Martha Louise Purdy Black Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire was a Canadian politician and the second woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons.
Background
Martha Louise Munger was born in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of George and Susan Munger, a wealthy family. Of the five children her mother had over four years, Martha was the only one to survive. Her father operated a laundry that was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.
Career
She had two younger siblings, George Junior. and Belle. Martha and Will made plans to join the Klondike Gold Rush in 1899, but Will backed out, departing instead for Hawaii. In 1898 she crossed the Chilkoot Pass into Canada, heading for the gold rush in the Klondike.
She gave birth to her and Will"s third son, Lyman, in January 1899 in Dawson City.
Martha returned home to Chicago, and returned again to the Klondike in 1900. She earned a living by staking gold mining claims and running a sawmill and a gold ore-crushing plant.
She was the second woman ever to be elected to the House of Commons of Canada. She published an autobiography, My Seventy Years, in 1938.
This work was subsequently updated and republished in her lifetime as My Ninety Years and later further updated posthumously and republished in 1998 as Martha Black: Her Story from the Dawson Gold Fields to the Halls of Parliament.