Juliette Gordon Low (Savannah, 1860 – 1927) was an American youth leader and the founder of the Girl Scouts of the USA. Her life spanned the years after the Civil War in the South and a society that was only beginning to offer girls organized activities beyond the home. Her name is tied to an organization that still brings together millions of girls and adult volunteers.
She was born in Savannah, Georgia, into a well-off family. Her father served in the Confederate army, and during the war the family moved first to Thunderbolt and then to Chicago, where her mother's relatives lived. As a child she was restless and paid little attention to schoolwork, preferring poetry, theatre and drawing. She attended boarding schools in the South and the North and, in 1886, married William Mackay Low, with whom she lived between Savannah, London and Scotland. The marriage was troubled: long separations, the lack of children, and her husband's affairs and heavy drinking wore it down. After his death in 1905, before the divorce was finalised, Low had both the means and the time to pursue other projects.
While in England she met Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout movement, and his sister Agnes, who led the Girl Guides. Low became involved with Guide groups in Scotland and London, where she taught young members knotting, map reading, cooking and first aid. Back in the United States in 1912, she gathered 18 girls in Savannah that March and started the country's first troop. In 1915 the organisation took the name Girl Scouts, and Low served as its president until 1920, the year she was recognised as founder. She remained active until her death in 1927.
Her legacy is mainly organisational and educational: she turned a local initiative into a national network that combined outdoor life, practical skills and community service. Her birthday, 31 October, is still marked each year by the Girl Scouts as Founder's Day. In 2005 she was honoured with a monument in Washington, on the pavement beside the White House.
Key works
- The sources do not identify any published books by Juliette Gordon Low.
- From her youth, poems and plays survive in part, but their titles and dates are not documented in the sources consulted.
- Malbone Bouquet (a family newspaper she started with her cousins as a child, which featured some of her early poetry).
Curiosities
Little Ship
As a child she was so restless that, when she moved in with her grandparents during the war, she was nicknamed Little Ship.
A grain of rice
At her wedding, a grain of rice thrown in celebration lodged in her left ear and caused an infection. Removing it perforated her eardrum, and the deafness in that ear became permanent.
A monument in Washington
In 2005 she was honoured with 'The Extra Mile Points of Light Volunteer Pathway', a one-mile route beside the White House, which takes its name from that distance.
Original Filopedia text based on Wikipedia (es) and Wikipedia (en) and Wikidata.