Martha Louise Black

Martha Black was three months pregnant when she climbed the Chilkoot Pass during the Klondike Gold Rush. Estranged from her husband and far from her family, she gave birth in her cabin, alone, after deciding a hospital stay was too expensive. In her memoir, My Ninety Years, Martha described the experience.

“I had given myself so completely to the search for … gold that I had deliberately put out of my mind a terrible suspicion—I was to become a mother. I could not believe it … I realized I could not leave the country. I could never walk back over that Pass. Neither could I face the ravaging ordeal before me alone, helpless, most of my money gone.

“Word spread about the camp that a baby was expected. I had not found a million dollars in gold dust—but I made a rich discovery. Always, the world over, pioneers have proven themselves to be salt of the earth … They know how to share their few possessions. The gifts those men brought me! … Showered with kindnesses like these, I learned to love my fellow men of the North, who, although I did not know it at the time, were to be my people for the rest of my life.

“The baby came ahead of time. I was alone, and it was over quickly, an incredibly easy birth—Mother Nature’s gift to women who live a natural out-of-door life such as I had done. And weren’t the menfolk surprised, when they returned from work at night, to find, wrapped in red flannel, a fine, healthy boy!”