Martha, a passenger pigeon named after George Washington's wife, was the last of her kind. Immediately following her death in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens, she was packed in an enormous 300 pound block of ice and shipped to the Smithsonian. The passenger pigeon or wild pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is an extinct North American bird. The species lived in enormous migratory flocks until the early 20th century, when hunting and habitat destruction led to its demise. Martha died on September 1, 1914.