Matthew Henson

Henson was born to free Black sharecroppers in Maryland and lost his mother at seven. Racial violence pushed the family to Georgetown, and after his father died the boy moved in with an uncle in Washington who paid for a few years of schooling before his own death. At ten, hearing Frederick Douglass speak at a Lincoln memorial ceremony, Henson decided education was the way past the prejudice around him. It did not last: at 12 he walked to Baltimore and signed on as a cabin boy aboard the merchant ship Katie Hines, whose captain taught him to read on voyages to China, Japan and the Russian Arctic. Working a Washington clothing store counter years later, he met naval officer Robert Peary, who needed help for a Nicaragua expedition.

That 1887 meeting became a partnership that ran nearly a quarter century. On their first Arctic trip together, in 1891 and 1892, Henson learned Inuit survival skills, the language and dog-sledding well enough that Peary called him his indispensable "first man." By the 1908-1909 expedition, Henson was driving the lead sledge team, and on April 6, 1909, he and four Inuit companions reached the position Peary's party identified as the North Pole, with Henson ahead as the group's scout. The National Geographic Society credited the expedition. Later analysis, including a 1988 reassessment of Peary's own notebook, has questioned whether the party actually closed the final miles, and the exact claim has stayed disputed rather than settled ever since.

The recognition split along race, not effort. Peary returned to acclaim, honors and a rear admiral's pension; Henson returned to a customs house clerkship in New York that Theodore Roosevelt helped arrange, and worked it for 30 years while Peary's name went on the maps and the medals. Henson had also fathered a son, Anauakaq, with an Inuit woman named Akatingwah during the expeditions, and never saw the boy again after 1909 — an arrangement Peary made too, with an Inuit woman of his own, that neither man's official record acknowledged for decades. Henson published his own account, A Negro Explorer at the North Pole, in 1912, describing himself plainly as general assistant and laborer, not co-leader, in the language his era permitted him to use.

Recognition arrived late and slowly. Congress gave him a medal in 1944; he became the Explorers Club's first Black life member in 1937 and reached its highest honorary rank in 1948; Presidents Truman and Eisenhower received him before his death. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, then reinterred with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery in 1988, close to Peary's own grave. The National Geographic Society awarded him its Hubbard Medal posthumously in 2000, nearly a century after the expedition. His Greenland descendants through Anauakaq were traced and reconnected with his American family in the 1980s, closing a gap the record had left open for generations.

Matthew Henson's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Greenland expedition of 1891-92 mission
  First Arctic trip with Peary — he learned Inuit language and dog-sledding 1892
• North Pole expedition of 1908-09 mission
  Reached the Pole position with Peary's party on April 6, 1909 1909
• A Negro Explorer at the North Pole book
  His own account of the expeditions 1912

• 1873 aged ~7 His mother dies, and racial violence pushes the family to Georgetown He was seven.
• 1878 aged ~12 Hears Frederick Douglass speak at a Lincoln memorial event He was ten, and later credited it with turning him toward education.
• 1879 aged ~13 Signs on as a cabin boy aboard the Katie Hines at 12 The captain taught him to read on voyages to China, Japan and the Russian Arctic.
• November 1887 aged 21 Meets Robert Peary while working a Washington clothing counter
• 1891 aged ~25 Joins Peary's first Greenland expedition
• September 7, 1907 aged 41 Marries Lucy Ross in New York City
• April 6, 1909 aged 42 Reaches the Pole position with Peary's expedition He served as lead scout for the final push.
• 1944 aged ~78 Congress awards him the Peary Polar Expedition Medal
• March 9, 1955 aged 88 Dies in the Bronx at 88

• Robert Peary 1856–1920
  Naval officer who led the disputed 1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the North Pole. expedition partner
• Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919
  26th President known for progressive reforms, conservation efforts, and assertive foreign policy. arranged his customs house post
• Frederick Douglass 1818–1895
  Former slave who became a leading abolitionist, orator, and advocate for equal rights. inspired his pursuit of education