Mrs. Dubois' Excellent Adventure

NYPL

This is the story of an intrepid young lady, age eighteen, who went off in search of the North Pole in the year 1868. And yet the only place I have found this story is in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

The Eagle reporter heard this story from its heroine - a lady called Mrs. Dubois, who lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn -  in the year 1887. She was widowed by then and leading a quiet life. But what an adventure she'd had nineteen years before!

The year was 1868 and the future Mrs. Dubois was then Miss Worrell - a young Englishwoman whose uncle, John Harford, was the captain of the Greyfeather. Harford was taking the Greyfeather on a expedition to the North Pole. And his niece, Miss Worrell, was on board  - the only female member of the expedition.

Harford became ill ten weeks into the voyage and was unconscious in his berth for nine days. The first mate wanted to turn back south, because they had no maps and no charts - and, according to Mrs. Dubois, only two ships had ever gone so far north, and they were whaling ships. She did not want to turn around and go south  "to the captain, while in that condition, she knew it meant death." And so Miss Worrell took over:

She then took command herself and kept the ship on its courses. The second mate refused to obey her orders. Drawing a revolver from a belt around her waist she fired at a rope and shot it in two. She then told the mate that if he did not obey orders she would try her next experiment on him.

He changed his mind after that.

Arrow above points to Kodiak Island; 1911 map from MapsEtc (link below)

Miss Worrell took the ship up to "seventy-two degrees north latitude and in sixteen days reached "Codiac" (Kodiak) "by way of the Behring Straits and the Arctic ocean." Kodiak Island was part of Alaska as of 1867 (the Eagle got this wrong and said it was Russian in 1868). They got some "ice, pine [wood] and fish" and took it on board, paying the "Esquimaux" for it in whiskey.

Miss Worrell then took the ship to Australia - she does not say why - and it was at this point that the crew mutinied. The Eagle reporter noted that she had "large scars on both hands" from being attacked by a crew member with a "sailor's knife," during the mutiny. Her uncle recovered around this point (again, this is a little unclear) and they returned to England. She later visited the United States and met Mr. Dubois in New York, where she married him at the Sands Street Methodist Church in Brooklyn. She had been a widow for many years, the reporter added.

She was probably the Caroline Dubois (or Du Bois) living at Gravesend (Sheepshead Bay was very close to Gravesend and enumerated with it) from the 1880 census on, born in England in 1849 (April 1849 according to the 1900 census), and a widow since at least 1880. However, this Caroline DuBois had a daughter Frances, born in New York on August 31, 1866.*  Two thorough searches of the census records (and yes, perhaps I will do a third search!) failed to turn up any other Mrs. Dubois in the Sheepshead/Gravesend area in the 1880s, born in England about 1848-50. There were only a few other Mrs. Dubois' of  roughly the right age in all of New York State, never mind Brooklyn. So something does not add up...

As for Captain John Harford of the Greyfeather, he is proving to be elusive, too. There were many attempts to reach the North Pole in the mid nineteenth century. Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 expedition is perhaps the most famous one of the mid Victorian period. Harford's voyage may not be known because it ended in failure, but it does seem strange not to have been able to find (so far) any corroborating evidence. After all, if this story is true, then Caroline Worrell would have been the earliest known woman to attempt to reach the North Pole. Josephine Peary, wife of Robert E. Peary, who claimed to be the first man to reach the North Pole (in 1909), has been assumed to be the first woman polar explorer. She went with Peary on several expeditions, the earliest being in 1891.

So many questions and contradictions - yet the Eagle story is subtitled "Her Famous Trip In Search of the North Pole." This implies that there are other news stories out there about it, that it was a known news item, being recalled 19 years later. I'm going to keep researching this story, but I wanted to post it now. One of the pleasures of history blogging is that one can come back and add to a post, or write a follow-up.  I have no doubt that there will be a follow-up post for this story, too.

Sources (for now):

"Career of Mrs. Du Bois," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 10, 1887, p. 1.
"Our Polar Expeditions," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sept. 25, 1897, p. 5. [re Mrs. Peary]

1880 US Census, New York, New York [Manhattan], FHL #1254887, T9-0887, p. 397A. [Caroline Dubois 38y Widow, Dressmaker, b England, dau Frankie 13y b New York]
1892 NY State Census, Gravesend, Kings Co., Film # 12930244, Digital Folder # 4370043, Image 330
1900 US Census, Brooklyn Ward 31, Kings, NY; ED 0566, Household #252, Ref #32, GSU #1241069, Image #0069.
*Ancestry.com, New York Passenger Lists 1820-1957, Frances K. Cunliffe passenger on the President McKinley dep. from LA, arr NYC 1 July 1933, states that she was born in Brooklyn, NY on 31 Aug 1866; she was definitely the daughter of Mrs. Dubois, who was living with or near the Cunliffes from 1892 on.

Arctic map (1911) from Maps Etc.