Furlong, Charles Wellington

Charles Wellington Furlong (December 13, 1874 - October 9, 1967) was an American author, artist, explorer, photographer, and former professor. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Furlong graduated from the Massachusetts Normal Art School in 1895. From 1896 until 1904, Furlong served as the head of the Cornell University Art Department. He left Cornell for his first extended expedition in 1904, during which time he discovered the wreckage of the frigate U.S.S. Philadelphia which sunk during the Barbary Wars. Harper's Monthly Magazine sponsored his next expedition, to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in southern South America, where he lived with the Selk'nam and Yahgan peoples. During this expedition he also created maps and navigational charts of the region. 'Gateway to the Sahara', his first book, was published in 1909, and he returned to South America in 1910. During World War I, he served as a war correspondent in North Africa, created a series of tactical field manuals concerning geographic intelligence. After the war, Furlong served an intelligence aid on President Woodrow Wilson's staff during the Paris Peace Conference. Furlong remained in the military after World War I and attended the Army War College from 1923-1924. He returned to South America in 1925 as a member of the Tacna-Arica Plebiscitary Commission organized to settle boundary disputes between Peru and Chile. He remained in South America until 1930, when he went to East and Central Africa. He served in the Military Intelligence Division of the War department during World War II as a Middle East consultant. He married Eva Earl in 1899, with whom he had two children. Later in life he remarried to Edith Virginia Calista Spinney.