Exhibit sheds light on local historical figure

What, exactly, happened to Ross G. Marvin?

For many years, it was widely believed that he drowned. Later, reports surfaced that he had been shot by an Eskimo.

In any case, the precise details of what transpired on the last day of Marvin's life - nearly a century ago - will probably never be known.

Marvin, one of this area's notable historical figures, died on April 10, 1909, at the age of 29.

An Elmira native and a Cornell University professor, he accompanied famed explorer Robert E. Peary on his expedition to the Arctic in 1908 and 1909, after which Peary was hailed as the first man ever to set foot on the North Pole.

Peary later called Marvin his "right-hand man."

Marvin is featured as part of "Across the Polar Sea: With Robert E. Peary on the North Pole Expedition," a new exhibit at the Chemung Valley History Museum in Elmira.

The traveling exhibit, which marks the 100th anniversary of the expedition, was arranged by The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College in Maine, Peary's alma mater.

"We had been working with the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum," Wilson explained. "They had been here to do research using the records on Ross Marvin we have in our collection.

"They told us about the exhibit, and asked if we'd be interested in hosting it," Wilson added.

To complement the exhibit, the Chemung Valley History Museum is displaying a wide array of Marvin-related artifacts from its own collection, ranging from his polar bear-skin parka, fur boots and wooden snowshoes to his tobacco case, razor and spoon.

As for Marvin's untimely demise ...

Peary's strategy for reaching the North Pole - located on permanently frozen, constantly shifting sea ice in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, roughly 500 miles north of base camp at Ellesmere Island in the far reaches of Canada - was to send sled teams ahead of him to drop supplies.

Marvin led one of the sled teams, accompanied by two Inuits hired for the expedition, according to "A Tragedy in the Arctic," a 1954 account by Elmira author James Vinton Stowell, himself a polar explorer.

They dropped supplies, and were headed back.

Here's what happened, according to a story one of the Inuits told many years later, printed in "A Tragedy in the Arctic."

At some point, Marvin became angry and began acting irrationally, perhaps because one of the Inuits was having trouble keeping up. Marvin tossed the Inuit's food and gear off the sled and tried to abandon him, meaning he would almost certainly perish.

The other Inuit shot Marvin, ostensibly to save his friend's life.

The two Inuits, upon their return to Ellesmere Island, said that Marvin had fallen into the ocean while trying to cross a gap in the ice, and drowned. For 17 years, it was believed that Marvin drowned, until one of the Inuits - wracked by a guilty conscience - confessed to killing him.

Stowell wrote in "A Tragedy in the Arctic," however, that he knew Marvin's character and couldn't believe that he would go crazy and turn on his Inuit companions. Many others in the expedition felt the same, Stowell wrote.

Jim Gray of Elmira is a local historian who guides summer walking tours in downtown Corning, during which he tells stories about this area's famous historical figures.

Gray suspects that Marvin was angry with Peary for not including him on the final push to the North Pole.

He also speculates that maybe Peary knew he wasn't going to reach the North Pole, and may have even had Marvin - an expert navigator who would have known if Peary didn't reach the Pole - killed so the world would think that Peary had accomplished the feat.

"Of course, it's purely speculation," Gray said.

Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole on the expedition (although later studies cast doubt on that claim) and made national headlines upon his return to the U.S.

Marvin was the only man lost on the expedition. Years later, he posthumously received a Presidential Citation for "outstanding services to the government of the United States in the field of science and for the cause of polar exploration."