Peary himself was 300 miles away, at a winter camp in Fort Conger. Some sources report that Ilakasingwah also was living on board the ship (although that’s not certain). There, Josephine met llakasingwah, Peary’s pregnant Inuit mistress. She later wrote a book about Marie’s first years, The Snow Baby (1901).Īll told, Josephine made a half-dozen trips to the Arctic, including one miserable winter spent, with young Marie, on board the Windward, a ship that had become bound in the ice (although not far from shore), in 1901. For Josephine, however, it almost seems as if Marie’s birth was a blessed non-event, just something she did between prepping furs and cooking ptarmigan stew.
However, childbirth remained a dangerous affair in 1893, and even more terrifying when you didn’t know what to expect because you were living in an isolated foreign land. Of course, Inuit women had been having babies in the Arctic for centuries. Snow Baby Marie Peary (Library of Congress photo).
I have yet to find an account of Marie’s birth, but I imagine that Josephine labored in that cobbled-together shack, probably with with no midwife nearby (although it’s likely that the expedition included a doctor with some basic obstetrical training). On her next stay in Greenland, in 1893, Josephine gave birth to her daughter Marie, soon-dubbed the “Snow Baby” by the Inuit locals and the international press. Later, Josephine chronicled her adventures in her first book, An Arctic Journal. She also nursed her husband, who had shattered his leg en route to Greenland. There, living in a cobbled-together house with Peary and five other men, Josephine threw herself into Arctic living: She explored, trapped, hunted, cooked, tanned skins, and created outfits from fur and feature. Three years into her marriage, Josephine bucked popular criticism to travel with her husband on his first trip to Greenland. Josephine’s 1893 memoir described her first year in Greenland (June, 1891 to August, 1892).
I do like his motto, “Find a way, or make one” ( Inveniam viam aut faciam). But Josephine is my hero, living proof that female maniacal travelers are not a recent phenomenon but have always existed. In the 1890s, Admiral Peary often was in the news, celebrated (and sometimes maligned) as the great explorer. The family spent many summers on the island, which is now a State Historic Site. There, in the early 1900s, the Pearys built a two-room cottage that eventually evolved into a larger home (but not a mansion). Long before reaching the Pole, however, Peary set sail for Eagle Island, which he bought for $100 in 1877, just a few years after graduating from Bowdoin College. Eagle Island, in Maine’s Casco Bay, was such a haven for big adventurers Admiral Robert and Josephine Peary.Īdmiral Peary, as many know, was credited with being the first person, along with Matthew Henson and other expedition members, to reach the North Pole on April 6, 1909.
(Photo from Josephine Diebitsch Peary Collection, Maine Women Writers Collection, University of New England, Portland, Maine).Įven maniacal travelers need a respite once in a while, if only to plan their next adventures. Peary lived on Casco Bay’s Eagle Island for more than 50 summers. Adventurer-author-mother-wife Josephine D.
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