Explorer. He was part of explorer Robert E. Peary's Expedition team along with George Borup, Donald B. MacMillan, Matthew A. Henson, John W. Goodsell, and Robert Bartlett. The team were part of the crew of the ship, the USS Roosevelt on the 1908 to 1909, North Pole Expedition. Borup served as Peary's Assistant. He died on April 28, 1912, at the age of 27, and he was buried in Dale Cemetery, in Ossing, New York. The bell from the USS Roosevelt was placed on his grave but was later removed in fear of vandalism. On hearing about his friend's sudden passing, Peary wrote, 'In the spring of 1908, a young man in a gray suit, accompanied by his father, came to see me at my New York Hotel. I had seen the father several times before this, when he had called to urge upon me the qualifications of his son to become a member of the North Polar expedition of the Peary Arctic Club, which was then being organized to sail during the approaching summer. The father told me how the boy was his only son, whom he held dearer than all else on earth, that membership in an Arctic expedition would be about the last thing he himself would wish for him, but that it was the boy's heart's desire, and if it was possible, he intended for him to realize it. He had already told me that the boy was a sound, clean healthy fellow, one of Yale's athletes; that he had lost his mother in early years; that he was now at work in the shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad at Altoona, intending to learn the profession of railroading from the bottom up; and that the boy was in every sense a man, and a gentleman. Long experience with applications of earnest young men to become members of my Arctic expeditions had led me to be not over-enthusiastic in regard to prospective candidates, and more than this, the personnel of the expedition which I was then organizing was essentially complete. But the boy before me was of a different type from most applicants. His face was honest, manly and true, if I read aright, and he impressed me as a boy with a man's earnestness and steadfastness of purpose. Before the interview ended, I had told George Borup that he could consider himself as a member of my party. There was no lack of preparatory expedition work for him as well as for the other men already selected and he was soon in the midst of it. I found him an enthusiast ad worker, and what was absolutely essential, a reliable man. When I sent him for information, I knew that I should get all there was to be had. When I assigned him to look after certain details of the work of assembling supplies and equipment, I felt that the work would be done as I had intended. Then came the final days at Sydney, Cape Breton, when the Roosevelt steamed out for her northern quest, and Borup's father and the members of my own family accompanied us as far as the entrance of the Harbor, returning from there on the tug which piloted us out.I recall clearly the picture of Borup and his father seated shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand on the quarter-deck of the Roosevelt as we steamed down the Harbor, and their farewell as the tug left us. Such was the beginning of my acquaintance and association with George Borup, "The Arctic Tenderfoot." I shall not attempt here to give an analysis nor an epitome of Borup's character, or his Arctic life, or attempt to write his memorial. With his other friends, much of that has already been done. But as I look back over the four years that have elapsed since that first meeting, there rise before me numbers of characteristic vignettes of Arctic experiences and vicissitudes, in which Borup played a part or was the central figure. During the upward voyage his keen delight in every new feature carried me back across the years, and I lived over again those days when I saw for the first time the wonder of the midnight sun and the savage splendor of the heart of the Arctic. When we reached the Eskimos it is hard to say which was most delighted, he or they, for his boyish good-fellowship and his athletic strength won their simple hearts completely, and he became the fast friend of all my Eskimo allies, men, women and children. During this time he experienced perhaps the tensest physical excitement and the deepest thrill of his life, and his description of his first walrus hunt will long remain a boy's classic. When we turned our back upon the little Arctic oasis which is the home of my Eskimos, and hurling ourselves at the century long "No" of the Pole, began our long battle with the mighty ice floes of the American gateway to the Pole, Borup was incessantly alert. The grim struggle with the ice moved every fibre in him, and I saw that under the boy exterior there lay true tempered steel, upon which I could rely to the last iota in an emergency. During the winter he was always the same, taking the ship's routine with the greatest zest, and returning from hunting trips in the darkness and intense cold to tell of his hardships as if they were mere jokes. If he ever had his blue moments, manlike he kept them to himself. In February came the beginning of the strenuous spring sledge work, the work which was the reason for the entire expedition. From here on I can give only vignettes. A few days after the middle of February, as I marched at the head of my division along the great, broad, white highway of the Arctic ice-foot stretching westward from the cliffs of Cape Hecla to Cape Columbia, in the few hours of gray twilight which formed the day at that season, and in a temperature of fifty-six degrees below zero, I saw a small cloud, apparently of smoke, approaching rapidly along the trail. As it neared me I could make out the smoking heads and shoulders of dogs under it, and a little later Borup and MacMillan, returning with light sledges and doubled teams of dogs from Columbia to Point Moss, pulled up beside me. They had been traveling at flying speed and were in a glow of excitement, but two marble white spots on Borup's cheeks told their story to me, and pulling off my mitten, I applied my warm hand to them for a few moments until the marble whiteness disappeared and the spots glowed and became flexible again. It was a most simple and natural act and yet it appears to have made a great impression upon Borup. I recall vividly sending Borup to Cape Columbia after we were out on the sea ice, for an additional supply of alcohol fuel to take the place of that lost by the smashing of the cans in working through rough ice. I can feel again the anxiety of those long days of waiting at the "Big Lead," hourly expecting Borup and Marvin to come in, and how later, three marches beyond, in sunlight bitter as frozen steel and with the temperature at the minus 60 mark, he and Marvin came swinging in in another cloud of frosty smoke, to have us almost literally fall upon their necks with joy. I recall how Borup, forcing his team across a lead of open water on a treacherous bridge of floating ice cakes, single-handed dragged his frightened team out of the icy waters, and saved them and the precious sledge load from being lost. I recall how with every bone and muscle in him sore and aching from the grueling work, he tooled his heavily loaded sledge across the hell of the broken ice floes, and kept his place with the experienced Eskimos in a way that elicited admiration from us all, and would have brought tears of joy to his father's eyes could he have seen the boy. I can see him turning back at his farthest, 84° 29', loyal and earnest in spite of his regret at not going farther, though he had already made a longer sledge journey over the Polar Ocean than Nansen's from his ship to his farthest at 86° 14'.Later, in independent command, he established a depot for me at Cape Fanshawe Martin, on the northwest coast of Grant Land, and after his return to the ship, he, in company with MacMillan, made the wonderful trip to Cape Morris K. Jesup, thence northward out on the sea ice, where he secured the most northerly tidal observations ever made, and on the return covered a distance of over 275 miles in eight consecutive marches. After this he erected at Cape Columbia (the extreme northern limit of North America, 413 miles from the Pole) the permanent Expedition monument and record. This has now become, in a way, Borup's monument. The day the Roosevelt broke out of her winter quarters at Cape Sheridan and started south for home, found Borup more homesick, perhaps, than he had ever been in his life. The "call of the wild," the "lure of the Arctic," the imperious obsession this great, dark, stern, savage Northland, causes in certain temperaments, had captured him completely, and would have held him firmly, even had his life been longer than it was. Of his death, which came as a stunning shock to us all, I can say nothing. It was one of those things which make us doubt and question the wisdom of any alleged overseeing or directing power. In his book "The Arctic Tenderfoot," Borup has left a memorial which will appeal for generations to young men of adventurous turn of mind. His life has shown that with clear brain, clean body, a brave heart, and inability to recognize defeat, a young man may select his own prize in life and ultimately win it. Whatever Borup did, he did with all his strength and ability. In no assignment did he fail. His work was an invaluable factor in the winning of the North Pole for the United States. And no one of the splendid fellows who helped make success possible, stood closer to my heart than George. In the midst of their sorrow, his friends and relatives have cause for congratulation and pride, in the fact that ending a clean and earnest and stainless life at twenty-seven, Borup had already won a reputation and a place which many men win only at twice his age, and after long years of hardest work and sacrifice.'