather Bureau, 1892-1900. Practised in the use of meteorological instruments and eager for adventure, Baldwin in 1893 joined the North Greenland Expedition of Robert E. Peary as meteorologist and fifth in rank. He impressed Peary as ingenious, perseverant, and resolute under hardship. His "Meteorological and Auroral Notes, " 1893-94, are published in Peary's Northward Over the "Great Ice" (2 vols. , 1898).
On his return to the United States, fascinated by Arctic exploration, he devoted all his spare time to promoting an expedition. In addition to lecturing about the Arctic, he published a book entitled The Search for the North Pole or Life in the Great White World (1896), with a view to accumulating funds for polar research. In 1897 he made a voyage to Spitsbergen, hoping to join Andree in a search for the Pole by balloon, but arrived a few days too late, thus narrowly escaping the fate of the balloonists, all of whom were lost. In 1898 he joined the second polar expedition of Walter Wellman as meteorologist and second in command. From August to October he was in charge of an exploring party in Franz-Josef Land and built and named Fort McKinley. In the spring, in charge of another party, he explored Graham Bell Land.
On his return to the United States he prepared for publication Meteorological Observations of the Second Wellman Expedition (1901), and "Auroral Observations on the Second Wellman Expedition, " which appeared in Monthly Weather Review and Annual Summary (March 1901). In April 1901 Baldwin was appointed inspector at large in the Signal Corps of the army. His heart, however, was in polar exploration. He now had the good fortune to discover a patron in William Ziegler, a wealthy manufacturer and polar enthusiast, with $250, 000 to spend on a Baldwin-Ziegler expedition, one of the most lavish that ever sailed for the Arctic. Baldwin's prime object was to discover the North Pole, where he expected to raise the Stars and Stripes on July 4, 1902. The America, the flagship of his three vessels, left Norway on July 27, 1901, for Franz-Josef Land, with a complement of forty-two men, a heavy cargo of coal and stores, fifteen Siberian ponies, and more than four hundred dogs. He successfully established three depots of supplies on the coast of Franz-Josef Land as bases for a dash to the Pole and three safety stations on the coast of Greenland for the return trip. He spent the winter at Camp Ziegler, with his flagship frozen in the ice. By late spring half of his dogs were dead, many of his sledges wrecked, and his coal and food supplies greatly depleted. In June he sent up fifteen balloons carrying three hundred messages, each of which bore an urgent request for coal. Disappointed by the failure of an expected supply ship to arrive, on July 1, 1902, he began his return voyage to Norway, where he cast anchor on August 1, sixteen days after a relief ship had sailed. He brought with him a collection of motion pictures, the first to be made of the Arctic region. He regarded his expedition as preparatory to a second one, but he and his patron, who was disappointed with results, now parted company. He published an account of the expedition, fully illustrated, in the London periodical, the Wide World Magazine (January-March, 1903).
After his return to the United States Baldwin attempted unsuccessfully to obtain financial support for another expedition. In 1909 his life's ambition was frustrated when Peary discovered the Pole. Uncomplaining, with New York City as his address, he relapsed into obscurity. In 1918 he went to Washington and for fifteen years served the government in a minor capacity, successively, in the War Department, Shipping Board, State Department, and Navy Department. For a time he interested himself in genealogy and presented the Library of Congress with typescripts of his researches, dated 1922-25. In May 1933 he lost his clerkship under the economy act. Gen. Adolphus W. Greely, the Arctic explorer, made an unavailing appeal in his behalf to the President. A few months later, practically destitute and supported by the charity of friends, he met his death on the streets of Washington in an automobile accident, an inglorious ending of an adventurous career.