Lillian
Alling, walked, in 1927, from New York City to Dawson, YT;
disappeared en route to Eagle, AK.
Princess Anna of Koda (a Native woman) “a Tartar Joan of Arc” almost succeeded
in uniting the entire native population of Western Siberia in revolt against the excesses of the Russians in 1608.
Charlotte Selina Bompas (1830-1917)
Born in England, she was an Anglican missionary and the wife of Bishop
William Bompas, first Anglican Bishop of the Yukon. She was the daughter
of an English doctor who moved his family to Italy when his health failed.
She returned to England after some years and married her cousin, William,
in 1874. She worked as a teacher and helpmeet alongside her husband in
Simpson, Forty Mile and Carcross until William's death. After a brief sojourn
in England, she returned to Canada and lived with two nieces near Montreal.
She died there in January 1917. (Source:
Diocesan Board of the Women's Auxiliary of Yukon. Five Pioneer Women
of the Anglican Church. Whitehorse: Diocesan Board of the Women's Auxiliary
of Yukon, 1964.)
Susan Mellett Bowen (1870-1962)
Teacher and Anglican "pioneer" in the Yukon. Born in Ireland, emigrated
to Canada 1893. She came to the Yukon in answer to a call from help
from Bishop Bompas taught First Nations students at Forty Mile, near Dawson.
After Forty Mile, she taught at Rampart House for two years and was the
only unmarried white woman in the Yukon. In the course of her work, she
met and later married Rev. R. J. Bowen in about 1898. She and Rev. Bowen
constructed the first Anglican church in Dawson and Whitehorse (the Old
Log Church). (Source: Diocesan Board
of the Women's Auxiliary of Yukon. Five Pioneer Women of the Anglican
Church. Whitehorse: Diocesan Board of the Women's Auxiliary of Yukon,
1964.)
Louise
Arner Boyd(16 Sept., 1887-1972) American explorer of the
Arctic Ocean and the first woman to fly over the North Pole; an heiress
from San Francisco who outfitted and led her own expeditions to the Arctic.
More about her in Women of the Four Winds, by Elizabeth Fagg Olds
(Houghton Mifflin, 1985).
Charlotte Sarah (French) Canham
(1845-1921) Born in Ireland, she married the Rev. T. H. Canham, an Anglican
missionary in northern Canada at Fort McPherson. After two years there,
they moved into the Yukon, first at Nuklakayit, then Fort Selkirk and finally
at Rampart House. After a brief visit to England, the Canhams returned
to the Yukon and Fort Selkirk. She spent over thirty years in the Yukon.
(Source: Diocesan Board of the Women's Auxiliary of Yukon. Five Pioneer
Women of the Anglican Church. Whitehorse: Diocesan Board of the Women's
Auxiliary of Yukon, 1964.)
Kate Carmack (neé Shaaw
Tlaa). Yukon. Wife of George
Carmack and contributor to the discovery of gold in the Yukon's Klondike.
There are a number of sites that mention her but none is particularly accurate.
Kathleen (Martin) Cowaret (1888-1958)
Yukon. Born in Manitoba, she applied in 1916 to Yukon Diocese Bishop I.
O. Stringer (Anglican) for a teaching position. She was sent to Fort Selkirk
to take charge of the day school there. When she began, she had two students,
though soon after the number increased to 12. She married a local trapper,
Alex Coward but didn't like his surname and insisted on being referred
to as Mrs. Cowaret. The construction of the Klondike Highway to Mayo (1953)
and to Dawson (1954) forced Fort Selkirk residents to move to Minto and
Pelly Crossing. She remained in the area and served as an active member
of the Anglican Women's Auxiliary until her death at Minto in 1958. (Source:
Diocesan Board of the Women's Auxiliary of Yukon. Five Pioneer Women
of the Anglican Church. Whitehorse: Diocesan Board of the Women's Auxiliary
of Yukon, 1964.)
Gertrud Rask Egede, Greenland,
missionary, nurse. Wife of Hans Poulson Egede ((1686-1758) Norwegian bishop,
missionary, educator, author). She had a ship named after her and appeared
on a Greenland stamp.
Lady Jane Franklin, née
Griffin,UK (1792-1875), while
not an explorer herself, she deserves mention because, for thirteen years
Lady Jane encouraged people to search for her husband's expedition, lost
in the Canadian Arctic. She spent her own inherited fortune financing search
parties. She bought a luxury yacht, the Fox, and had it fitted out
for a trip to the Arctic led by Captain Leopold McClintock. Her efforts
to find word of her husband, Sir John Franklin, were so important to the
exploration of the North-West Passage that she was awarded the Royal Geographic
Society's Founder's Medal, the first woman to receive it. A picture
of Lady Jane.
Emélie (Fortin) Tremblay,
Yukon, first white woman known to have crossed the Chilkoot Pass. Born
4 January 1872 at Saint-Joseph-d'Alma in Québec. Married American
Nolasque Tremblay in December 1893. On the 16th of June 1894, she and her
husband arrived at Fortymile in the Yukon and spent the next eighteen months
prospecting from a cabin on Miller Creek. Between the fall of 1895 and
spring 1898 the Tremblays visited their families back east. They returned
to the Yukon to take part in the Klondike Gold Rush over the Chilkoot Trail.
Until 1913, they worked on a variety of claims in the Dawson region. Then,
as a result of financial difficulties, they moved into Dawson. Émélie
opened a women's clothing store. Her shop, located at the coner of King
Street and 3rd Avenue is, today, a Dawson City historical building. In
Dawson, Émélie was noted for her social activities and her
work on behalf of travellers, missionaries and widows. She was a life member
of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, a founding member
of the Ladies of the Golden North and a president of the Yukon Women Pioneers.
She also received numerous awards for her works and, today, some of her
medals are in the museum of the Saguenay, Québec. In Dawson, in
1940, after the death of her husband, she married Louis Lagrois. She gave
up her store and moved with him to Grand Forks. (This information is drawn
from a biographical note that was included in Association franco-yukonnaise,
Empreinte:
La présence francophone au Yukon (1825-1950), edited and researched
by Caroline Boucher. Vol. 2. Whitehorse: AFY, 1997: 16-18.) En
français
Valentina Grizodubova (1910-1993), Polina
Denisovna Osipenko (1907-1939) and Marina Raskova (1912-1943),
Russia/USSR, in September 1938, broke the long-distance world record for
female aviators with their flight from Moscow to the southeastern tip of
Siberia, a non-stop flight over a distance of 5,908 km in "Rodina,"
an ANT-37. Paterae on Venus are named for Grizodubova
and
Raskova. (In fact, all features on Venus are
named for women and goddesses or the name of the planet in various
Earth languages. Some of the features on Callisto, a statellite of Jupiter,
are named for heroes and heroines from northern myths and mythological
places in high latitudes.)
Debbie
Schreiber Harding, Pennsylvania, US, a commercial balloon
operator that runs a small recreational flight business in Chester County
for the last eight years. She is the first woman to pilot a hot air balloon
over the North Pole, April 20, 1998. "Our inflation was flawless and soon
we were over the beautiful North Pole. It looked like a white moonscape.
Ice ridges, snow and patches of water as far as the eye can see. The ground
and sky were melting as one. Definitely one of the most beautiful sights
in the world."
Ka.ye.ka.ha, (?-1937), of the
Tlingit Raven Kiksadi clan; Joseph
Juneau's wife.
Mrs. Maksoutoff. Alaska/Russia.
Princess Maksoutoff was the wife of the last Russian Governor of Russian
America from 1864-1867. See
a full-length picture of her.
Amanda McFarland (Alaska). Arrives
at Fort Wrangell in 1877 to become the first woman missionary in Alaska.
(source)
Violet
Milstead, she and her pilot husband "were hired to instruct
at Nickel Belt Airways in Sudbury[, Ontario]. Her main job was running
the flying school, but she managed to do some charter work, becoming the
first woman bush pilot."
Margaret
J. Mitchell and Marie Joussaye Fotheringham. Disputes over
gold mining could get out of hand, as the battle between Margaret Mitchell
and Marie Fotheringham shows. By Darrell Hookey. Margaret Mitchell discovered
the Mitchell showing in 1902; known as "Hardrock Queen of the Klondike"
(and is a member of the Yukon Prospectors's Association's Prospectors'
Hall of Fame).
Geraldine
Moodie, the first woman
photographer in the Eastern Arctic of Canada. Her photographs of the Inuit,
taken around the turn of the century, are some of the best in existence.
She worked from a home base in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, and lived at
various times (and died) in Alberta.
Jane Summers Orrell, Yukon,
made discoveries of gold in the Green Gulch and Boxcar areas of the Klondike
in 1904-1909 (and is a member of the Yukon Prospectors's Association's
Prospectors'
Hall of Fame).
Satejdenalno (Katherine James)
McQuesten, Alaska, was among the very first Athabascans to marry an American.
Kate was born in 1860 at Kokrines to a Koyukon Athabascan mother and Russian
father. She was educated at Russian Mission and was 18 when she married
42 year-old trader Leroy Napoleon
"Jack" McQuesten. Over the next 20 years, the couple traveled up and
down the Yukon River opening trading posts. Kate had eleven children, but
the first three died before 1888 (There's a picture of her and four of
her children on the Jack McQuesten page). (Information on Satejdenalno
from James Arthur McQuiston's family history page, "The
Clan Uisdean."
Princess Natalya
Alexyeva Shelikof, Russia/Alaska. Co-discovers Kodiak Island
with her husband Grigorri Shelikof.
Myrtle Simpson, British explorer,
first woman to ski across Greenland ice cape, 1964.
Sarah Ann (Alexander) Stringer
(1869-1955). Yukon. Born in Ontario, she learned secretarial, nursing and
missionary skills. She married Rev. I. O. Stringer in 1896 and travelled
with him soon after to Fort McPherson (NT) and Herschel Island (Yukon).
They lived in a sod house there for some months, returning to Fort McPherson
that fall. Her first child, a daughter, was born there in December. They
returned to Herschel in the spring of 1897 to remain there for four years.
Her son, Herschel, was born there. In 1901, at the end of their stint,
they travelled to San Francisco. Upon the family's return, Rev. Stringer
became rector of the log church in Whitehorse. He became Bishop of Yukon
in 1905. Rev. and Mrs. Stringer continued to make long trips visiting the
missions and settlements of the Yukon. On a trip with her husband in 1927,
she became the first white woman to visit Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island.
Stringer became Bishop of Rupertsland and they relocated to Winnipeg. Sarah
"Sadie" died in Vancouver in 1955. (Source: Diocesan Board of the Women's
Auxiliary of Yukon. Five Pioneer Women of the Anglican Church. Whitehorse:
Diocesan Board of the Women's Auxiliary of Yukon, 1964.)
Golden North Fraternity, an
auxiliary of the Alaska-Yukon Pioneers, a group of women who took part
in the Klondike Gold Rush. Some of the organization's officers included:
MATHEWS, EMMA STARRETT Lady Collector of Customs in Ladies of the Golden
North, Lodge No.1 and PETERSON, EMMA Assistant Lady Pathfinder in Ladies
of the Golden North, Lodge No.1, Aux. to AK-YT Pioneers.
McVitie's Penguin Polar Relay, The first all-women expedition to reach the North Pole. According to the web site, "Britain's best loved chocolate
biscuit has enabled twenty 'ordinary' British women to walk, in five groups of four in a relay format, 1000km across moving sea-ice from northern Canada to the North Pole." "Participants include[d] a mother of triplets, the
Queen Mother's great niece, a royal protection officer, a film financier, a chartered surveyor, a physio, several teachers, an air stewardess, and many others.
Metelitsa - Russian women's polar expedition organization founded by Valentina Kznetsova. Her daughter Irina has filmed many of the expeditions and lives between Moscow and San Francisco. (Source: Milbry
Polk)
