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“The Race To The North Pole: Jesup, Crane And The Money”09:00AM / Thursday, May 14, 2009
LENOX, Mass. - In 1909, both Robert Peary and rival Frederick Cook claimed to have been the first man to reach the North Pole. Did either one actually make it? That Peary won first place in the history books is due in no small part to the backing of certain influential businessmen.
Berkshire historian Richard S. Jackson, Jr., will reveal this lesser known back-story at Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum when he gives a visual presentation titled “The Race to the North Pole: Jesup, Crane and the Money” at 4:00pm on Saturday, June 6. Historian Cornelia Brooke Gilder, who has assisted Jackson with research and photographic material, will introduce the lecturer. Both will be on hand to answer questions and will also be available for a “meet and greet” during a Victorian Tea that will follow the presentation.
Prominent businessman and philanthropist Morris K. Jesup of New York and Lenox was the initial chief backer for Peary and his expedition. For over a decade Peary was a regular visitor at Belvoir Terrace on Cliffwood Street, the Lenox estate of Jesup and his wife Maria. In New York, Jesup was president of the Peary Arctic Club. When he died several months before the final expedition, the vice-president of the club, Zenas Crane of Dalton, stepped in with crucial funding. The combined financial support of these leaders literally made history, according to Jackson. He will show that not only did it create a series of events in the Arctic one hundred years ago; it also influenced how they were recorded for posterity.
Jackson’s inspiration for his lecture has been the special exhibition at the Berkshire Museum, “The Race to the Arctic.” He has long held an interest in the Arctic. For his own northern voyages, he cruised “Iceberg Alley” along the Labrador coast and in 1968 filmed Inuit life at Resolute Bay, one of the northernmost settlements in the world, not far south of the Magnetic North Pole.
Jackson and Gilder co-authored Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930, Acanthus Press. At one time Jackson was chief of staff of the office of the House Minority Leader in the Massachusetts legislature in Boston. He then returned to the Berkshires as president of WBEC, Inc., where he regularly wrote and broadcast radio editorials. He is past chairman of the Lenox Historical Commission and the Tanglewood Council, member of the Naumkeag Committee and trustee of Hancock Shaker Village. In recent years, he has been a real estate agent for Wheeler & Taylor Realty.
Admission is $15 for nonmembers and $12 for members. For reservations and inquiries call Ventfort Hall at 413-637-3206 or visit www.GildedAge.org. The historic mansion is located at 104 Walker Street in Lenox. |
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| i can only say that the story have so many good morals to us and good to read because we can catch up some things .we can know what is the important of christmas. | | from: angelica jabonillo | on: 01-03-2010 12:00AM
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