Greely
ADOLPHUS WASHING- TON, an American Arctic explorer; born GREENBACK PARTY Magdalen College School and at Jesus College, Oxford. He took orders, and was in succession curate and vicar of two East End London parishes. In 1868 he became librarian at Lambeth, and next year he was struck down with consumption, a disease which made any kind of active work thereafter impossible. He published his "Short History of the English People" in 1874. It was the first complete history of England from the social side. The work attained an unparalleled success, as many as 150,000 copies having been sold within 15 years.
He wrote also a larger and independent edition of the work as "A History of the in Newburyport, Mass., March 27, 1844. English People" (4 vols. 1877-1880); He served as a volunteer through the war of 1861-1865, and shortly after its conclusion entered the regular army as lieutenant, and in 1868 was placed on the signal service. In 1881 he was selected to conduct the American expedition to the head of Smith Sound, for the purpose of carrying on observations in pursuance of the international scheme arranged at Hamburg in 1879. He and the survivors of his party were rescued in June, 1883, when at the point of perishing from starvation, after spending three winters in the Arctic regions.
Lieutenant Lockwood of this expedition traveled to within 396 miles of the geographical pole, the farthest point N. hitherto reached. In 1887 Greely was appointed chief of the signal service, with the rank of a Brigadier-General.
In 1906 he was promoted Major-General for completing the Ute campaign. He accomplished a great relief work when 400,000 people in San Francisco were made homeless by the earthquakes. He retired in 1908. He published "Three Years of Arctic Service" (1886). He died in 1920.