Although not well-known by the general public outside of Marin County, Louise Arner Boyd’s scientific expeditions to Greenland and the Arctic are the foundation of her notoriety and fame. However, Louise’s interests in geography and its relationship to, and influence on, society and culture took many forms. After her first two expeditions to Greenland, Louise had become an important and respected member of the American Geographical Society (AGS) which had helped organize and support her voyages. In August of 1934 she was selected to be the Society’s delegate to the International Geographic Congress in Warsaw, Poland while also representing The Society of Women Geographers, The California Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Council. Although she was to deliver a lecture on her 1931 and 1933 expeditions to NE Greenland and report on the Congress, Louise had also made additional plans of her own.
She understood that the Polish nation was soon to experience substantial change after having as she wrote, “vanished from the maps of Europe for a century and a quarter” until being recreated after World War I. Her plans were to travel to all corners of the nation making, “a photographic record of the rural life of the country and to obtain, before it was too late, views of things that are characteristic today but may be gone tomorrow.” Louise little realized how prophetic those words would be as Poland would soon be overrun by German armies and fall under the oppressive yoke of Stalinist Russia within a few years. In typical Louise Boyd fashion, she shipped her large Packard limousine to Poland and brought along her chauffeur of 22 years, Percy Cameron, to facilitate her 3-month journey when not traveling by rail, boat, or on foot. She took over 2000 photographs and kept a detailed journal of all that she had seen, often accompanied by Isiah Bowman of the AGS or
professors of Geography from Polish universities. Her intentions were to record, “rural landscapes and village architecture, with farms and farm methods, with transportation on highways and waterways, with market scenes, peasant type and peasant costumes” of the many ethnic groups in Poland. The following diary entries record both everyday experiences along with frightening shadows of future events: Sept. 11 - “Czestochowa…market in square, 13 covered wagons with cross being carried in front…barefoot women walking, men with high boots, all wagons half covered, half open. The covered part is decorated with artificial flowers and garlands.” Oct. 5 - “We passed a house with a cloth on it, bread, water and salt and all waiting: this is a local custom to travelers in their domain and of welcome.” Date unknown – “Hitler voting posters on Kiosk at Konigsberg, also gates and railing with banner saying, “Hitler creates work and bread, we answer with, Yes!”
in 1937, over 500 of Louise’s photographs along with her detailed observations appeared in her book, Polish Countrysides; preserving forever a people and a way of life that vanished in the flames and destruction of World War II. Today, Louise Arner Boyd is more well-known in Poland than in her native country due to her determined curiosity about the relationship between a people and their land. Ms. Boyd is, as geography historian J.K. Wright penned, “the world’s most enterprising woman explorer.”
(Originally appeared as History Watch article in the Marin Independent Journal)