Margaret Elizabeth Thomas, better known as Mardy, was born in Seattle on 18 August 1902. Her mother remarried, following a divorce when Margaret was about 5 years old. When she was 9, her stepfather took up a job as an assistant U.S. attorney for the territory of Alaska, thus resulting in Margaret and her mother moving from Seattle to Fairbanks, Alaska. There in Fairbanks, her mother gave birth to 3 more children, Louis, Louise, and Carol.
In 1919, Margaret moved out of Fairbanks to Portland, Oregon, where she attended a liberal arts college to become a teacher. However, she returned after 2 years, and enrolled in the University of Alaska. In the same year, she met Olaus Murie, who was a field biologist at that time, and the two soon developed a romantic relationship. Graduating from the University of Alaska in 1924, she became the first woman to graduate from that institution. Olaus and Margaret also got married in 1924, and their honeymoon trip was a research expedition in Alaska’s Brooks Range within the Arctic Wildlife Range, for Olaus to continue his research on caribou migration. The couple had 3 children altogether – Martin, Joanne, and Donald.
Olaus and Mardy Murie in the fur parkas they used on their Alaska dogsled honeymoon, 1924. Source: The Murie Center.
Margaret Murie died at her log cabin home in Moose, Wyoming, on 19 October 2003, at the age of 101 years old.