Juliette Gordon Low

Born October 31, 1860
Died 1927


Juliette Gordon was born on October 31, 1860. When she was a newborn, an uncle of hers referred to her as "a daisy" and the nickname "Miss. Daisy" followed her throughout her life. She was raised in Savannah, Georgia during the Civil War. As a young girl, one of her favorite activities was making paper dolls.

After graduating from High School, she met and married an Englishman named Willie Low. Shortly afterwards, they moved to England. Low made friends easily and had several friends who were well known at the time, including Rudyard Kipling, the author of the Just So Stories. Low enjoyed drawing, painting, and other crafts. She even created her own blacksmith tools and used them to construct a set of iron gates.

As a young woman, Low had an accident which rendered her almost completely deaf. Still, she traveled the world visiting places such as Egypt and India. She met a man named Sir Robert Baden-Powell who told her about an organization he had founded called Boy Scouts. In addition to the numerous boys in the group, six thousand girls had signed up. His sister was helping him to organize the girls into a group called the Girl Guides.

Low was extremely interested in the idea of a girls’ organization. She offered to start a troop of Girl Guides in Scotland. Many young girls in Scotland were unable to attend school and worked in unhealthy conditions in factories. Low found a woman to teach her and the girls in her troop how to spin cloth. The troop then sold the cloth at a market in London and used the proceeds to start an egg business. The egg business was successful, earning the girls enough money that they no longer needed their pay from the factories. As word spread of the troop's success, so did the Girl Guides’ membership.

Low formed another troop in London and made plans to form troops in the United States. Then on March 12, 1912, Low registered two troops of girls in her home town of Savanah, Georgia. She called these troops the Girl Scouts. The troops participated in many activities that socially were not always considered appropriate for girls at the time. They hiked, camped, and played basketball in teams they formed. At the time of her death in 1927, there were 168,000 Girl Scouts in the United States.

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