Juliette Gordon Low (October 31, 1860 – January 17, 1927)
was the founder of Girl Scouts of the USA. Inspired by the work of Lord
Baden-Powell, founder of Boy Scouts, Juliette Low joined the Girl Guide
movement in England, forming a group of Girl Guides in Great Britain in 1911.
In 1912 she returned to the United States, and established
the first U.S. Girl Guide troop in Savannah, Georgia, that year. In 1915, the
United States' Girl Guides became known as the Girl Scouts, and Juliette Gordon
Low was the first ever leader. She stayed active until the time of her death.
Her birthday, October 31, is commemorated by the Girl Scouts
as "Founder's Day".
Early life
Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon was born on October 31, 1860
in Savannah, Georgia. She was named after her grandmother, Juliette Augusta
Magill Kinzie, and nicknamed Daisy, a common nickname at the time, by her uncle. She was the second of six children born to
William "Willie" Washington Gordon II, a cotton broker with the firm
Tison & Gordon, which was later renamed to W. W. Gordon & Company, and
Eleanor "Nellie" Lytle Kinzie, a writer whose family played a role in
the founding of Chicago.
Six months after her birth, her father joined the
Confederate States Army to fight in the American Civil War. In 1864, due to the close proximity of Union
troops to Savannah, she moved with her mother and two sisters to Thunderbolt,
Georgia. After the Union victory in
Savannah the same year, her family received many visits from General William T.
Sherman, who was a friend of her uncle. Sherman arranged an escort to take her
family to Chicago in March 1865. Upon
arriving in Chicago, Gordon Low became sick with brain fever, although she
recovered without severe complications. A few months later, after President Andrew
Johnson issued the amnesty proclamation, her father reunited with the family to
move back to Savannah.
As a child, Gordon Low was accident-prone, and she suffered
numerous injuries and illnesses. In 1866, her mother mentioned in a letter that
"Daisy fell out of bed – on her head, as usual...." That same year, she broke two of her fingers
so severely that her parents considered having them amputated. She also suffered frequent earaches and
recurring bouts of malaria.
Hobbies
Gordon Low spent more time pursuing art and poetry than she
did working on school work. She wrote and performed plays, and she started a
newspaper with her cousins called The
Malbone Bouquet, which featured some of her early poetry. She formed a club with her cousins, with the
goal of helping others. The Helpful Hands
Club learned to sew, and tried to make clothes for the children of Italian
immigrants. She was dubbed "Crazy Daisy" by her
family and friends, due to her eccentricities.
Her cousin Caroline described her by saying, "While you never knew
what she would do next, she always did what she made up her mind to do."
Education
Gordon Low's parents raised her with traditional Southern
values, and they emphasized the importance of duty, obedience, loyalty, and
respect. By the age of 12 she had
started boarding school, attending several boarding schools during her teen years,
including Miss Emmett's School in New
Jersey, the Virginia Female Institute,
the Edgehill School, and Mesdemoiselles Charbonniers, a French
finishing school in New York. While
studying at Edgehill, she joined the secret group Theta Tau (based on the
sorority of the same name), where members held meetings and earned badges. In 1880, after she had finished boarding
school, Gordon Low took painting lessons in New York. Among her teachers was
Robert Walter Weir, a prominent landscape painter.
Personal life
Marriage
After the death of her sister Alice in 1880, Gordon Low
relocated to Savannah to take over the household duties, while her mother grieved.
During this period she met William
Mackay Low, the son of a family friend, and they began courting in secret. William Low left Savannah to study at the University of Oxford, and they didn't
meet again until almost three years later in 1884. Gordon Low traveled to
Europe while they were separated, and she learned several new skills including
shorthand, bareback riding, and hunting partridge. In late 1885, William Low proposed marriage.
The Lows' Savannah nuptials were held on her parents'
wedding anniversary, December 21, 1886. The couple spent their honeymoon at St.
Catherine’s Island near Savannah, GA. Then they leased property in London and
Scotland, spending the social season in London and the hunting season in
Scotland. They spent much of their first
two years of marriage apart, due to her medical problems and his long hunting
trips and gambling. The long separations, combined with Gordon Low's inability
to have children, caused a strain on their relationship.
Gordon Low spent her time painting, and she learned
woodworking and metalworking. She also designed and built iron gates for her
home in Warwickshire. She hosted many
parties and events at the house and received visits from HRH Albert Edward, the
Prince of Wales, who was a friend of her husband, and Rudyard Kipling, whose
wife was related to her mother. She
devoted time to charity work, although her husband was against it. She made
regular visits to a woman with leprosy, fed and cared for the poor in a nearby
village, and joined the local nursing association.
Separation
By 1895 Gordon Low was growing increasingly unhappy in her
relationship. She rarely spent time alone with her husband, who had grown
distant and began to have affairs and drink heavily.
In 1901, Anna Bridges Bateman, the widow of Sir Hugh Alleyne
Saceverell-Bateman, stayed as a guest at the Lows' home in Scotland. Gordon Low
discovered her husband's affair with Bateman, whereupon she left to stay with
friends and family. She worried that he planned to divorce her, so she sent him
a telegram asking for a year before making any final decisions. Although he initially didn't want a divorce or
a separation, he wrote Gordon Low a year later to ask that they live apart
permanently, which she agreed to.
Gordon Low's husband began withholding money from her unless
she agreed to a divorce. After talking to a divorce lawyer, she learned that
for a divorce to be granted, she would need to prove adultery and desertion, or
adultery and cruelty. In the case of
adultery, Bateman would need to be named, which would have social repercussions
for all involved parties. This caused the divorce proceedings to move slowly.
In late 1902, Gordon Low received money from her husband for
the first time in two years. She used it and her savings to rent a house in
London. Her husband committed to a
support agreement in 1903, which was to award her 2,500 pounds a year, the Low
home in Savannah, and stocks and securities. Later that year, she purchased her
own home in London, along with the house next door, which she rented out for
income.
After her husband suffered a possible stroke, Gordon Low
temporarily called off the divorce. She felt it was wrong to divorce him while
he could not defend himself; the proceedings resumed in January 1905 when his
condition improved. William Low died
from a seizure in June 1905, before the divorce was finalized. After the funeral, it was revealed that he had
left almost everything to Bateman, and that he had revoked his 1903 support
deal with Gordon Low. William Low's sisters contested the will, with the
support of Gordon Low. She ultimately received a sum of money, the Low house in
Savannah with its surrounding land, and stocks and securities.
Girl Guides
After the death of her husband, Gordon Low traveled, took
sculpting classes, and did charity work while looking for a project that she
could focus her time and skills on. In
May 1911, she met Sir Robert Baden-Powell at a party, and was inspired by the
Boy Scouts, a program that he had organized. At the time, the Boy Scouts had 40,000 members
throughout Europe and the United States. It stressed the importance of military
preparedness and having fun, two values that she appreciated. Gordon Low and Baden-Powell became close
friends, and spent a large amount of time together over the next year.
In August 1911, Gordon Low became involved with the Girl
Guides, an offshoot of the Boy Scouts for girls that was headed by Agnes
Baden-Powell, Sir Robert Baden Powell's sister. She formed a Girl Guides patrol
near her home in Scotland, where she encouraged the girls to become
self-sufficient by learning how to spin wool and care for livestock. She also taught them knot tying, how to read a
map, knitting, cooking, and first aid, and her friends in the military taught
the girls drilling, signaling, and camping.
She organized two new Girl Guides patrols in London when she visited for
the winter of 1911.
Start of the American
Girl Guides
In 1912, Gordon Low and Baden-Powell took a trip to the
United States to spread the scouting movement. She hoped to spread the movement
to her hometown, Savannah, as a way to help girls learn practical skills and build
character. When she arrived, she made a
phone call to her cousin Nina Pape, a local educator, saying, "I've got
something for the girls of Savannah , and all America, and all the world, and
we're going to start it tonight."[40] Shortly after March 1912, Gordon Low
formed the first two American Girl Guides patrols, registering 18 girls.
The early growth of the Girl Guides movement in the United
States was due to Gordon Low's extensive social connections, and she
contributed early on by recruiting new members and leaders. She advertised in newspapers and magazines,
and recruited her family and friends. Baden-Powell also put her in contact with
people interested in Girl Guiding, including Louise Carnegie. After forming the first American troops, she
described herself as "deep in Girl Guides," and by the next year, she
had released the first American Girl
Guides manual, titled How Girls Can
Help Their Country, which was based on Scouting
for Boys by Robert Baden-Powell and How
Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire by Agnes Baden-Powell.
Gordon Low established the first headquarters in a remodeled
carriage house, behind the home in Savannah that she inherited from her
husband. The headquarters contained
meeting rooms for the local Girl Guide patrols, and the lot outside was used
for marching and signaling drills and sports, including basketball. Edmund Strudwick Nash, who rented the main
house from Gordon Low, offered to pay rent on the carriage house as his
contribution to the organization, becoming one of the American Girl Guide's
first benefactors. Nash's son, Ogden Nash, immortalized "Mrs Low's House" in one of his poems.
Gordon Low traveled along the east coast, spreading Girl
Guiding to other communities, before returning to Savannah to speak with
President Taft, who was making a visit to the Gordon home. She hoped to
convince Taft that his daughter Helen should become a patron for the Girl Guides,
but she was unsuccessful.
American Girl Scouts
Many competing organizations for girls that claimed to be
the closest model to Boy Scouting were forming, and Gordon Low believed that
gaining support from prominent people would help legitimize her organization as
the official sister organization to the Boy
Scouts. Her biggest competition was the Camp
Fire Girls, which was formed in part by James E. West, the Chief executive
of the Boy Scouts of America, and a
strong proponent of strict gender roles. In March 1912, Gordon Low wrote to the Camp Fire Girls, inviting them to merge
into the Girl Guides, but they
declined even after Baden-Powell suggested that they reconsider. West considered many of the activities that
the Girl Guides participated in to be
gender-inappropriate, and he was concerned that the public would question the
masculinity of the Boy Scouts if they
participated in similar activities.
Renaming the
organization
Although the Girl
Guides were growing, the Camp Fire
Girls were growing at a faster rate, so Gordon Low traveled to England to
seek counsel from the British Girl Guides.
By the time she returned to America in 1913, she had a plan to spread Girl
Guiding nationwide by changing the name from Girl Guides to Girl Scouts,
establishing a national headquarters, and recruiting patrons outside of
Georgia. Upon returning to Savannah, she
learned that the Savannah Girl Guides
had already renamed themselves to Girl
Scouts because "Scout" reminded them of America's pioneer
ancestry. West objected to the name
change, saying that it trivialized the name of scout and would cause older Boy Scouts to quit. Baden-Powell gave
Gordon Low his support on her use of the term scout, although he preferred the
term Guide for the British Girl Guides.
In 1913, Gordon Low set up the Girl Scouts national headquarters in Washington, D.C., and hired
her friend Edith Johnston to be the National Executive Secretary. The national headquarters served as the
"central information dispenser" for Girl Scouting, as well as the
place where girls could purchase their badges and the newly published handbook,
How Girls Can Help Their Country.
Gordon Low recruited leaders and members in various states
and spoke with every group that she could.
Around the same time, she
designed and patented the trefoil badge, although West claimed that the trefoil
belonged to the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts had no right to use it. She traveled back to London in the summer,
where she met King George V and Queen Mary of Teck, and received the Girl Guide Thanks Badge from Princess Louise
for promoting Guiding.
Gordon Low also formed the Honorary Committee of Girl Scouts and elected her family and
friends to the committee. By using her connections, she was able to convince
Susan Ludlow Parish, Eleanor Roosevelt's godmother; Mina Miller Edison, the
wife of Thomas Edison; and Bertha Woodward, the wife of the House of
Representatives majority leader, to become patrons.[60] Although she had
received many patrons' support, Gordon Low still funded most Girl Scout
expenses herself.
World War I
At the start of World
War I, Gordon Low rented Castle
Menzies in Scotland, and let a family of Belgian refugees temporarily move
in.
On February 13, 1915, she sailed back to the United States
on the RMS Lusitania. When she
arrived, she continued her work for the Girl
Scouts. At the time, the Girl Scouts had 73 patrons and 2,400 registered
members. Gordon Low decided to build a stronger central organization for the Girl Scouts by writing a new
constitution that formed an executive committee and a National Council. Gordon
Low held the first National Council meeting under the new name, Girl Scouts, Inc. on June 10, 1915, and
was elected the first president of the organization.
The Girl Scouts
expanded after the United States entered World War I. Gordon Low publicized the
Girl Scouts through newspapers, magazines,
events, and film. In 1916, Gordon Low relocated the Girl Scout headquarters from Washington
DC to New York City. The same year,
Gordon Low returned to England to fundraise for and open a home for relatives
of wounded soldiers, where she volunteered 3 nights a week. By November, she was back in the United States
continuing her work with the Girl Scouts.
In response to the thrift program, a program enacted by the United States Food Administration with
the goal of teaching women how to conserve food, Girl Scouts in Washington, DC began growing and harvesting their
own food and canning perishable goods. Herbert Hoover wrote to Gordon Low,
thanking her for the contributions of the Girl Scouts and expressing hope that
other Girl Scouts in the country
would follow suit. She responded by organizing Girl Scouts to help the Red
Cross by making surgical dressings and knitting clothing for soldiers. They
also picked oakum, swept workrooms, created scrapbooks for wounded soldiers,
and made smokeless trench candles for soldiers to heat their food with.
By the end of 1917, Gordon Low convinced Lou Henry Hoover to
become the National Vice President of the Girl
Scouts, and Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, President Woodrow Wilson's second
wife, to become the Honorary President of the Girl Scouts.
Expanding
internationally
After World War I ended, interest in the Girl Guides began to increase in many
different countries. In response, Olave Baden-Powell, the Chief Guide, created
the International Council of Girl Guides
and Girl Scouts as a way to bring together the different communities of
Guides and Scouts across the world. The first meeting took place at the Girl Guide headquarters in London, and
Gordon Low attended as the representative for the United States.
Gordon Low stepped down as the National President of the Girl Scouts in 1920 so that she could
devote more of her time to promoting Guiding
and Scouting on an international
scale. She attended as many meetings of the International Council as she was
able, and would underwrite the travel of foreign delegates so that they would
also be able to attend. She also
assisted Olave Baden-Powell with converting 65 acres of land into a campsite
for the Girl Guides. Gordon Low
furnished a bungalow near the main house on the land and named it "The Link". The name was meant
to signify the bond between the British
Girl Guides and the American Girl
Scouts.
While no longer the President, she remained an active
presence in the organization. She worked on and appeared in The Golden Eaglet, the first Girl Scout movie. At a fundraising campaign in New York during Girl Scout Week, Gordon Low dropped
pamphlets onto a crowd of people from an airplane. On October 31 that same
week, the Girl Scouts celebrated the
first Founder's Day, a day to
celebrate Gordon Low and her accomplishments. In 1922, the Girl Scout convention took place in Gordon Low's hometown, Savannah.
She helped plan and organize the convention by renting an auditorium, planning
appearances by professional athletes, the mayor, and the school superintendent,
and hiring a film company. After the
1922 convention, she began planning Cloudlands,
a camping facility in Cloudland, Georgia designed to train leaders and girls
together. Cloudlands was later
renamed Camp Juliette Low.
Breast cancer and
death
Gordon Low developed breast cancer in 1923, but kept it a
secret. She caught the flu after an
operation to remove the malignant lumps, leaving her bed-ridden until February
1924. When she recovered, she resumed her work with the American Girl Scouts and the International Council. She secretly had two more operations to try to
cure her breast cancer, but was informed in 1925 that she had about six months
to live. She continued to do work for
the Girl Scouts, and even snuck away
during her recovery from surgery to make a speech at the Girl Scouts' regional conference in Richmond.
Gordon Low traveled to Liverpool, where Dr. William
Blair-Bell was developing a treatment for cancer. Gordon Low tried his
treatment, an IV containing a solution of colloidal lead. The treatment was
unsuccessful, and she spent her 66th birthday fighting off lead poisoning. She traveled back to the United States to
meet with her doctor, who informed her that she did not have much longer to
live. She went to the Low home in Savannah, where she spent her last few
months.
Gordon Low died in Savannah on January 17, 1927, at the age
of 66. An honor guard of Girl Scouts escorted her casket to her
funeral at Christ Church the next day. 250 Girl Scouts left school early that
day to attend her funeral and burial at Laurel Grove Cemetery. Gordon Low was buried in her Girl Scout uniform with a note in her
pocket stating: "You are not only the first Girl Scout, but the best Girl Scout of
them all." Her tombstone read: "Now
abideth faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love."
Legacy
In 1948 a postage stamp honoring Low, Scott catalogue number
974, was issued by the United States. Over 63 million were printed, making this
a common issue. At the time the Post Office had a policy of not honoring civic
organizations. It took a joint resolution of Congress, with the approval of
President Harry S. Truman, to produce the stamp for her. (The National Postal
Museum suggests that it may have helped that Bess Truman was honorary president
of the Girl Scouts.)
Juliette Gordon Low's home in Savannah is visited by Girl Scouts from all over the world. In
1965, her birthplace was listed as a National
Historic Landmark.
Low also donated a seven-acre park in Savannah which bears
her name. The park (originally part of her family homestead, the remainder of
which was developed into the Gordonston neighborhood, which includes a road
named Kinzie Avenue after Low's family) has been the center of long-running
disputes between Gordonston residents and non-residents as to whether the park
was donated to the residents of Gordonston, or to the residents of Savannah at
large, even to the point of disagreement over the park's name. The park figures prominently in Karen
Kingsbury's 2013 novel The Chance.
The main characters of the book, teenage sweethearts Nolan Cook and Ellie
Tucker, meet one last time in the park before Ellie is forced to move away.
They write letters to each other and bury them under a large oak tree, and
promise to meet again on that same day eleven years later. Though their lives
diverge significantly in the interim (Nolan becomes an NBA superstar and is
open about his Christian faith; Ellie has lost her faith and becomes a
struggling single mother of a daughter named Kinzie—named after the
above-mentioned street where she and Nolan regularly met), the two reunite as
promised and ultimately plan to marry, with Ellie regaining her faith as a
result of what happened.
In 1979, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
On May 29, 2012, the centennial anniversary of the Girl Scouts' founding was commemorated
when Low was honored with the Presidential
Medal of Freedom.
Camp Juliette Low
in Cloudland, Georgia, bears the name of its founder.
The Girl Scouts celebrate Juliette Gordon Low's October 31
birthday each year, as "Founder's
Day".
She was also awarded two patents, a utility patent for a "Liquid Container for Use with Garbage
Cans or the Like", Patent 1,124,925, and a design patent, D45234, for
the trefoil Girl Scout Badge.
In 1999, the city of Savannah named its ferry service the Savannah Belles Ferry after five of
Savannah's notable women, including Juliette Gordon Low.
In 2016 the first official Girl Scout trail honoring Juliette Gordon Low was created by a Girl Scout for her Gold Award project. The trail is located in Westwinds Metropark in Holland Ohio.
Comments
Post a Comment