The Snow Baby: A True Story With True Pictures (1901)
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
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My Arctic Journal, 1893: A Year Among Ice-Fields and Eskimos (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from My Arctic Journal, 1893: A Year Among Ice-Fi...)
Excerpt from My Arctic Journal, 1893: A Year Among Ice-Fields and Eskimos
I rarely, if ever, take up the thread of our Arctic expe riences without reverting to two pictures: one is the first night that we spent on the Greenland shore after the depar ture of the Kite, when, in a little tent on the rocks - a tent which the furious wind threatened every moment to carry away bodily - she watched by my side as I lay a helpless cripple with a broken leg, our small party the only human beings on that shore, and the little Kite, from which we had landed, drifted far out among the ice by the storm, and invisible through the rain. Long afterward she told me that every unwonted sound of the wind set her heart beating with the thoughts of some hungry bear roaming along the shore and attracted by the unusual sight of the tent; yet she never gave a sign at the time of her fears, lest it should disturb me.
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Josephine Diebitsch Peary was an American writer. She was also an arctic dweller.
Background
Josephine Diebitsch Peary was born on May 22, 1863 in Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States. She was the daughter of Herman Henry Diebitsch, who was born in Prussia, and Magdalena Augusta Schmid Diebitsch, a native of Saxony. Her father was head of the interlibrary exchange department of the Smithsonian Institution, and at one time Josephine worked as his assistant.
Education
Josephine Diebitsch Peary attended Spencerian Business College and graduated the class valedictorian in 1880.
Career
In 1886, Josephine Diebitsch Peary had made his first reconnaissance of the Greenland ice cap, and had been in charge of a crew surveying an interoceanic canal route through Nicaragua. As a lieutenant in the civil engineer corps of the United States Navy, Robert E. Peary was assigned to New York, where the newlyweds set up housekeeping. Two years later they were transferred to Philadelphia. On June 6, 1891, the Pearys sailed to Greenland for a year's stay, during which Robert Peary planned to cross the ice cap by traveling northeast from Inglefield Gulf. A bad fracture of his leg placed the responsibility for both cooking and nursing on Josephine Peary.
After his recovery, Robert Peary and one companion crossed northern Greenland, leaving on April 30, 1892, and returning on August 6. Flushed with this success, he planned to explore northeast Greenland thoroughly in 1894, and Josephine Peary, although pregnant, again accompanied him. A nurse and a surgeon were with the party. Marie Ahnighito Peary, the "snow baby, " was born on September 12, 1893, at their new base on Bowdoin Bay, Inglefield Gulf. It is claimed that no other white woman had wintered, and no white child had been born, so far north. From her experiences of two arctic winters Mrs. Peary wrote My Arctic Journal and Snow Baby. In 1894 a supply vessel obtained by her brother, Emil Diebitsch, arrived, and Josephine Peary and all the party except her husband, Matthew Henson, and Hugh J. Lee, sailed home. Although Robert Peary failed to cross the ice cap in 1894, he suceeded the following year. Aided by her brother, Josephine Peary headed the fund drive for a voyage to bring her husband home in 1895, as originally planned. In 1897 Josephine Peary, with her baby girl, went with Peary to Greenland to bring home the third and largest of three iron meteorites from Cape York (The two smaller had been brought back in 1895 and placed in the American Museum of Natural History).
The following year Robert Peary sailed north on his first attempt to reach the North Pole. Ice conditions forced him to sledge supplies 250 miles from Etah to Adolphus W. Greely's old base on Lady Franklin Bay, Ellesmere Island; during the journey his toes were frozen and had to be amputated. On learning from a whaling ship of his misfortune, Josephine Peary and her daughter sailed north on the 1900 supply ship. They had intended to return the same year, but the ship was frozen in and had to remain throughout the winter. Robert Peary joined them on May 6, 1901. Josephine Peary made her last summer voyage to the Arctic in 1902.
In 1905 Josephine Diebitsch Peary christened the steam schooner Roosevelt, on which Peary made his last two voyages to the Arctic. Much of the Pearys' time after 1909 was spent at Eagle Island, in Casco Bay, Maine. After Robert Peary's death in 1920, Josephine Peary retired to private life. She made a rare public appearance on December 20, 1942, when she christened the destroyer Robert E. Peary.
Josephine Diebitsch Peary died on December 19, 1955 in Portland, Maine, United States.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
Membership
Josephine Diebitsch Peary was a member of the Philadelphia Geographic Society, of the National Geographic Society, the Appalachian Mountain Club, of a Woman Geographers Club.
Personality
Josephine Diebitsch Peary demonstrated that white women could survive extreme cold and solitude.
Connections
Josephine Diebitsch first met Robert E. Peary in 1882. On August 11, 1888, they were married. Aware of Robert Peary's passion for the North when she married him, Josephine Peary participated actively in his expeditions until the responsibilities of motherhood decreed otherwise. They had two children. Her son, Robert E. Peary, Jr. , was born in 1903.