Female Explorers

Harriet Chalmers Adams was an American explorer, writer and photographer from Stockton, California, USA. During her life she traveled through South America, Asia and the South Pacific. In the early 1900's her accounts of her travels were published in National Geographic. She was also a frequent lecturer, using her own color slides and movies to enhance her talks.

Adams' first major expedition was a three-year trip around South America. She and her husband, Franklin Adams, visited every single country in South America and even crossed the Andes on horseback. Regarding that journey, the New York times wrote that she "reached twenty frontiers previously unknown to white women." On subsequent trips she retraced the steps taken by Christopher Columbus' early discoveries in the Americas and crossed Haiti on horseback.

Harriet was also a war correspondent for Harper's Magazine in Europe during World War I. She and Franklin also toured eastern Bolivia during a second trip to South America.

From 1907 to 1935, she wrote twenty-one articles for the National Geographic Society that featured her photographs, including "Some Wonderful Sights in the Andean Highlands" (September, 1908), "Kaleidoscopic La Paz: City of the Clouds" (February, 1909) and "River-Encircled Paraguay" (April 1933). She wrote on Trinidad, Surinam, Bolivia, Peru and the trans-Andean railroad between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso.

Ironically enough, in Harriet's time women were not allowed to join the National Geographical Society as full members. Harriet took of the cause for the recognition of female explorers, and helped launch the Society of Woman Geographers in 1925. She then served as its first president through 1933. .

It has been estimated that Adams traveled more than a hundred thousand miles during her explorations. The New York Times wrote "Harriet Chalmers Adams is America's greatest woman explorer. As a lecturer no one, man or woman, has a more magnetic hold over an audience than she."

Harriet died in Nice, France, in 1937, at age 62. Her obituary in the Washington Post called her a "confidant of savage head hunters" who never stopped wandering the remote corners of the world."

(Photo Credit: Stockton.Lib.Ca.US)

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Ruth Harkness was an American fashion designer and socialite, who traveled to China after the death of her husband and brought back the first live giant panda to the United States - not in a cage, or on a leash, but wrapped in her arms.

The Giant Panda, today recognized on sight by every schoolchild, was once only a 'phantom animal' to the Western world. No description of this animal even reached Western society until 1869, and it took another sixty-seven years for someone to bring a live panda out of China.

It was not until 1937, some sixty-seven years after the panda's discovery by Westerners, that Ruth Harkness and Gerald Russell captured a live giant panda for the first time. During this period twelve well staffed and equipped professional expeditions failed to collect a single live specimen of the giant panda.

Susan Helms, the first woman to live on International Space Station 'Alpha', as a member of the second crew to inhabit the Station, arrived home on earth recently after spending some 5.5 months in orbit. The Expedition-2 crew, composed of two American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut, launched on March 8, 2001 onboard STS-102 Discovery and successfully docked with the station on March 9, 2001. Helms was the first woman to live on the ISS, but the second American woman to live on a space station. The first, Shannon Lucid, spent six months on Russia's Mir in 1996.

Susan was born February 26, 1958, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Later, her family moved to Portland, Oregon, and she graduated from Portland's Parkrose Senior High School in 1976. After High School, Susan attended the U.S. Air Force Academy, receiving a B.S. degree in aeronautical engineering in 1980. After receiving her commission, she moved to Eglin AFB, Florida, where she served as an F-16 weapons separation engineer with the Air Force Armament Laboratory. In 1984 Susan was selected to obtain graduate school, and she obtained a M.S. degree in aeronautics/astronautics from Stanford University in 1985.

After receiving her M.S., Helms was assigned as an assistant professor of aeronautics at the USAF Academy. In 1987, she attended the AF Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, California. After completing one year of training as a flight test engineer, Helms was assigned as a USAF Exchange Officer to the Aerospace Engineering Test Establishment, Canadian Forces Base, Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, where she worked as a flight test engineer and project officer on the CF-18 aircraft. As a flight test engineer, Helms has flown in 30 different types of U.S. and Canadian military aircraft. She was managing the development of a CF-18 Flight Control System Simulation

(Photo Credit: Nasa)

Gudridur Thorbjarnarsdottir, born at Laugarbrekka at Hellnar during the last quarter of the 10th century, was the daughter of Thorbjarnar Vífilsson and Hallveig Einarsdóttir. Vífill, Gudridur's paternal grandfather, had come to Iceland with "Aud the Deep-Minded" as her slave, but later he gained his freedom.

Gudridur was also the foster-daughter of Orm and Halldís of Arnastapi, Iceland. While staying with her foster parents, Gudridur became enamored of a young man. He was a slave's son, but had been very successful in his own life. He wanted to marry Gudridur, but Thorbjarnar would not allow his daughter to marry a slave's son. Rather ironic, given that Gudridur's own family history.

Instead, Gudridur's father decided to take his family to Greenland. This was about ten years after Erik the Red, a friend of Thorbjarnar, had led a settlement group to the same area. Gudridur's foster-parents and many others went with them on the voyage.

Erik presented Thorbjarnar some land near his own, and Gudridur eventually met and married Erik's son Thorsteinn, considered one of the most promising men in Greenland at that time. Thorsteinn and Gudridur went to Vinland after Thorsteinn's brother Thorvaldur had been killed there by the natives. It was another difficult journey, taking an entire summer, many died of disease, including Thorsteinn. Gudridur was now a widow.

Gudridur then met and married Thorfinnur Karlsefni, a wealthy merchant of royal descent who came to Greenland from Iceland. Following their marriage, the couple set out to lead an expedition to explore and settle in Vinland. According to the 'Saga of Greenlanders,' there were sixty men and five women on Thorfinnur's ship, including Gudridur.

Thorfinnur got Leif's permission to use the houses Leif had built in Vinland during his expedition there. In the year 1004, during the first autumn in Leif's house in Vinland, Snorri, the son of Thorfinnur and Gudridur was born. He is the first European recorded in history as being born on the American continent.

After three years in Vinland, during which time scholars believe the group traveled as far south as Manhattan if not further,

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell CBE was born 14 July 1868 in Washington Hall, County Durham, England to a wealthy, titled and politically active family. She was educated first at Queen's College in London and then later at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. During Gertrude's time, women were under many restrictions and history was one of the few subjects women were allowed to study. This being the case, she specialized in modern history, in which she received a first class honors degree in two years.

Bell's uncle, Sir Frank Lascelles, was British ambassador at Tehran, Persia. After completing her education, Gertrude traveled to Persia for a visit. During the next ten years she traveled around the world and developed a passion for languages and archaeology. She became fluent in Arabic, Persian, French and German as well as also speaking Italian and Turkish.

In 1899, Bell again travelled to the Middle East, where she toured Palestine and Syria, and then traveled from Jerusalem to Damascus. Altogether she traveled across Arabia six times in the next twelve years. She explored and mapped the areas in which she traveled. Over time, all of her experiences in Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia made her very influential in the process of British imperial policy making.

In partnership with T. E. Lawrence, Gertrude helped establish the 'Hashemite dynasties,' which are now located in parts of what is today parts of Jordan and Iraq. She also had a large role in establishing and assisting in the administration of what is now the modern state of Iraq.

Bell's first love - archaeology - was never forgotten. She founded, with relics from her own collection, what later became the Baghdad Archaeological Museum. It was her greatest wish to preserve Iraqi culture and history, as well as keep all archaeological relics in their country of origin. Additionally, the British School of Archaeology, Iraq, was endowed from proceeds in her will.

Gertrude Bell was discovered dead, of an apparent sleeping pill overdose, on 12 July 1926. It has long been debated as to whether her death was suicide or accidental. Bell was buried at the British cemetery in Baghdad and her funeral a major event there. It was attended by a great number of people including her colleagues, British officials and the King of Iraq. It was reported that King Faisal watched the procession from his private balcony as they carried her coffin to the cemetery.

An obituary written by her peer David G. Hogarth expressed the respect British officials held for her. Hogarth honored her by saying, "No woman in recent time has combined her qualities - her taste for arduous and dangerous adventure with her scientific interest and knowledge, her competence in archaeology and art, her distinguished literary gift, her sympathy for all sorts and condition of men, her political insight and appreciation of human values, her masculine vigor, hard common sense and practical efficiency - all tempered by feminine charm and a most romantic sprit."

(Photo Credit: Wikimedia/Public Domain)

Carrie Adell Green was born in Marengo, McHenry County, Illinois, in 1854. She married Robert Strahorn, a reporter for the Denver Rocky Mountain News with a reputation as an Indian fighter.

Immediately following their wedding, the couple set out for Cheyenne Wyoming Territory. Robert received a job offer from the Union Pacific Railroad. Previously, he had prepared a handbook entitled Wyoming Black Hawk and Big Horn Region, which described in great detail the climate and resources of that area. Union Pacific Railroad President Jay Gould had obtained a copy and saw it as a way to help attract settlers to the West - following the routes of his railway. He asked Robert to write more such handbooks and pamphlets for distribution.

The couple spent each spring and fall traveling throughout the West, and returned home in the winter to write when traveling became difficult. Robert wrote pamphlets on Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. Carrie wrote stories for the Omaha Repbulican, as well as letters to her mother that would later form the basis for her famous book "Fifteen Thousand Miles by Stage," which was published in 1911 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

During the course of their career as scouts for Union Pacific. They traveled to Yellowstone and Hot Sulphur Springs in Montana; to Hailey Hot Springs and Lake Coeur d'Alene in Idaho; to Estes Park and Pikes Peak in Colorado. They saw pueblos in New Mexico, Yosemite in San Francisco, and traveled by canoe up the Fraser and Harrison rivers in British Columbia.

Carrie is known as the first white woman to tour the entire Yellowstone Park and one of the first to travel to and write about the wilds of Alaska.

After six years of traveling and writing, Robert determined to build railroad lines himself. In doing so, he established the towns of Hailey, Mountain Home, and Caldwell in Idaho, and Ontario in Oregon.

In 1890, Robert and Robert and Carrie moved east, settling in Boston for seven years. Robert became an investment banker, and Carrie devoted herself to music, literary studies, and good works.

Ultimately, in 1898, the couple made their last home was in Spokane, WA. It is here that Carrie wrote her book, which became a classic description of stagecoach days in the American West. The book was published in 1911.

Carrie Adell Green Strahorn died during a visit to San Francisco on March 17, 1925, having spent more than thirty-four years exploring and writing about the American West.

I was so surprised and happy to check my email today and discover that this lens, Female Explorers, had been awarded a Purple Star! It's so gratifying that this lens - so very close to my heart - has been found worthy of this honor. The lives of female explorers the world over have been so forgotten and hidden over the centuries, and this renews my intent to bring as many of their accomplishments to light as I can. Thank You!

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