Fonds dcm-42 - Martha Louise Black fonds

Martha Louise Munger was born in Chicago in February 1866. She married Will Purdy in 1887 whom she had met during her schooling by the Sisters of the Holy Cross at St. Mary's of Notre Dame, Indiana. They had three sons, Warren, Donald, and Lyman, who was born in Dawson City, Yukon in January 1899. In the summer of 1898 Martha and her brother climbed the Chilkoot Pass on their way to Dawson City. Martha returned to Chicago in 1899 with her father, but came back to the Yukon in 1900. She divorced Will in 1901 and married George Black in 1904. George was a lawyer in Dawson City who had been one of the earlier miners in the area. He was appointed Commissioner of the Yukon Territory in 1912 making Martha "First Lady". In 1916 Martha traveled with George and Lyman and the Yukon Infantry Company to London, England, where she was administrator of the Yukon Comfort Fund, which provided packages for the Yukon men in battle or convalescing in hospital, funded by the Yukon Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE) in Dawson City. In 1917 Martha was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society (FRGS). The Blacks returned to Canada after the war and in 1921 George won a seat in the House of Commons as MP for the Yukon. Ill health forced him to retire in 1935, and Martha ran in his place and won the seat, becoming at age seventy, the second Canadian woman to be elected as an MP. Martha served as MP until 1940. In 1948 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE). As an author, she contributed to magazines such as The Canadian Home Journal, Delineator and the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire (IODE) magazine Echoes. Martha co-authored her biography "My Seventy Years" with Elizabeth Caily Price in 1938 and wrote "Yukon Wild Flowers" in 1940. She published several pamphlets on Yukon life, flowers and fictional stories. She was founding member of the Yukon Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire and a member of the Women's Auxillary of the Anglican Church of Canada. Martha was a keep horticulturalist, and naturalist. She frequently gave illustrated lectures on the Yukon, especially during her time overseas. Martha Louis Black died in Whitehorse on October 31, 1957 at the age of 91.