From 1878 from 1880, Frederick Schwatka led an expedition across the Canadian Arctic by dogsled in search of any surviving written records of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, which had disappeared more than thirty years earlier.

Born in Galena, Illinois in 1849, Schwatka explored Northern Canada, Alaska, and Mexico before his premature death from a laudanum overdose in 1892.  This lecture presents Schwatka as a key figure in the history of the heroic age of arctic exploration, connecting the British search for a Northwest Passage in the early nineteenth century to the University of Illinois’s own Crocker Land Expedition of 1913-17.

Doskey will also discuss Frederick Schwatka’s “Arctic Library,” assembled to aid him in his expeditions and eventually sold to the University of Illinois Library by his widow in 1924.

Thanks to Dennis Sears of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library for this information item.

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