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After Ralston abandoned his alcoholic wife to join the army, she went to Chicago and became a familiar face to the police and press, claiming to be the victim of swindlers and thieves.
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This early image shows Court Street in Boston, where Matilda Fisher and her husband ran a successful bakery. When Abelard Fisher died, Matilda quickly married David C. Ralston, but he did not succeed in business and left her to join the U.S. Signal Corps.
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Matilda, unable to pay a steep fine for drunkenness, was sent to the notorious Bridewell Prison. By the time she was released, her and David’s child had been adopted out of the Home for the Friendless.
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When Matilda Ralston was unable to support herself and the daughter she’d had with David C. Ralston, the child was sent to the Home for the Friendless on Wabash Street in Chicago, while Matilda was sent to prison.
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While Ralston was in the Signal Corps, he became friends with Lieutenant Adolphus Greely, who was to be the commander of the ill-fated polar expedition.
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David C. Ralston spent part of his youth in Knox County and is buried here today. He was a key figure in the U.S. Signal Corps’ early studies of weather, which is how he came to be selected for the polar expedition that was to take his life.
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