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EA-Biography

(Marie Peary Stafford)

JOSEPHINE DIEBITSCH PEARY

        Josephine Diebitsch Peary (1863 - ), the wife of Robert Edwin

Peary, discoverer of the North Pole, was born in Washington, D.C., on

May 22nd, 1863, the daughter of Hermann and Magdelene (Schmid) Diebitsch.

Her parents were both German-born and German-reared and met only after

they had come to the United States. Her father was a Prussian Army officer

of noble family (von Diebitsch) and came to America at the same time as his

friend Carl Schurz and for the same reason — violent and active dislike for

the political set-up in Germany. Her mother was a descendant of the famous

publishing firm of von Tauchnitz.

        Hermann Diebitsch tried various scientific agricultural experiments on

farms which he bought in Maryland, near Washington, but his scholarly mind

and his rigorous military training made him completely unsuited to such a

life and he eventually found congenial employment in charge of the Foreign

Exchange Department at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Josephine

was educated in the public schools of Washington through high school and

then attended the Spencerian Business College. She was the oldest of a

family of four, two brothers and a sister, and her merry nature and abounding

vitality made her a ring-leader, not only at home but among her friends

everywhere. Almost a tomboy in her girlhood, she grew into a tall, slender,

strin g k ingly beautiful woman, whose charm and graciousness and simplicity of

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manner proved to be tremendous assets to her husband in his naval and

arctic careers.

        After graduation from the Spencerian Business College, she proved her

independence by taking a job in the Census Bureau, something unheard of at

that time for a young girl of her family background. In 1882, when her

father's illness made it impossible for him to continue his work at the

Smithsonian, she was given the position until his death in 1883 and there–

after held various important posts in the Smithsonian until 1886 when she

resigned upon her engagement to Robert Edwin Peary, at that time a lieu–

tenant in the Navy.

        Peary was ordered to Nicaragua in charge of an expedition to survey

the proposed route of the Nicaragua Canal and was gone from November 1887 to

July of 1888. The couple was married in Washington, August 11th, 1888.

Peary's next orders were to the Philadelphia Navy Yard and during their

residence in that city he was able to interest the Philadelphia Academy

of Natural Sciences in a project dear to his heart, the exploration of

Greenland.

        In 1886, on a short leave of absence from the Navy, Peary had gone

north on the old sealer Eagle . With one companion, and no first-hand

knowledge or experience, the two of them had penetrated farther onto the

mysterious "inland ice" than anyone had previously succeeded in doing. It

was his desire to go north with a well-equipped expedition, to cross Green–

land on the inland ice, if possible, and to settle the question as to whether

Greenland was an island or the immense peninsula of some great arctic

continent.

        In 1891 this dream was realized and an expedition, financed by the

Academy of Natural Sciences and what money the Pearys could contribute from

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their own slender means, sailed in the Newfoundland sealer the Kite ; to the

wonder and admiration of the public, Mrs. Peary accompanied her husband.

There were no women explorers in that day, woman's place was in the home,

and Peary was severely criticized for venturing to take his wife into certain

hardship and danger. His own feelings in the matter are best expressed in

his own words, as found in his foreward to Mrs. Peary's book, My Arctic Journal .

        The feeling that led Mrs. Peary through these experiences was first

and foremost a desire to be by my side, coupled with the conviction that

she was fitted physically as well as otherwise to share with me a portion at

least of the hardships and fatigues of the work. I fully concurred in this

feeling and yet, in spite of my oft-expressed views that the dangers of life

and work in the Arctic have been greatly exaggerated, I cannot but admire her

courage. She has been where no white woman has ever been, and where many a

man has hesitated to go. Within sixty miles of where Kane and his little

party endured such untold sufferings; within eighty miles of where Greely's

men one by one starved to death, and within less than fifty miles of where

Hayes and his party and one portion of the "Polaris" party underwent their

Arctic trials, this tenderly nurtured woman lived for a year in safety and

comfort; in the summer time climbed over the lichen-covered rocks, picking

flowers and singing familiar home songs, shot deer, ptarmigan and ducks in

the valleys and lakes and even tried her hand at seal, walrus and narwhals in

the bay; and through the long, dark winter night, with her nimble fing [ ?] rs and

ready woman's insight, was of inestimable value in devising and perfecting

the details of the costumes which enabled Astrup and me to make our journey

across the great ice cap in actual comfort.

        I rarely if ever, take up the thread of our Arctic experiences without

reverting to two pictures. One is the first night that we spend on the

Greenland shore after the departure of the ship, 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 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. The other picture

is that of a scene perhaps a month or two later, when--myself still a cripple

but not entirely helpless-this same woman sat for an hour beside me in the

stern of a boat, calmly reloading our empty firearms while a herd of infuriated

walrus about us thrust their savage heads with gleaming tusks and bloodshot eyes

out of the water close to the muzzles of our rifles, so that she could have

touched them with her hand, in their efforts to get their tusks over the gunwale

and capsize the boat. I may perhaps be pardoned for saying that I never think

of these two experiences without a thrill of pride and admiration for her

pluck.

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        The fact that this first expedition into the North did not consist

entirely of excitement and adventure, but that Mrs. Peary took upon herself

and faithfully performed the duties of cook for the seven members of the

party throughout almost an entire year with no shops upon which to draw for

additional food items and only the most primitive of kitchen equipment, adds

rather than detracts from the picture of a character not only cool and daring

but steadfast and enduring. Peary traversed northern Greenland from coast to

coast on this expedition, but he returned to headquarters long overdue and

those anxious weeks of waiting without hope of news or the possibility of

doing anything to help, were the hardest trial Josephine Peary was forced

to endure. She wrote in her diary "Never before have I felt so utterly alone

and forsaken with no possible chance of knowing where or how my dear one is."

        But in 1893 Peary had succeeded in financing and organizing another

expedition and, when it sailed in June, Mrs. Peary was once more on board.

This was a larger and more ambitious undertaking. The party planned to be

gone for two years and this time Mrs. Peary was not going to do the cooking.

Other arrangements had been made, for a baby was expected in the Peary family

in August. Great pessimism was felt over such an unorthodox proceeding, the

general consensus being that there might be a chance of the mother's surviving

the ordeal but no hope for the baby. The only concession the Pearys made to

the unusual feature of their expedition was to make certain that the doctor

for the party had had experience in obstetrics and to take with them a

friendly, motherly, practical nurse. The baby, Marie Ahnighito, was born

the 12th of September, with no more difficulty than that attendant upon

the birth of any first child; she not only survived the birth but the suc–

ceeding months of darkness of the arctic winter and is alive today and of

a rugged constitution.

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        In the summer of 1894 a ship went north to the party in Greenland

although it had been understood that no ship was to be sent for two years.

However, the anxiety of the family and the curiosity of the public made

waiting another twelve months impossible. On the arrival of the ship, all

the members of the expedition with the exception of Hugh Lee and Matt Henson

broke their two-year contract, for one reason or another, and decided to

return to the United States. Peary himself was determined to stay the full

two years but he insisted upon Mrs. Peary's returning home with the baby.

This she reluctantly did.

        At home she was faced with the disagreeable fact that the money intended

for the ship which was to bring Peary back in 1895 had already been spent on

the ship in 1894 and [ ?] so there would be no way for the little party left

in Greenland to return except by foot along the coast of Greenland in the

hope of picking up a Danish ship or a Scotch whaler. This was not the kind

of situation which Mrs. Peary could face with equanimity. During the winter

of 1894-95 she, who was fiercely proud and would have starved rather than

beg for herself, interviewed one influential and wealthy man after another,

begging funds to equip a ship for the following summer; she, who dreaded

publicity and had never been on a public platform in her life, lectured wherever

there was a chance of making a little money. Finally things turned in her

favor. The National Geographic Society, through the kindness of its presi–

dent, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, invited her to lecture for them and offered

to give her the proceeds of the ticket sale; the Brooklyn Institute did the

same thing. Her valiant efforts aroused the interest of Morris K. Jesup

and his wife who promised to make up whatever amount was still needed when

it came time for the ship to go. To any other woman this would have spelled

respite; to her it was a challenge and she only drove herself the harder,

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with the result that there was little which the Jesups needed to contribute.

Not only did the ship go north in 1895 to bring home Peary and his faithful

companions but the lasting friendship of the Jesups had been won, together

with their respect and admiration.

        In 1898 Peary went North again, this time to be gone for four years,

and his wife and small daughter did not accompany him. A second daughter,

Francine, was born in January, 1899 and died the following August. Immedi–

ately after this sad blow, Mrs. Peary received the news that her husband

had frozen his feet the preceding January so severely that eight of his

toes had been amputated but that, undaunted, he was remaining in the Arctic

for his allotted time to carry on as much of his work of exploration as

possible.

        In the summer of 1900 a ship went north to carry additional supplies

and mail to the Peary party and Mrs. Peary, more unerved than she had ever

been before by the two shocks in rapid succession, took her daughter Marie

and accompanied the ship to get what consolation she might from a brief sight

of her husband. The ship was due to return to the United States in the early

fall but ice conditions were very bad and, before any contact had been made

with Peary, the ship was caught in a sheltered harbor and frozen in for the

winter.

        This was a fresh ordeal for Mrs. Peary. There was no doctor on the ship;

she and the Captain were the only members of the party who could read or write;

it was impossible to send word to her anxious family at home that she was safe;

apparently, although she made every effort, it was equally impossible to get

word to her husband at his headquarters, two hundred miles to the north, that

she and their daughter were nearby.

        The anxiety, the responsibility of a small child, the nervous strain,

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the lack of congenial companionship, the monotony, and the continuous

darkness of the winter night combined to make a situation which would have

reduced most women to nervous prostration. Yet her daughter can never re–

member seeing her give way to grief nor was there any time when she was not

ready and willing to enter into the amusements of the child. She held

school every forenoon with an extremely reluctant little pupil; there were

candy pulls and corn poppings; long walks out over the ice when the moon was

full, and every possible occasion was seized upon as a pretext for celebra–

tion in an effort to break the dull daily routine and make the ship's company

more contented. It was an admirable example of a gallant and completely

selfless character.

        In May of 1901 Peary reached the ship by sheer accident and remained

with it until it was free of the ice in the spring break-up and able to

sail for home. He remained in the Arctic and, in 1902, Mrs. Peary and Marie

once more went north with the ship and brought Peary back. In 1903 their

son, Robert Edwin Peary, Junio n r was born; in 1907 Peary went north again

in an effort to reach the Pole but only succeeded in breaking all previous

records by reaching 87° 6′ N. In 1909 he achieved his life's ambition, the

discovery of the North Pole.

        All the major scientific and geographical societies of the world

honored the great explorer for his achievement and not a few of them were

clever enough to recognize the tremendous part his wife had played in his

success. Her constant belief in him, her sharing when possible, in his work

and remaining uncomplainingly at home when it was not possible, her pride in

his achievements, above all, her love and courage, were an incentive to which

no man could fail to respond. In his dedication of the book recording his

great triumph Peary refers to her as the one who "Had been my constant aid

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and inspiration and has borne the brunt of it all."

        Josephine Peary is the author of three books, My Arctic Journal ,

New York, 1893; The Snowbaby , New York, 1901; Children of the Arctic ,

New York, 1903.

        Mrs. Peary has lived in almost complete retirement since the death

of her husband in 1920, but her influence and the inspiration of her

life continue to make themselves felt by everyone who comes in contact

with her.

       

Marie Peary Stafford