Matthew Alexander Henson was born in Maryland in 1866. As a boy he worked as a sharecropper. A sharecropper is a farmer, but they don't own the land they farm. They grow the food, then they share their crop with the landowner.
Every year Matthew and his family would grow a crop. Then they would have to share half of what they grew with the man who owned the land.
Matthew's parents died when he was young. Matthew didn't want to be a farmer, so he ran away to sail the seas. He went to Baltimore, Maryland.
Find out how this choice led Matthew to become friends with Robert Perry, and how the two of them went on an expedition to discover the North Pole.
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