page_title: David H. Jarvis
section_title: Recognition
hierarchical_section_title: David H. Jarvis / Recognition
caption_attribution_description: English: The Congressional Gold Medal awarded to David H. Jarvis for his role in the Overland Relief Expedition in Alaska in 1897. From the collection of U.S. Coast Guard Museum. Original medal.
context_page_description: David Henry Jarvis was a captain in the United States Revenue Cutter Service. During the harsh winter of 1897–1898, Jarvis, then serving as a first lieutenant aboard the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, led the Overland Relief Expedition, bringing a three-man rescue team with a herd of about 400 reindeer across 1,500 miles of tundra and pack-ice to Point Barrow, Alaska, to bring needed food to 265 whalers whose ships had become stranded in the ice off the northern Alaska coast.
context_section_description: President William McKinley recognized the achievements of the rescue in a letter dated January 17, 1899 to the United States Congress, in which he requested of Congress "That gold medals of honor of appropriate design, to be approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, be awarded to Lieutenants Jarvis and Bertholf and Dr. Call, commemorative of their heroic struggles in aid of suffering fellow-men."
  In recognition of their work, Jarvis, Bertholf and Call were awarded Congressional Gold Medals for "heroic service rendered" in legislation passed on 28 June 1902. The enabling statute reads as follows:
  Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby directed to bestow a gold medal of honor, of such design as he may approve, upon First Lieutenant David H. Jarvis, Second Lieutenant Ellsworth P. Bertholf, and Doctor Samuel J. Call, surgeon, all of the Revenue-Cutter Service and members of the overland expedition of eighteen hundred and ninety-seven and eighteen hundred and ninety-eight for the relief of the whaling fleet in the arctic regions, in recognition of the heroic service rendered by them in connection with said expedition.
caption: Jarvis' Congressional Gold Medal [26]
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