Robert Edwin Peary graduated Bowdoin College after earning his engineering degree in 1877. Courtesy of the George J. Mitchell Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College On April 6, 1909, America’s foremost explorer reached the pinnacle of his career when he “nailed the Stars and Stripes to the North Pole” on his seventh arctic expedition.
Then, Maine’s own Robert E. Peary returned home to a hero’s welcome and was promoted by Congress to the rank of Rear Admiral. Peary then announced his retirement and withdrew to his beloved Eagle Island in Casco Bay.
Robert Edwin Peary was born in Cresson, Pennsylvania, on May 6, 1856. When his father died three years later, Robert’s mother moved her family to Portland, where young Robert was raised and schooled. After graduating from Portland High School in 1873, Peary moved to Brunswick where he earned an engineering degree from Bowdoin College.
In 1881, after briefly working as a surveyor in Fryeburg, Peary joined the United States Navy and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the engineer corps. Peary’s career as an arctic explorer began five years later when he set sail for Greenland to study the ice caps. Upon Peary’s retirement in 1909, this American hero and celebrated international figure returned to his Casco Bay “promised land” at South Harpswell and “the only permanent address he ever had.
” Peary had purchased Eagle Island from George W. Curtis of Harpswell, in September of 1881. The rocky 17-acre isla.