Matthew Alexander Henson Memorial
Robert Edwin Peary Sr. was an American explorer who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is best known for claiming to be the first expedition to reach the geographic North Pole. But why mention Perry? After all, the memorial I visited on this bike ride is dedicated to Matthew Alexander Henson. Henson, also an American explorer, accompanied Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic, including the famous 1908-1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. The expedition party consisted of Perry, Henson and four Inuit assistants. And Henson said he was the first individual of their expedition party to reach the pole.
Henson was born in Nanjemoy, Charles County, Maryland, on August 8, 1866, to sharecropper parents who were free Black Americans before the Civil War. He spent most of his early life here in D.C., but left school at the age of twelve when both of his parents died. He then went to work as a cabin boy on a merchant ship, having been fascinated by stories of the sea. He learned to to read, write and navigate while working on the ship. But at the age of 18 he returned to D.C. and worked as a salesclerk at a hat shop. It was there that he met a customer named Robert Peary, who in 1887 hired him as a personal valet.
Their first Arctic expedition together was in 1891–92. Henson served as a navigator and craftsman, and was known as Peary’s “first man”. But it was during their 1908–09 expedition to Greenland, that Peary and Henson, along with four Inuit assistants, claimed to have been the first to reach the geographic North Pole. In interviews, Henson identified as the first member of the party to reach the pole.
Henson achieved a level of fame from his participation in the expedition, and in 1912 he published a memoir entitled “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole”. As he approached old age, his exploits received renewed attention, including being received at the White House by Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.
Eighty years later, and decades after Henson’s death, a research paper by an English explorer named Wally Herbert claimed that their expedition records were unreliable, and indicated a that the men could have fallen 30–60 miles short of the pole due to navigational errors. Nonetheless, Peary and Henson and the expedition has remained famous as one of the great explorations of history.
Henson died on March 9, 1955, at the age of 88, and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. He was survived by his second wife Lucy Ross Henson. After her death in 1968, she was buried with him. But in 1988, both their bodies were moved and reintered during a commemoration ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. And that is where I rode on this bike ride to see his memorial.
The memorial at his gravesite features an inset bronze plaque commemorating the North Pole discovery. At the top sits a large bas-relief bust of Henson in Arctic gear. Immediately below, an inscription describes his part in reaching the North Pole. And globes of the world, tilted with the Pole in view, sit at either side. The central image, which was based on a photograph that Peary took at the Pole on April 6, 1909, shows Henson flanked by the four Inuit assistants with the U.S. flag flying behind them atop a mound of ice. The bottom panel on the memorial depicts dogsleds and dramatic ice floes, suggestive of the struggle that Henson, Peary and the Inuit sustained over many years to achieve their goal. And on the opposite side, an inscription quotes Henson’s book, “A Negro Explorer at the North Pole.” It reads, “The lure of the Arctic is tugging at my heart. To me the trail is calling! The old trail. The trail that is always new.”
[Click on the thumbnails above to view the full size photos]
NOTE: The monument in the background of the photo at the top is dedicated to Peary. I will go back to visit it and write about him at some point in the future.
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