George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives

Miriam MacMillan Collection,
1898-1987

14 linear feet.

Catalog Number: M119

Agency History / Biographical Note:
Miriam Look was born in Clinton, Massachusetts, in 1905, a daughter of Moses Jerome Look, a civil engineer, and his second wife, Amy G. Wood Look. In 1935, Miriam married Donald B. MacMillan (Bowdoin 1898), a friend of her father. The marriage was a childless one, but the MacMillans helped raise Helga Knudsen, the daughter of their friend Aage Knudsen.

Mrs. MacMillan accompanied her husband on nine of his Arctic expeditions aboard the schooner Bowdoin, where she was responsible for the food supplies, the supplies for the MacMillan-Moravian School for Eskimo children (founded by her husband in Nain, in northern Labrador in 1929), and other expedition preparations. In addition, she took most of the photographs and videofilms of life in Labrador, Baffin Island, Ellesmere Island, and Greenland, and wrote extensive notes on every trip, which she used later to write her published accounts of her experiences: Green Seas and White Ice (1948), Etuk, the Eskimo Hunter (1950), and Kudla and His Polar Bear (1953). She also wrote articles for magazines, including National Geographic and Yachting.

Mrs. MacMillan was  the Curator of the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College (1970-1973), Associate Curator (1973-1987); and received honorary degrees from Nasson College (1960), and from Bowdoin (1980).

After the death of her husband in 1970, Mrs. MacMillan moved to Owl's Head, Maine, to live with her friends, Dr. and Mrs. Edward Morse. She died in 1987.

Scope and Content:
The collection consists of materials concerning Miriam and Donald MacMillan from her estate, including their personal correspondence (1913-1944). Items pertaining to Donald MacMillan consist of correspondence from 1898 to 1969; journals and diaries pertaining to the North Pole (1908-1909) and Crocker Land expeditions (1913-1917); manuscript drafts; and lecture schedules. Those materials concerning Miriam MacMillan include correspondence from 1948 to 1985; manuscript drafts; notebooks and diaries kept on her arctic voyages; scrapbooks chronicling her husband's achievements, and a collection of menus, awards, and lecture announcements.

Cite as: Miriam MacMillan Collection, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library.
Access Restrictions: None.