Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low_It was Henry Thoreau who wrote WALDEN POND that suggested girls should be taught to hunt and fish. He felt that in the natural world of the seasons of his stay at Walden Pond that he had observed the need for human beings to survive by nature and not exclusive of their natural habitat. Therefore, the female of the species should not confine themselves to parlors of knitting and readjusting furniture because the day for survival in the harsher elements would inevitably come.

Juliette Gordon Low is known to have been bounced on General Sherman’s knee as he sat in the Gordon parlor in Savannah just after “marching through Georgia”. Many years later “Mrs.” Low organized the first American Girl Guide Troop in Savannah, Georgia with 18 members forming two patrols named the Carnation and the White Rose.

March is designated as the history of Girl Scout Month; and two local libraries – the Aberdeen Branch of the Harford County Public Libraries – and the Perryville Branch of the Cecil County Public Libraries – have set up charming displays of historical paraphernalia from two different eras of girl scouting.

It may sound hokey, but those early camp fires and capabilities instilled in girls by Den Mothers leave young girls with very good memories decades and decades later. Singing “Kum Ba Yah” around the campfire, Brownie Camp crafts, and hiking with your brown bag lunch to a special place in the woods is a safe place that lingers from childhood. The camaraderie of the troop and the numbers displayed on the shoulder of the uniform that you wore to school on Thursdays were a posture lesson that walked into your first job interview. In Aberdeen, Maryland they have the gold star pins displayed that were essential to making the uniform official. The patron of the library who loaned their display had a lot of badges sewed on her uniform sleeves which was the style of the Girl Scout uniform in the 1940’s.

Traditional Girl Scout pictures depict Juliet Gordon Low as a soldier in uniform; in her later years she was almost military in her bearing. This year the Perryville Library has displayed a wider horizon for the history of the founder of Girl Scouts – now a global organization – who was the innovator forerunner of what we now call the “Woman’s Movement”.

After sitting on General Sherman’s knee at the age of four, Juliette’s mother moved her children to Chicago. Her father’s cotton business was gone after he served as an officer in the Confederate Army. “Nellie” Kinzie Gordon was descendent of Revolutionary War heroes, and she had trouble keeping food on the table for her children when her husband was away at war. After things settled down in Savannah, mother and sisters returned to live in the Gordon family home which had not been destroyed in the Civil War.

Juliette was known as Daisy from the very day that she was born. As a young girl she organized a club to make clothes for boys. Poverty and cruelty to animals were issues that touched her heart very early in life. The boy’s clothes, however, all fell apart after the preteen girls sewed them together.

There are lot of stories that depict Juliette as silly and fragile. The portrait painted of her soon after she married is displayed in the Perryville Library. She was an exquisite beauty by any terms in any time. Her husband inherited a large amount of money soon after they married.

But “belle of the ball” and a life of ease was not Juliette’s destiny. She lost most of her hearing at a very young age, and her husband divorced her. He also died fairly young and left his fortune to the new woman who had come into his life. Juliette retained lawyers to defend her, but to no avail.

In 1910 Daisy met Sir Robert Baden-Powell who founded the “men scouts”. She decided if young boys could scout then why not assist girls with scouting. In 1911, she invited seven girls from poor families to visit her house in Scotland. She taught them cooking and first aid skills. She demonstrated how to raise chickens for the sake for selling eggs and earning money.

“Daisy” Juliette Low Gordon encouraged girls to play sports, to wear the kind of clothes that would allow them to participate in sports, to compete, to study the outdoors, and to learn about animals.

For more information about scouting and troops available for girls in your geographical area visit www.girlscouts.org. They can probably give some information about where to come by those delicious cookies too (you can buy them and freeze them for enjoyment any time of year if you do not eat them all as soon as you buy them).



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