Henrietta Hudson Cruger Nesmith (born 1849 - died 1917)
and the Henrietta Nesmith Glacier

Henrietta Hudson Cruger Nesmith was the daughter of Thomas Llewellyn Nesmith and the wife of Adolphus Washington Greely.

Henrietta was born in 1849 in Thun, Switzerland while her parents were vacationing there from their home in New York.  Her parents, Thomas L. Nesmith and Maria Antoinette Gale also had four sons;  The twins, Otto H. and Loring, Antony R., and John Wadsworth Nesmith.

In June of 1878, Henrietta married an aspiring young Army Lieutenant named Adolphus Washington Greely in San Diego, California.  Adolphus, 'Dolph' as she called him, was soon to make history by leading an arctic expedition that would achieve the the record for "Farthest North", besting a centuries' old record-breaking spree by the British.

During Henrietta's husband's arctic expedition, he named a Glacier after his beautiful wife. The Henrietta Nesmith Glacier, on Ellesmere Island in the Nunavut Territory of Canada, overlooks a broad basin called the Hazen Plateau to the south and ends only a short distance from Lake Hazen, the core of the park reserve. Because of the slope of the land in the Lake Hazen basin and its orientation toward the sun, this thermal oasis provides an ecosystem during the warmest years with a frost-free season rivaling Schefferville, Quebec - 3,200 kilometers southeast.  (Hazen Plateau and Lake Hazen were also named by Greely.  Both in honor of the Army's Chief Signal Officer. William Babcock Hazen, who spearheaded the effort to send a U.S. Army Expedition to the arctic.)

Lake Hazen is the largest freshwater lake in the High Arctic (500-square-kilometer-plus surface area) and one of the largest in the circumpolar world.

To the southeast is Lady Franklin Bay where Fort Conger is located, a historic site of worldwide significance. The remaining buildings have the same protective status as the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. Fort Conger played a pivotal role in the early voyages of explorers and scientists to the area, and was a base for those seeking the North Pole including A. W. Greely.
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