Matthew Henson

Matthew Alexander Henson was born to free African American parents in Charles County, Md. on August 8, 1886. In 1867 Matthew’s parents sold their farm and moved to Georgetown, Maryland just outside Washington D.C.

He ran away from his widowed stepmother at about age 11, was taken in by a black woman in Washington, D.C., and at 12 went to sea as a cabin boy on a sailing ship. During the next six years Henson learned to read, write, and navigate. In the next five years he traveled the world while learning everything he could about seamanship. But, due to the racism and prejudice he experienced from white sailors, he left his life at sea when he was 18.

After the death of his captain, Henson held several jobs, finally working as a stock clerk in a hat store in Washington.

Soon after returning to the east coast, Matthew met Robert Peary, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. Peary offered Henson a job as his servant on an expedition to Nicaragua. During this time Henson demonstrated abilities in ways that proved extremely valuable to the expedition. As a result, Peary asked him to be part of an expedition that would ultimately reach the north pole.

With some breaks in service, Henson was with Peary for eight arctic expeditions over 22 years until their last one, in 1909, the year they reached the North Pole.

Each expedition over the next two decades started from Greenland. It was here that Henson’s experience at each attempt proved invaluable. He learned everything necessary from the native Innuit to live in the extreme climates of this hostile environment. In turn, he was responsible for training each member of the expedition including Commander Peary.

Finally, on April 6, 1909 Peary, Henson and several Innuit reached the north pole. On that historic day, it was Henson, an African-American, who first reached the Pole and planted the American flag.

It would not be for several decades though, that Henson would receive any credit at all for his contribution to the expedition. During his lifetime, Peary received many international honors for his achievement.

Henson, however, received comparatively little recognition for his part in the discovery, even though Peary repeatedly acknowledged Henson’s indispensability to the success of the Polar expeditions.

Although Peary was celebrated for the achievement, he was also criticized for not taking along a white man.

Peary frequently praised Henson as the best man for the job, but Henson's role was largely unrecognized for years. After reaching the pole he earned a living as a customs clerk in New York and occasional guest lecturer. In 1947 Henson published his story, A Negro at the North Pole (with a foreword by Booker T. Washington) and toward the end of his life he received many awards and tributes. He was three times refused a pension by Congress, was excluded from the Explorer’s Club in which his commander [Peary] was president, and lastly was not considered for burial among the heroes at Arlington National Cemetery at the time of his death.

After his death in 1955, Matthew Henson was buried in New York City’s Woodlawn Cemetery. In 1968, the body of his wife Lucy Ross Henson was buried nearby. In 1987, at the request of Dr. S. Allen Counter of Harvard University, President Ronald Reagan granted permission for the bodies of Henson and his wife to be re-interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

On April 6, 1988, the remains of Matthew Henson and his wife were transported to Washington, D.C., where they were re-interred among other American heroes and near the grave site of Robert Peary and his wife Josephine Deibitsch Peary. Members of Henson’s family attended the ceremony along with many of the explorer’s admirers from around the world. The re-interment represented the ultimate national recognition that Henson had so long deserved.

The headstone of Matthew Henson and his wife Lucy Ross Henson is made of jet-black Vermont granite, approximately five- feet high, four feet wide, and one-foot thick. The gold-leafed carving includes an excerpt from the explorer’s own account of his North Pole adventures.

On the opposite face, the stone contains an inset bronze plaque commemorating several aspects of the North Pole discovery. At the top sits a large bas-relief bust of Henson in Arctic gear. The central image — based on a photograph taken by Robert Peary at the Pole on April 6, 1909 — shows Henson flanked by the four Polar Eskimos who accompanied them on the trip. The American flag flies behind them atop a mound of ice.

With its dogsleds and dramatic ice floes, the bottom panel suggests the struggle that Peary, Henson, and the Eskimos sustained over many years to achieve their goal.