The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame

A Life of Louise Arner Boyd

Joanna Kafarowski

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781459739703
• eBook ISBN: 9781459739727
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

The first comprehensive biography of Louise Arner Boyd — the intrepid American socialite who reinvented herself as the leading female polar explorer of the twentieth century. Born in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York's distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era. After inheriting a staggering family fortune, she began leading a double life. She fell under the spell of the north in the late 1920s after a sailing excursion to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her flamboyant lifestyle as a leading society woman. Yet despite organizing, financing, and directing seven daring Arctic expeditions between 1926 and 1955, she is virtually unknown today.

Notes

Notes

1. “No News About Amundsen,” accessed August 21, 2012, www.hidden europe.co.uk/no-news-about-amundsen.

Chapter One: An Adventuress Is Born

1. Arnold Blackmur, Old Diablo: A Social History (Redwood City: Ampex, 1981), 6. See also “Horses of California” by Joseph Cairn Simpson, Sunset Magazine 9 (1902), who extolled the virtues of the Oakwood Park Farm: “The best appointed of all the horse-breeding farms in California and so far as I have knowledge not a single establishment in the United States on which so much money has been expended for improvements — that is my judgement of Oakwood Farm,” p. 29.

2. Judy and Rick Hornor, The Golden Quest and Nevada’s Silver Heritage (Pilot Hill: Nineteenth Century Books, 2006), 69.

3. O.S. Fowler, Phrenological Character Report of John Franklin Boyd (Boston: O.S. Fowler, 1871), 1. It is likely that the personal details in this report were either accurate or consistent with John F. Boyd’s self-assessment since the report was preserved by John Boyd himself and, upon his death, by Louise Arner Boyd.

4. “Yachts and Lots,” unknown newspaper, n.d.

5. Bodie Standard, November 7, 1877.

6. “Boyd-Arner,” San Francisco Examiner, April 29, 1883.

7. Rochester Daily Union Advertiser, June 30, 1876, 7. Theodocia Arner was the editor of The Journal of the Home, which was the monthly publication of the Rochester Association for the Relief of Homeless and Friendless Females. Advocating on behalf of the Home’s clients, this journal was edited by Theodocia Arner until her departure to California in 1872.

8. Hospital Review, August 15, 1876, 3.

9. Marin Journal, unknown month and day, 1879.

10. San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday edition), n.d.

11. “Sad Accidental Death,” Marin Journal, August 15, 1901, 6.

12. Letter from Mrs. Louise Arner Boyd to Sherman Thacher, February 9, 1902, The Thacher School Archives. Under Sherman Thacher’s tutelage, the school program emphasized the link between a sound mind and a sound body. As quoted by Makepeace (p. 75), an 1891 advertisement for the school stated: “The aims of the place are in three directions: toward health and enjoyment, toward unselfish, manly character, and toward accurate, thorough, and self-reliant habits of thought and study; an object constantly in view is to help a boy towards the simplest way of living a happy, useful life — with other people.”

13. Letter from Sherman Thacher to Mrs. Louise Arner Boyd, March 27, 1902, The Thacher School Archives. Mrs. Boyd is referring to Jack Franklin Boyd’s 1902 application to The Thacher School. A reference letter sent by an unstated family friend to Sherman Thacher attested to Jack Boyd’s upright and conscientious nature. Jack must have been an exceedingly truthful boy, since this is emphasized in the reference letter and application.

14. LeRoy McKim Makepeace, Sherman Thacher and His School (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), 113.

15. Letter from Mrs. Louise Arner Boyd to Sherman Thacher, May 9, 1902, The Thacher School Archives.

16. “Boyd Memorial Park Dedicated with Appropriate Ceremonies,” Daily Independent, May 2, 1905. See also “John F. Boyd Gives Park to San Rafael,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 7, 1904. The donation of land was estimated at $25,000 USD. The only stipulation of the gift was that the Town Trustees employed a man to keep the Park in good condition. Sherman Thacher and His School, by Makepeace (p. 113), suggests that Mr. and Mrs. Boyd wanted to establish a memorial to Jack Boyd at The Thacher School but Sherman Thacher asserted that “our boys had too much already.” It was Thacher’s idea that a clubhouse in Jack’s memory be presented to the Ojai community. As outlined in “Boyd Center Marks Centennial,” the Jack Boyd Memorial Clubhouse served as a local hospital during the flu epidemic of 1918, a flood disaster centre in 1938 and a USO centre during the early years of the Second World War. In 1957, the clubhouse was moved to another location and is now part of the Ojai Parks and Recreation Department.

17. “The Ruins as Seen by Ed Soules,” Marin Journal, April 24, 1906, 1. See also “Among the Homeless from San Francisco,” New York Times, May 2, 1906. According to this article, at least a hundred San Francisco residents travelled back with the Boyds on the Konprinz Wilhelm. A day after arriving in San Francisco, these residents estimated their losses due to the disaster at $7,000,000 USD.

Chapter Two: Shaped by Adversity

1. “Sloop Gjøa Which Made NW Passage Here,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 20, 1906, 9.

2. “Present Their Daughter to Marin County Society,” San Francisco Call, August 19, 1906.

3. “Death Calls for Mrs. John F. Boyd,” Marin Journal, October 2, 1919. According to one obituary of Mrs. Louise Arner Boyd, “… the mother never fully recovered from the shock of their [sons’] death.” See also “Wife of Pioneer Broker Dies Here,” San Francisco Examiner, October 5, 1919. According to Mrs. Louise Arner Boyd’s San Francisco death certificate, the official cause of death was “encephalomalacia with contributing causes being myxedema and anemia secondary.”

4. “Respected Citizen Called to Death,” Marin Journal, May 6, 1920. See also “Aged Millionaire Near Death in Fall,” San Francisco Examiner, April 29, 1920. According to his San Francisco death certificate, the official cause of death was “diabetes with contributing factors being fracture of the left femur and bronchitis.”

5. Untitled, undated document by Louise Arner Boyd, 1, Marin History Museum.

6. Ibid., 2.

7. Ibid., 3.

8. Clive Holland, Farthest North: Endurance and Adventure in the Quest for the North Pole (London: Robinson, 1999), 223.

9. Roald Amundsen, My Life as an Explorer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 242.

10. “Presentation at Court,” San Francisco Newsletter, July 4, 1925.

Chapter Three: “Diana of the Arctic”

1. Elizabeth Bradfield, Approaching Ice: Poems (New York: Persea Books, 2010), 73.

2. Robert Peary, quoted in Michael F. Robinson, The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 1.

3. Untitled, undated document by Louise Arner Boyd, 4, Marin History Museum.

4. Partial contract between Mr. Francis J. Gisbert and Louise Arner Boyd,...

Table of contents

• 1-frontmatter
• 2-prologue
• 3-part1
• 4-ch1
• 5-ch2
• 6-ch3
• 7-part2
• 8-ch4
• 9-ch5
• 10-ch6
• 11-ch7
• 12-part3
• 13-ch8
• 14-ch9
• 15-ch10
• 16-epilogue
• 17-acknow
• 18-appendix
• 19-notes
• 20-biblio