I am unplugging, traveling, and taking a fortnight’s vacation from the blog. I’ll be back with you on Friday, 1 June with my 101st blog post and more Juliette Gordon Low tidbits. I might also have some interesting news from my publisher, Viking/Penguin.

In the meantime, think up some topics for me, please! I always love hearing from you.

Thanks,

Stacy

She enjoyed an “excellent dinner with capital wines–claret and champagne” at the famous Palais de Trocadéro, which you can see at the end of the avenue below.

Palais de Trocadéro, Paris

Fond of fashion, Nellie went to have dresses made at a shop called Pidoux & Company. She noted in her diary that her evening dress cost $140.00 and a “tailor-made shirt” was $45.00. In today’s money, the gown would be worth $3,870.00. (1)

Nellie saw two different shows at the beautiful Grand Opera. She heard Mignon, the comic opera, and Gounod’s adaption of Shakespeare’s tragic tale of star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliette.

Paris Opera c. 1900

Elsewhere, she saw the divine Sarah Bernhardt as Roxanne and Benoit-Constant Coquelin as Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac. The two toured in the United States later that year. Nellie had seen the two greatest French actors of her era, together, in one play.

Nellie dined with Willie at the well-known Cafe Riche on Le Boulevard des Italiens and laughed out loud as her husband ordered “Diner par Dieu” — that is “Dinner by God!” rather than “Diner pour dieux,” or  ”dinner for two,” as she recorded.

Cafe Riche

At the Ecole des Beaux Arts she lingered over the sculpture and the paintings–but not modern art. Nellie despised modern art and dismissed  a painting of “three horses heads…life size, painted a delicate sky blue” that she had seen in Munich.

The Fine Arts School

And she took in the fabulous event, the talk-of-the-town, the great, exotic entertainer who grew up partly in my hometown of Monmouth, Illinois, Loie Fuller. Fuller, known as the “goddess” or the “magician of light,” danced wearing voluminous material that swirled around her. Lights played on the costume as she swirled, and it was breathtaking to audiences of the time. Nellie found Fuller’s dancing “graceful, but,” she wrote, the “most effect was made by the arrangement of the colored electric lights,” reminding us in 2012 that electric lighting was relatively new and exciting, too. (2) Watch this brief but amazing video of Loie Fuller doing her signature “Serpentine Dance:”

It was a heady time for Nellie Gordon. This is only a few of the many opportunities of which she availed herself. Paris was a cultural center then, as now, and Nellie was never one to sit in a hotel when she could be out investigating life and reveling in all of its extraordinary and wondrous aspects.

Luckily, to her daughter Juliette Gordon Low, Nellie Kinzie Gordon bequeathed this marvelous spirit.

______

(1) Calculation of “purchasing power” from measuringworth.com.

(2)  All of Nellie’s quotes from the Nellie Kinzie Gordon Diary, 1900, Gordon Family Papers, MS318/12/129, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia.

All photos from wikimedia except for the Cafe Riche, which is from http://paris1900.lartnouveau.com and Sarah Bernhardt, which is from http://shakespeare.emory.edu/postcarddisplay.cfm?cardid=472.

Juliette Low's watercolor sketch entitled "Queenstown Harbor"

The letter is undated and incomplete, so I don’t know precisely when she wrote it. Nor can I say for certain which Queenstown this is. It looks like her beloved Scotland, but Queenstown, Scotland has no harbor. It could be Queenstown, Maryland, where she had many friends, but the hills don’t seem right. It is not Queenstown, Australia, as Juliette never traveled Down Under. Nor is it clear from the two extant pages of the letter precisely what that is in the middle of the harbor. A castle? A ship?

With her own unique sense of humor, Juliette penned viewing instructions in her letter to Mary:

“Half close eyes. Place sketch in Mary’s room, then view it from Grace’s room.  This is the only way to produce the fine effects!!”

Just what these “fine effects” were, Juliette did not disclose. Grace was Mary’s sister–so apparently, Daisy, always humble, believed the sketch would show best from a far distant vantage point across the length of two bedrooms!

Here is the first page of the letter which contains Juliette’s lovely little painting. It is written on mourning paper (many of you will know that that’s what the black border signifies) so someone close to her had died within the  year. That suggests to me that this letter was probably written in 1882, after her sister Alice’s death. Juliette would have been 21 or 22 years old, then, when she created this little landscape, about the time she embarked upon her first trip abroad.

_____

Juliette Gordon Low to Mary Gale Carter Clarke, undated fragment, Clarke Family Papers, MS2200/22/7, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

In case you have not heard, Juliette Gordon Low has been chosen as one of this year’s recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom! This is the highest award a civilian can earn in the U.S.

She will join a select group of people who are distinguished in their various fields–many of them known to us as heros and reformers, intelligent and brave souls who dared to challenge society’s boundaries and by so doing moved us forward. Indeed, Juliette Gordon Low has done that.

President Harry Truman began this civilian award, but President John F. Kennedy renamed it and honed its intent in Executive Order 11085. The purpose was simply to recognize and honor citizens who made exemplary contributions to American “security or national interests,” to “world peace,” or to “cultural of other significant public or private endeavors.” The award can be given posthumously. Usually it is bestowed upon a living recipient.

This year, Juliette Gordon Low will be joined by some extraordinary Americans–the recognition of whom I believe would really touch her. For example, strong women such as Dolores Huerta, the passionate advocate for the rights of Mexican-American laborers, who, with Cesar Chavez, began United Farm Workers of America, and Madeline Albright, the first female Secretary of State. And then there’s the incredible Pat Summitt–the  best NCAA women’s basketball coach who has worked so hard on behalf of women’s sports and now Alzeiheimer’s education. Think how Juliette Gordon Low encouraged her first Girl Scouts to play basketball, despite the stigmas against girls in sports and against girls competing.

Early Girl Scouts playing basketball in Savannah.

Perhaps Juliette Gordon Low would be just as tickled to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom alongside of pioneering astronaut John Glenn. One of the greatest thrills for Juliette was flying. She buzzed over the earth in some of the earliest powered airplanes and loved the entire sensation. How amazed she would be to think about Glenn orbiting the planet.

A 1913 Deperdussin airplane similar to the ones in which Juliette Gordon Low flew.

This is not the first honor Juliette Gordon Low has received, of course. A World War II battleship and a federal building (in Savannah) were named for her, she was featured on a postage stamp in 1948, and inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1979. This Presidential Medal of Freedom, however, is a signal honor, and one which I believe is entirely deserved.

Why?

Because only Juliette Gordon Low could have created the Girl Scouts. It was her specific life experiences–her upbringing, her education, her marriage, her near-divorce, her work with the poor–and her unique personality that made her appreciate Robert Baden-Powell’s program and act on it in the way she did. Even today, the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. holds dear many of Juliette Gordon Low’s core ideals. She created the single most important organization for girls and women in this country. Period. Bar none. The positive effect that Girl Scouting has on girls and women is incalculable—as are the benefits that Girl Scouts have had (and continue to have) on this nation. And yet Juliette Gordon Low is, as I have been telling audiences all over, almost completely left out of the historical record.

Surely the attention of the centennial of Girl Scouting, Ginger Wadsworth’s and Shana Corey’s new books for girls and my new biography for adults, the savvy work by GSUSA CEO Anna Maria Chavez, and now this tremendous honor of the Presidential Medal of Freedom will return the spotlight to Juliette Gordon Low, who so richly deserves it.

Click here for the White House press release, and short biographies of all the 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.

_________

Photograph of the Girl Scouts in Savannah thanks to the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, Savannah, Georgia. Photograph of the medal from wikimedia. Photo of airplane from bukagambar.info.

One of the reasons that Juliette Low was such a terrific CEO was her ability to embrace change. She was often visionary in her understanding of how to grow Girl Scouting, including her enthusiasm for the new medium of film.

In 1918 there were no color films, and no “talkies” yet, either. World War I was still ongoing, and Girl Scouting was flourishing as a result of Juliette Low’s certain knowledge that girls yearned to be involved in significant ways in the national crisis. She was all in favor of the film that Girl Scouts created in 1918 entitled The Golden Eaglet: The Story of a Girl Scout. It was written by prolific American novelist and Girl Scout Josephine Daskam Bacon, and was an object lesson in how Girl Scouting could improve the lives of girls and, indeed, everyone in their community. Of course, nothing is easy at first, but our hero Margaret perseveres. And if you remember camping in “the old days,” was it like this?

Who wouldn’t want to be part of those purposeful, multi-talented, resourceful, responsible, heroic girls who knew how to meet every emergency but could still have fun? This was a recruiting film, and Juliette Low took it with her to show in as many theaters as she could rent.

In the second half of The Golden Eaglet, audiences learn why “housework isn’t so bad…,” why Girl Scouts are just as handy in the home as in the wild, and how Margaret earned her Golden Eaglet–the highest award Girl Scouting offers (today it’s called the Gold Award and it is still extremely difficult to earn).

And, Juliette Gordon Low herself appears, to pin the Golden Eaglet on a proud Margaret, and to close out the film.

Josephine Daskam Bacon recalled that while everyone else was overawed by the film cameras, Juliette Low was euphoric. “I am sure she would have liked to appear in every scene;” Bacon wrote; “she invented enough situations to have used up thousands of feet of film; she cheerfully suggested alterations of the plot, action, and management which puzzled and terrified the director….” When Bacon told her that she would be in the film, playing herself, Juliette Low, Bacon recalled, “threw herself into it with an ardor and a seriousness….” Observing Mrs. Low’s enthusiasm, Bacon suddenly understood that Juliette “loved that big hat; she loved that ridiculous whistle; she loved her whole uniform! She wasn’t wearing them, as some of us were, because it was necessary or because it seemed best: she loved to wear them!“

Josephine Daskam Bacon concluded that Juliette Low “drench[ed] with her vitality and enthusiasm the little plant she had brought over from England and cherish[ed] it till it grew into the great tree that it is to-day. And I don’t think anything less than that spirit could have done it.”

As Juliette Low’s biographer, I can only agree.

_____

Bacon’s reminiscences from “Here and There with Juliette Low in Girl Scouting,” in Juliette Low and The Girl Scouts, Anne Hyde Choate and Helen Ferris, eds. (New York: GSUSA, 1928), 133-139. Quotes from 134 and 135.

To set this up: Jane Carter was Mary’s mother. She was a widow, because Mary’s father had committed suicide when Mary was ten years old. He apparently bequeathed his depression to his children, Mary among them. Hyde was the son of an established and wealthy family, the Clarkes of Cooperstown, New York. Mary and Hyde were deeply in love, but Mary’s mother did not approve of the match because Hyde had a reputation as a man-about-town. Jane had taken her daughter to Europe to put an ocean and some time between the young lovers, hoping that Mary and Hyde’s ardor would cool. She forbade them to correspond with each other. The Carters had barely gotten across the Atlantic when terrible news reached them:

………..

In March 1883, Jane Carter received a letter from a man named David Gregory accusing Hyde of actions so scandalous that they were grounds for dissolving any understanding with Mary.  A Dr. Gautier verified all Gregory had written. From Rome, Mrs. Carter penned a crushing letter to Hyde explaining that she had long heard rumors of his “gambling and dissipation.” But these new revelations meant she could no longer even “number him among [their] acquaintances.” Only Mary’s anguished note at the bottom of her mother’s letter gave Hyde any hope.  It read, “It must be a terrible lie, oh write quickly and let us know it is so.”[i]

Hyde replied with alacrity, desperate to clear his name.  Gregory and Gautier were his enemies, he began, and thus they put the worst possible spin on events.  Apparently, David Gregory’s daughter Louise, a woman, Hyde alleged, whose “morality is of the worst sort,” had used him.[ii]  “It was not till after a month’s solicitation on her part that I allowed myself to do that which she herself asked for and which I have had course to regret and repent of.”  And he was not the only one.  Hyde’s best friend, Philip Sherwood, was also the object of Louise Gregory’s attention:  “She pretended love for him and he could have done the worst if he had been as foolish as I.”

It appears that Louise claimed she was pregnant and charged Hyde with the paternity.  Hence the involvement of Dr. Gautier. The Gregorys threatened Hyde Clarke’s life, guaranteed they would see he never married, and hinted at legal action.  Hyde’s father “offered to support her and her child, if such a thing were to happen.  It never did,” Hyde swore.  Further, he had never promised to marry Louise, who plainly stated that she loved another man. He contended that the Gregorys were cowards who did not pursue a lawsuit because it would have been too easy to demonstrate Louise’s failings.

Hyde’s exposition concluded with a reasoned and stern restatement of his commitment to Mary.  He denied hiding anything from her.  He had told her that he had lived a riotous life before they met.  Hyde pointed out that the Louise Gregory saga was finished before he proposed to Mary. He was contrite. His greatest sorrow was the pain he had caused Mary. He believed himself worthy of a love as pure as hers. “My object in life is to make her happy,” he insisted and begged Mrs. Carter to consider proof of his character from those who loved him, like his father and Phil Sherwood, not from his adversaries.[iii]  As he wrote in a separate letter to Mary, “Trust me that the pride of having a pure woman’s love is enough to make me see the follies of passionate youth.”[iv]

To Jane Carter, whose own husband ultimately surrendered to his demons, Hyde’s actions must have bespoken a similar kind of madness.  Hyde’s confession surely reinforced her bedrock belief that a miserable marriage was a living death.  To Mary, who loved Hyde but had been taught a moral code with no room for behavior like his—or Louise Gregory’s—Hyde’s confession tempted a re-emergence of her depression.  Daisy’s yellow garter arrived just as the disclosures began.  Mary would have donned hers with a dread urgency.

Jane Carter asked Daisy to join them in Rome, hoping she would act as a palliative for the inconsolable Mary.  Unaware of the impetus for the invitation and feeling “like a champagne bottle with all the wires cut, ready to go off,” Daisy wrote jubilantly of how her mother’s intervention turned her father’s initial “no” into “yes.”  Daisy did not believe that Mary could “realize my joy unless you have ever hoped for anything intensely and after utterly abandoning all idea of getting it suddenly find your wish about to be fulfilled.” Poor Mary certainly must have wept bitter tears upon reading that sentence.  At least comfort was on the horizon, as Daisy planned to sail to Europe in early May.[v]

While Daisy made preparations to join her, Mary set out to change her mother’s mind. Initially doubting she could care for Hyde, Mary felt numb. She was not at all certain her feelings could be sustained. Yet Mary was a deeply religious woman.  Hyde’s sin, as she called it, required both expiation on his part and forgiveness on hers. He clutched at the slender straw of hope, her belief that “our Savior is so merciful, so loving, so ready to forgive the truly penitent, that should I, a sinner too, condemn?” Mary wanted to honor her commitment to Hyde, but could not defy her mother. Jane Carter held fast to the position that the Clarke family’s “lax” morality was diametrically opposed to hers and did not foretell a congenial marriage.[vi]

Mary’s despair deepened when Daisy, unaccountably, could not travel to Europe, leaving Mary without her Little Flower to help her muddle through.  It seems clear that neither Abby nor Daisy knew about the newest developments in the relationship between Mary and Hyde, for Daisy penned a letter to Mary in August containing a sentence that would have been cruel had she known the truth. Daisy wrote “Was it not dreadful that Mr. Phil Sherwood should have died so suddenly of heart disease in Hyde Clarke’s house.”[vii]  Then she was on to another topic. Yet the unexpected death of Hyde’s best friend was heartbreaking. Jane Carter temporarily lifted the ban and allowed her daughter to write. Mary wanted to comfort Hyde in his grief and she regretted there was nothing she could do but pray.[viii]

…….

Hyde and Mary were eventually married, and their first child would be Anne Hyde Choate, the second president of the Girl Scouts and Juliette Gordon Low’s goddaughter. Jane Russell Carter, who loved her daughter very much, would later spend a considerable amount of money helping Hyde and Mary hold on to heirlooms and treasures from Hyde’s home when financial troubles caused by Hyde’s father caused them to be auctioned off. Hyde Hall, in Cooperstown, is a national landmark and New York State historic site. It is open to the public. Here is the Hyde Hall website, where you can see photographs of the beautiful home. Be sure to check out the Hyde Hall facebook page, too.

Descent from the Cross

Daisy Low stood in front of this painting, studied the scene, imagined herself a part of it, and “wept,” moved her to tears by the suffering and death of Jesus.

Daisy loved the Baroque period, and Rubens was foremost among her favorite artists. “Descent from the Cross” is the centerpiece of a triptych that hangs in the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, Belgium. Rubens began it in 1612 and concluded two years later. Daisy visited Antwerp during her second trip to Europe, in 1884. She went specifically to the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady because it housed several well-known works by Rubens.

Daisy Low had an unshakeable and joyful faith in God. It carried her through hard times and it helped her make sense of her world. Her faith was a fundamental and bedrock part of her being.

____________

Photo from wikimedia. Quotes from Juliette Gordon Low to Mary Carter Clarke, 24 August [1884], Clarke Family Papers, MS2800/22/3, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Lippitt Mill

In 1848, Warren and his sons, Henry and Robert, partnered with some other businessmen and purchased Comfort Tiffany’s mill on the Quinebaug River near what would become Danielsonville, Connecticut, and renamed it the Quinebaug Manufacturing Company.  When their father died in 1850, the Lippitt brothers purchased the Coddington Mill in Newport, Rhode Island.  Three years later, that mill burned to the ground, so they relocated their firm in Woonsocket, along the Blackstone River. Abby knew the Globe Mill well because she often took her friends on excursions to see the enormous and awe-inspiring sight of over 40,000 spindles and 900 looms driven by a huge 750 horsepower Corliss steam engine and three water wheels, all overseen by 500 employees.  The Globe was a five-story landmark, known for its brilliant white exterior and its 560 windows.[ii]

The Globe Mill in Woonsocket

Abby’s father Henry Lippitt was involved with more than just several of the great cotton mills in Rhode Island.  He was a veteran of the state’s Dorr War and the Civil War.  He sat on the boards of directors of banks and important businesses and art associations.[iii]  His extensive professional network led to his successful attempt—as a Republican—to win the governorship of Rhode Island from 1875-1877.

Afterward, Henry Lippitt returned to trade, and in 1881, a local commentary claimed that his “annual business has never amounted to less than $300,000, and several years has exceeded $4,000,000.”[iv]  If that was even near to the truth, then Daisy’s friend grew up very wealthy indeed.

In 1856, scarlet fever took the lives of three of Abby Lippett’s four brothers and rendered her sister deaf.  Their mother, Mary Ann Balch Lippitt, survived such crushing grief by sustained, hard work.  Left with Charles, Jeanie, and infant Henry, born in October, she turned the full focus of her attention to making sure that Jeanie would not be marginalized because of her deafness.[v]

In the mid-nineteenth century, provisions for deaf children were few.  They were separated from society and taught in asylums where they learned how to sign, but not to speak. Mary Lippitt believed that signing would divide Jeanie from her family and the rest of the hearing community. She determined that her daughter would talk. As there were only sign language teachers in the country, Mary set out to instruct Jeanie herself.  She embarked on a rigorous course of training to teach the child to read lips and use her voice. Slowly but surely, it began to work.  Once she achieved some proficiency, Jeanie attended school with other girls in her neighborhood where she excelled at spelling, math, and geography.

There were two other girls living near the Lippitts who had lost their hearing at the same young age, Fanny Cushing and Mabel Hubbard. The three families ultimately worked together to advocate what was called oral training at a time when the sign language promoted by Thomas Gallaudet was thought the only effective method of teaching deaf children. Their efforts culminated in the creation of the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the Boston School for Deaf Mutes, known today as the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Mary Lippitt also engaged the pedagogical services of a young Alexander Graham Bell, the son of a phonetics teacher who had an interest in lip reading. His experience with the three young women and others who were learning orally led him to open a School of Vocal Physiology in Boston, and to marry Mabel Hubbard.[vi]

Clarke School for the Deaf

While the work with Jeanie continued, the Lippitt family added four more children:  Mary (called May), Lincoln, Abby, and Alfred, who died in infancy. Abby thus was the youngest, but never the baby of the family.  That place at center stage was always occupied by Jeanie who had the lion’s share of her mother’s attention, and even the best bedroom in the beautiful Lippitt home on Hope Street in Providence.[vii]

The Lippitt home in Providence, Rhode Island

Abby was much closer to May and Linc than to Jeanie, as the three youngest children grew up together and in the 1880s toured Europe together. Since they were a political family, Abby had an understanding of and an interest in current events to a much greater degree than her friends. Abby did share Daisy’s fondness for arguments. When she was an adult, her new sister-in-law, Henry’s wife Marian, was certain that the strident dinner conversation meant “the finish of our amicable family relationship.”  She recalled that the four siblings “argued every question of the day, personal, national, and international down to the last inch.  ‘Harry, I don’t agree with you.’  ‘May, your statement is incorrect.’  ‘Abby, you are quite mistaken.’  ‘Jeanie, your figures are wrong.’”  But as they turned in they all bade each other a cheery goodnight.  Marian concluded that “Lippitt arguments are a form of indoor sport.  A sort of whetstone on which to sharpen keen intellects.”[viii]

Dining room of the Lippitt home

Abby was a keen tennis player and golfer, ice skater and tobogganer.  She enjoyed the winter, hated to rise early, was an unwilling traveler, but most of all, Abby declared over and over again that she had no time for young men.[ix] Her friends laughed merrily about this, and Daisy dubbed her the Icicle.  Abby was not amused.  “Why do you insist upon calling me an icicle,” she demanded.  “You know how demonstrative and gushing I always was and I assure you I have not changed in the least.”[x]  Daisy believed that only Abby thought of herself as “demonstrative and gushing.”  As Marian would later note, “New Englanders do not ‘take on’ much over anything or anybody.  They are just loyal and sure, and let it go at that.”[xi]

……

Abby Lippitt Hunter, Mary Gale Carter Clarke, and Juliette Gordon Low met in boarding school and were friends to the ends of their lives. Many of you have asked for more information about Abby and Mary. What you just read is a section cut from my Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts that provides more information about Abby Lippitt. If some of it sounds familiar, it’s because not all of it hit the proverbial cutting room floor.

If you live in New England, the best place to start to learn about the Lippitts is the Governor Henry Lippitt House Museum, located in Providence. I would like to thank publicly Susanna Prull of Preserve Rhode Island for her kind assistance with my research on the Lippitts, and for allowing me the use of the photos of Abby Lippitt in my biography.

There are other great stories about Charles Warren Lippitt, about Duncan Hunter (the man Abby married), and about Jeanie Lippitt–but in telling them, I’d  just about be starting on another book!  Feel free to write to me with your questions.

Bust of Harriet A. Low Robertson by Lanteri

Who was Edouard Lanteri?

On faculty at the Royal College of Art when Juliette Low and Baden-Powell studied with him, Lanteri was born in France in 1848, but had become an English citizen. Lanteri had studied at the the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He was a friend and a teacher of the great sculptor Auguste Rodin, who once called Lanteri “my dear master” in a foreword to one of his books.

Prof. Lanteri insisted that all his own pupils began by “copying firstly plaster casts of antique and Renaissance masterpieces.” [1] He had done a series of anatomical studies–called ecorches–for his students to use to understand how the human body was constructed and able to move. Drawing the skeleton and the musculature of the body was required of his classes at the Royal College of Art. [2]

Ecorche by Lanteri

Once students had mastered plaster casts and ecorches, they could then study from life. Juliette was not Lanteri’s first or only female pupil, and while men far outnumbered women in the field of art, it was becoming less unusual by the early twentieth century for women to train using live models.

One day, Juliette’s experience with a model in Lanteri’s studio moved her to an impulsive act of charity. She could not focus on her sculpting, so convinced was she that the emaciated young model had “nearly fainted” from apparent starvation. The next night, Daisy brought a “thermos bottle of hot soup and thick sandwiches of meat and bread,” and half a quart of milk, all of which the model ate so gratefully that she “grew fat” as even Daisy watched.  Her worry for the young woman prompted her to share the vignette in a letter to her sister Mabel, but, keeping such deeds mostly secret, she ordered Mabel not to pass that part of her letter along for their parents to read. [3]

Lanteri also encouraged artists-in-training to pay close attention to life around them. Like military scouts or novelists, students were to observe in detail interesting people, phenomena, and situations so they could sketch them from memory at the day’s end. This almost certainly appealed to General Baden-Powell, who had been schooled in such close observation as a scout in the British army.

Lanteri's textbook

When Baden-Powell and Juliette Low were under his tutelage, Lanteri had just completed the third volume of his Modelling:  A Guide for Teachers and Students. One reviewer said of his books that Lanteri was “ a sculptor of unusual ability” who “knows exactly what is necessary for the young worker who is acquiring the foundation of sound knowledge, upon which success in later life very largely depends; and he has the rare gift of being able to impart to others something of his own enthusiasm and understanding.” [4] He had also overseen some former students at the Royal College as they created the enormous sculptures for the facade of the Victoria and Albert Museum. [5]

One of Prof. Lanteri’s students summed up the regard he called forth:  “It is this considerable gift to carry his theories into effect that makes Mr. Lanteri so supreme a master.  As a teacher he has no superior, and many a successful sculptor of to-day owes much to his untiring energy, encouragement, and interest, such as he takes in all who have the good fortune to come under his care.”  [6]

Bust of Alfred Stevens by Lanteri, from the V&A Museum

Another pupil called him “singularly endowed with the capacity for inspiring students with a passion for their art, and for securing from successive generations of them their admiration and affectionate esteem.  It may be believed that a very large proportion of the most successful British sculptors of to-day who are not more than middle-aged owe to Professor Lanteri much of the success the have achieved. [7]

Lanteri became known as a founder of a British school called “New Sculpture,” known for its “dynamic naturalism of the body.” [8] When he died, in 1917, his students mourned, and they knew that they were his legacy–as there were many more of them than there were works of art actually created by Edouard Lanteri. It must have been a wonderful thing for Juliette Low and Robert Baden-Powell to have been in the presence of such a selfless, generous, and talented teacher.

Lanteri

Because of the exciting book tour and, I am sad to say, a particularly nasty case of bronchitis, I have been away from the blogosphere for two weeks. I promise to return next Friday, the 23rd, when I am home and healthy and caught up with the other parts of my life.

In the meantime, I hope you’ve all bought a copy of Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts and are enjoying it!

You can keep up with various bits of the book tour on my facebook page, Stacy A. Cordery, Author ( http://www.facebook.com/StacyCordery ) where I have posted some photos and some links to interviews.

See you next week!

Thanks,

Stacy

Mrs. Eliot was a woodworker. I have no direct proof that she and Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low knew each other–but I find it difficult to believe they did not. Valentine Elliot’s husband was the priest in charge of St. Peter’s Church, which Daisy and William Mackay Low attended while they lived in Wellesbourne House from 1889 to early in the next century (Willy Low died in 1905). Because of Willy’s extended hunting trips, racing weekends, and visits to spas without her, Daisy was left ever more frequently to her own devices.

We know that Daisy carved a mantel for Willy’s smoking room in Wellesbourne House. But when did she learn woodworking? If it was before arriving in Wellesbourne, then surely their common interest drew the two women together. Or perhaps she learned it while living Wellesbourne. Perhaps Valentine Eliot actually taught Daisy Low the craft of wood carving.

Valentine Eliot was such a prodigious wood carver that she opened and ran a shop brimming with her art. According to Wellesbourne historian Peter Bolton, the intrepid Mrs. Eliot seems to have been undaunted by projects large (the St. Peter’s Church doors) or small (hymn boards). Woodcarving was not a hobby considered entirely suitable for women, so most people who knew of her no doubt thought her a little quirky. Did this quality draw Daisy to her? Did the two women carve in companionable and contemplative silence side by side? Did they murmur together about their absent husbands, filling the time on their hands with creative work? Or did they impatiently push aside the duties that claimed them, and rush to Mrs. Eliot’s studio and to their shared joy in their projects and each other’s company?

We’ll never know.

We’ll also never know what Valentine Eliot’s woodwork looked like, nor what calibre of artist she was. The church doors are long gone, and none of the carved wood in St. Peter’s today bears her name or initials. It is just as likely that she never signed any of her art.

However, when I was in Wellesbourne last summer, I walked through St. Peter’s Church in the company of Peter Bolton and his wife and fellow-researcher Rosalind Bolton.

St. Peter's Church, Wellesbourne

I was suddenlly arrested by the sight of an ornately carved wooden prie dieu:

carved prie dieu

I could find no artist’s signature nor mark. The carving was beautiful, but rough–not like a master craftsman, but like an exceptionally skilled amateur.

detail of prie dieu carving

Of course I wondered whether this prie dieu could be the handiwork of Valentine Eliot.

another detail…is this unfinished?

Peter Bolton thought it could be. I think it could be.

We cannot prove it, alas. But with the Boltons’ expertise backing up my hunch, I found it very exciting to contemplate. This might be the work of Valentine Eliot. And Valentine Eliot might have been Daisy Low’s teacher or colleague in the unconventional craft of woodworking.

For more views of St. Peter’s Church from our day there, see Clive Hanley’s photographs. Be sure to look at the memorial tablet to Willy Low.  Click here.

In the fall of 1897, Willy Low was off shooting without his wife, Juliette “Daisy” Low. In a letter to her Aunt Eliza Stiles, Daisy explained how she and her friend, Jessie (who was perhaps her sister-in-law, Jessie Low Graham), were together at the home of the Clan McIntosh, possibly Moy Castle but probably Meallmore, the hunting lodge she and Willy rented:

“The McIntosh (our landlord) is charming and his wife is very like me. Last week I was asked there, because Willy and Mr. Jimmy Guthrie have gone…shooting, and I would have been alone here.  Jessie and Hyde were there and Jess and  I retired at intervals to my room, where I stood on my head and Jessie screamed aloud, to let off steam. The whole atmosphere of the house was frigid….

“I asked the McIntosh to bring some of his party here to lunch last Thursday and they were like children out of school! The MacIntosh himself danced a sword dance, in front of the house, after lunch, across two fishing rods, and afterwards went in my canoe….”

A little glimpse into Daisy’s life during the fall Scottish hunting season–and more evidence of her standing on her head!

Moy Castle

____

Juliette Gordon Low to Eliza Stiles, 27 September 1897, Gordon Family Papers, MS319/14/152, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia.
Photo from www.mcleanscotland.com.

The process of researching and writing a book in this age of technology is very different from the days of notecards, yellow pads, and typewriters. Blogging while writing has been useful in at least five ways:

1.  Blogging has helped me to think through the book’s argument, to see the contours of the story, and to organize my thoughts–all in all making a better book.

2. Blogging allowed me to share with you all the fun details that would never get in the book. Since I did the research anyway, and since all authors hate to throw out what they’ve learned or written, it has been lovely to put the  bunny trails (as I called them in an earlier post) here on the blog. In many cases, I did follow the research further than I would have for just the book–so I learned more, too. And those details provide more interesting context about Daisy Low and her world.

3. Blogging brought me into contact with fascinating experts I did not know–including Tim Trager, the Grand Orchestrion expert; Judith Potter at Meggernie Outdoor Centre; Pine Hill Plantation’s Head Huntmaster, Todd Howard; Richard Sidell of  St. James Episcopal Church in Chicago; and especially Clive Hanley at Wellesbourne, with whose help I toured Daisy and Willy’s home in England, explored related sites, and met marvelous people like Peter and Rosalind Bolton, Ann Eccles, and Lady Elizabeth Hamilton. I never cease to be amazed at how generous people are with their knowledge and time. Lucky, lucky me.

3.5. Blogging kept me joyfully in touch with the incredible Katherine Keena, the Program Manager at the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace (a title that does not in any way hint at the enormity of her knowledge of all things Daisy Low). I would have to devote an entire month of blogs to the ways that she helped me, but at this point I will confine myself to a public thank you to her for the use of photographs from the Birthplace.

4. Blogging kept me on track. I was on a tight deadline for this book, and knowing that I had to produce something for every Friday was a spur to the writing of the book, too. In a related point, blogging taught me I never want to be a journalist with a regular column. My  hat is off to all of you who do such work!

5. Blogging mitigated the inherent loneliness of writing. This is the point with which I began, but it bears restating: knowing I had readers for the blog–that is, you–made the whole process of writing the book much more enjoyable.

So, blogging–will I do it again with the next book?  I don’t know. I’m not 100% certain what the next book will be about. Will I continue this blog forever? No! I would like to see the sorts of questions I get during the book tour and other book events. Perhaps there are consistent questions from readers that I can answer here. I already have one question from a Girl Scout archivist about Mary Clarke’s will, and I promised to answer that here. So, if you have questions as you read the book, please send them to me.

The next few weeks will be great fun but ridiculously busy with travel and book talks (you can see where I’ll be if you check my website, www.stacycordery.com. Go to the Appearances tab). I will still have my classes to teach and committee work to do at Monmouth College, still have my family and friends to keep up with, and so forth. I expect the blog posts for the immediate future will either be more Short Bits about Daisy and her world or else me sharing the excitement of the book tour.

Either way, please know how grateful I am, dear blog readers, for your presence and your support. I hope you enjoy the book, the fruit of our shared endeavor.

Definitely not!

William Washington Gordon II was, from beginning to end, head-over-heels in love with Nellie Kinzie Gordon. They married on 21 December 1857. It was a case of opposites attracting. He was taciturn; she was outgoing. He was cautious; she was impetuous. He was a Southerner; she was Chicago Yankee. None of it mattered. Even in the very rough patch during the last years of the Civil War he still doted on her. Don’t take my word for it! Eavesdrop on some of his best lines from letters he wrote to her in the 1890s. They had been married almost forty years at this point!!!

• “I miss you very, very much and feel every day more and more the need of your companionship and presence.  I love you more than anybody or anything else in the world.  With millions of kisses, Your loving husband, Wm. W. Gordon.”  (1)
• “I dream of you every night now and long for you.”   (2)
• “I love you my darling wife with all my heart and soul and long to be with you to pet you and love you and it does me good to have you write that you love me.”  (3)
• “I can’t write you a long letter and I am too tired to write a sentimental letter.  When I see you I will show you that I love you by the petting and caressing and kissing that will be as sweet to me as it can be to you.  You know I love you and you must [not] be so silly as to think I care one iota for anyone else.”  (4)
• “I should dearly love for you to be at home, in fact every fibre of me is calling for you and your love….”  (5)
• “As I wasn’t able to write you yesterday I am sending you a night telegraphic message to tell you I love you and that I hope to be with you by Saturday or Sunday…with millions of kisses, Your loving Husband.” (6)

Not steamy enough for you?

It wasn’t for Willie, either!

In the autumn of 1896 he created a secret language of love to use when concluding his letters to his wife. It’s so secret that I cannot decipher it. Maybe you can! It centered around three words:  “silken silkweed skirling” or maybe “silken silkweed skirting.” His handwriting is difficult to decipher. Here are some examples of his sign-off:

• “Goodnight Silken your loving Husband.” (7)
• “Silken silkweed with a million kisses”  (8)

These do not always follow intimacies–more often these words are in the context of something mundane, like the business or politics he discusses with her, for example:  “It is 11 AM and I must close to go to Bank. Silken Skirling. Your loving Husband.” (9) Willie usually wrote “Silken Silkwood Skirling” either before or after his signature. Such notations go on into 1898–so it was a code he continued for at least two years.

It is easy to understand why he thought up a code: letters in the family were routinely sent around to all the Gordons. Daisy, for example, would write her parents, and they would share it with her grandmother and brothers before mailing it to one of her sisters. So, his reason for the secrecy was plain.

But what did “silken silkwood skirling” actually mean?

It meant that Willie Gordon loved his wife truly, deeply, passionately–physically.

Life-long Valentines, Nellie & Willie Gordon

I can’t prove that as a historian, alas, and that’s why that phrase does not appear in my book. But I am confident enough, from having read boxes and boxes and boxes of Gordon family correspondence, to know that this was Willie’s way of expressing all the profound yearning for his life mate that could not be put into words, or that could only approached by special words understood just by the two of them. Marvelous, isn’t it?

And in case you are wondering whether Nellie returned the sentiment, here are two telling sentences from a letter Juliette Low wrote to her mother in 1892: “I want [to see] you too very, very much, but I don’t think you would be as happy as if Papa could come with you.  All the time you were here before, you were counting the hours until you could return to him….”  (10)

Juliette Gordon Low may have had a disappointing marriage, but her parents sure seem to have been fabulously in love all their long lives together.

I hope you have a very Happy Valentine’s Day!

——————-

(1) William Washington Gordon II to Nellie Kinzie Gordon, 5 June 1894, Gordon Family Papers, MS318/42/14, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah Georgia.
(2) WWGII to NKG, 28 September [1896], GHS MS318/4/46.
(3) WWGII to NKG, 4 October 1896, GHS MS318/4/47.
(4) WWGII to NKG, 6 October [1896], GHS MS318/4/47.
(5) WWGII to NKG, 7 October 1896, GHS MS318/4/47.
(6) WWGII to NKG, 7 January 1896, GHS MS318/4/46.
(7) WWGII to NKG, 23 February 1896, GHS MS318/4/48.
(8) WWGII to NKG, 21 February 1897, GHS MS318/4/48.
(9) WWG to NKG, 7 October 1896, GHS MS318/4/47.
(10) Juliette Gordon Low to NKG, 18 March 1892, Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, Savannah, Georgia.
The Valentines have nothing to do with the Gordons, alas, and are just for your amusement. The last one comes from the California Historical Society’s blog (http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com). Photo of the Gordons used with the kind permission of the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace.

It was based on the trefoil used by Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts, and because of that, it clearly linked her Girl Scouts to the larger Scouting family.

On 22 November 1913, she applied for a patent, and it was granted to her on 10 February 1914. Here is her application:

Page One of Juliette Low's Patent

Page two of Juliette Low's Patent

And all was well until 1921.

By that year, the Girl Scouts had grown so tremendously since their founding in 1912 that Juliette Low had seen fit to step down as President. (There’s a whole fascinating story there, by the way.)  She was given the title “Founder.”

The new leaders–most of whom had years of experience as Girl Scout volunteers or paid staff–felt themselves quite able to lead what had become an extremely large, national organization. These efficient, practical, experienced professionals knew that they were running a beloved institution that had grown far beyond its one-woman roots. An immediately recognizable emblem of Girl Scouting was Daisy’s trefoil. The new leaders wanted control of the patent.

Juliette balked.

She had witnessed Agnes Baden-Powell’s difficulties–legal and personal–concerning Olave Baden-Powell’s takeover of the Girl Guides in the United Kingdom–the Girl Guides that Agnes had begun and nurtured. What seems inevitable to us today was not at all certain then. What if something went wrong at the top of the Girl Scouts, Juliette fretted? What if the organization’s new leaders–most of whom she esteemed and knew well–decided to cut her out of her organization? What if she was no longer consulted? What if she were just erased from the institution’s history?

These questions were the sort that sat like a dead weight on her chest, making normal breathing and right thinking impossible. They worried her and nagged at her, even though she knew they were partly unfounded. Still, Agnes’s cautionary example never left her mind. Juliette Low consulted family members. She agonized some more. Finally she had her brother Bill Gordon, who was an attorney, draw up a document transferring the patent to the Girl Scouts. But the document did something else, too.

The legal assignment laid out the following: “Whereas Juliette Low…is the owner and patentee of…a design for a ‘badge’, numbered 45,234…and whereas, Girl Scouts, Incorporated…is desirous of acquiring the ownership of said patents, and all rights and interest therein: and, whereas, the said Girl Scouts, Incorporated…has…agreed that the name of Juliette Low as Founder in America or as First President of the organization, should be kept and maintained in the constitution of the Girl Scouts, Incorporated, in accordance with the vote of the organization at its last Congress and should always appear on the stationary and that the name of Juliette Low be the signature on the enrollment cards or any substituted card or process for the same. Now therefore…I, the said Juliette Low, do hereby sell, assign and transfer, unto the said Girl Scouts, Incorporated…all the right, title and interest in and to…Patent No. 45,234…to be held and enjoyed by said Girl Scouts, Incorporated….” (1)

What does all that legal-speak mean?

It means that Juliette Low struck a deal that aided her peace of mind. She promised to hand over the patent. The Girl Scouts promised to keep her name in the Constitution, on the stationary, and on the membership cards, “always.”

Founding and growing the Girl Scouts was truly a remarkable accomplishment. This interesting episode in the story of an organization growing beyond its founder demonstrates both the justifiable pride Juliette Low took in her Girl Scouts and how completely she had come to identify herself with her organization. It also reminds us of how touchingly human she was.

Finally, it speaks well of the new leaders whom Juliette herself had, in many cases, identified and nurtured as Girl Scouts. They understood how profoundly important it was to their Founder that she not be forgotten, and they were kind enough to allow concrete evidence of that to be written into the legal patent transfer.

_______________

(1) “Assignment” attached to Fraser, Turk & Myers to Girl Scouts, Incorporated, 21 April 1921, Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, Savannah, Georgia.

“When I think,” Juliette wrote of Lou Hoover, “what splendid, definite work she has done for Scouts–The funds she has collected, the practical common sense she has shown, I realize what big things she can do, and I regret that she should be planted in the small circle of the Executive Committee like an oak in a flower pot.” (1)

Lou Henry Hoov

Lou Henry Hoover was a geologist by training, an exceptionally intelligent  and talented woman, and, in 1925, when Juliette wrote that letter, Hoover was also the immediate past president of the Girl Scouts. She had been elected in 1922 and had stepped down into the Executive Committee in 1925. As president, Lou Hoover had taken steps to professionalize the Girl Scouts, particularly at the level of top leadership. This shift from a national, volunteer staff to one with more paid positions was controversial. Even Lou Hoover understood that. She wrote to a friend, “to have a professional person come in to do the work makes it easy, but lessens the feeling of personal responsibility.” (2)

Juliette Low was sympathetic to both points of view. She saw the importance of paid leaders, at the national level particularly, because Girl Scouting had grown so rapidly during World War I. Still, she grieved the loss of what had been when Girl Scouting was run by a passionate and dedicated circle of women linked through long friendship.

The letter about Lou Hoover was written by Juliette Low to the then-current president, Sara Louise Arnold. Arnold came to the Girl Scouts from a career in higher education, and Juliette Low thought the world of her.  Juliette Low was pleased to have Sara Arnold at the helm in part because she believed Sara would move more slowly toward the establishment of the necessary bureaucracy. That is why she continued her letter about Lou Henry Hoover like this:

“My one consoling thought is, that you [Sara] are the gardener, and you will bring out all that is best in her leaves and branches, but its the roots and what grows deep down, that need attention, otherwise if not pruned they may break up the flower pot.” (3)

The early 1920s was a momentous and a contentious period for Girl Scouting. Juliette Low learned to let go of the day-to-day decisions as her organization took on a life of its own. Still, this letter demonstrates one of the traits that made her so exceptionally good at what she did. Juliette Low, for all of her quirkiness, understood people. She knew their strengths—sometimes even when they didn’t. She was alert to the moments when pride, shortsightedness, and meanness of spirit would push out loving kindness and compassion in decision-making. And even when she had to back away from daily management in 1920, she used her role as Founder judiciously, sensing that her words carried extra weight. Suggesting to President Arnold that she treat former President Hoover carefully and kindly, to encourage rather than alienate her—both for her good and the good of the organization—was characteristic of Juliette Low’s approach to personnel management and to friendship.

As First Lady of the United States, from 1929 to 1933, Lou Henry Hoover would be a true and visible supporter in her role of Honorary President of the Girl Scouts. And, in 1935, she would ascend a second time to the national presidency of the Girl Scouts. Lou Henry Hoover, that mighty oak, found the deep soil she needed to thrive in Girl Scouting.

Lou Henry Hoover with Girl Scouts

More on the 1920 transition in next Friday’s blog.

_______

(1) Juliette Gordon Low to Sara Louise Arnold, 25 May 1925, Juliette Gordon Low Papers, Box 10F2a, National Historic Preservation Center, Girl Scouts of the USA, New York, New York.
(2) Tammy M. Proctor, Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (Santa Barbara:  Praeger Press, 2009), 40.
(3) Low to Arnold, 25 May 1925.
Photos of Lou Henry Hoover from the Library of Congress.

I wrote a lot in the book about Abby and Mary, but not as much as I would have liked to. In future, I’ll fill in some of the background information on both women. For today, I thought it would be helpful to look at Abby’s childhood home and the house where Mary lived after her marriage. They are both historic sites, and, like Daisy’s own birthplace and the Low Home, you can go visit them.

These spaces matter because Daisy spent considerable time there. She created memories in those locales, and they drew her back all throughout her life.  They shaped her in the way that geography does. Seeing them helps to visualize Daisy’s life and allows a better understanding of her. So, here’s a look at the Lippitt Mansion and Hyde Hall.

The Lippitt Mansion in Providence, Rhode Island, is where Abby Lippitt grew up. Daisy and Mary both visited the Lippitt family and enjoyed tobogganing and ice skating in the winter and clam bakes and boat races in the summer. Daisy loved excursions with Abby’s extensive network of Providence friends and the outings with Abby’s glamorous brother Charles on the campus of Brown University where he was a student.

Abby Lippitt's home in Providence

If you click here, you can see more photos of this lovely home, which looks very much like it did when Daisy visited. If you live near or take a trip to Providence, you can go stand in these rooms and walk through the garden and try to view it through Daisy Low’s eyes. It is more difficult to recapture the sense of Providence at the turn of the twentieth century. It was a bustling, commercial town, proud of its history and still connected to the sea.

Downtown Providence, Rhode Island

Brown University campus

The three girls especially adored hiking and picnicking on nearby Mount Desert Island in Maine. They thought of Mt. Desert as their own special island.

View of Mt. Desert Island

Mt. Desert's rocky shoreline

Abby Lippitt was an athlete and sports enthusiast, and her happiest times were always outdoors. Meanwhile, Mary Carter was a more of a philosopher. Like Daisy, Mary’s religion was a primary source of strength and comfort. Mary loved reading and art, and unlike Abby, the city girl, Mary preferred more a more bucolic existence. Upon her marriage to George Hyde Clarke, she moved into his imposing family home, Hyde Hall.

Hyde Hall, where Mary lived after her marriage

Interior of Hyde Hall

Hyde Hall’s website contains more photos.  Click here.

Hyde Hall sits on the shores of Lake Otsego by Cooperstown, New York. Cooperstown was and is a charming town surrounded by the extraordinary natural beauty of New York. It was the home of novelist James Fenimore Cooper, and today boasts the Baseball Hall of Fame and nearby Glimmerglass Opera.

Lake Otsego

Old Cooperstown, 1890

Mary and George Clarke refurbished Hyde Hall and raised a family there. Daisy visited them often and knew Cooperstown well. When she was with them, Daisy worshiped at the church where the Clarkes were married, Christ Episcopal Church. Like Hyde Hall, Christ Church has a long and fascinating history connected to many relatives of Mary Clarke. The chapel, for instance, was a made into a memorial to her sister, Marcia. The loss of a younger sister is one very sad thing that Daisy and Mary had in common.

Christ Episcopal Church, Cooperstown

Next month, when you read Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts, you will be able to summon to your mind’s eye these photos of two very important places in Daisy’s life. I hope this will contribute to your reading pleasure.

_____

Brown University photo from Rhode Island US GenWeb Project.
Hyde Hall photo from http://shermaniablog.blogspot.com. Interior shot from hydehall.org.
Map of Cooperstown from Katherine E. Chaison, “Plot Development, or E. F. Beadle’s Adventures in Building Suburban Homes in Late Nineteenth-Century New York,” New York History, Winter 2007.
Photo of Christ Church by Amy R. Gundrum in her article “Memorializing Mothers: Stained-Glass Windows, Female Empowerment, and Religion in Cooperstown, New York,” New York History, Winter 2007 .
Other photos in the public domain.

Today's blog author, Juliette Low's grandniece, Margaret Seiler

In my family, Juliette Gordon Low is known as “Aunt Daisy.” My mother, Margaret Gordon Seiler 
(“Peggy”), is now 88 years old and the last surviving niece of Daisy Low. She’s also the last little girl to 
grow up in the beautiful house in Savannah that locals call “The Birthplace.” “It’s my birthplace, too!”
my mother would say. Mom was born at 10 E. Oglethorpe in an upstairs bedroom, just like her aunt.  
She was born in 1923—Daisy died just four years later. Mom’s only memory of her aunt is when she 
was “riding” on one of the stone lions in front of the home Daisy lived in after her marriage, the Andrew
 Low House. She says she called out, “Look at me, Aunt Daisy! Look at me!” but Daisy did not turn to look 
at her. Mom remembers someone leaning down to say, “She can’t hear you. She’s deaf.”

Margaret's mother (Daisy's niece), Margaret Gordon Seiler, in 2002

Mom’s father, Arthur Gordon, was one of Daisy’s younger brothers. He was the youngest of six Gordon
 children and was a close confidante of Daisy’s—many of the stories we all know about her today were
 originally told by my grandfather. I’m sorry that I never got to meet him—he died when my mother was 
only 18. One of my favorite stories about Aunt Daisy is the one about the party she gave for my Aunt 
Mary Stuart (Mom’s older sister) when she made her debut. The party was in March and it was to be
 held in her garden. It was unseasonably cold in Savannah that year and the camellias did not bloom in
 time. So Daisy sent friends and servants out all over town to “borrow” camellias from other people’s 
trees and have them tied on her own! Another time she borrowed a piano from my grandparents
 without telling them—my grandmother came home to find men carrying it down the steps. It turns out 
Daisy was having a party and she just sent for it—she said she knew if she asked, the answer might be 
no. Her strong will and determination were sometimes a trial for her family, but of course they served her
 very well.

Arthur and Margaret Gordon, flanked by their friends

Another well-known story about Daisy is that she once stood on her head in a Girl Scout meeting to 
show off her new Girl Scout shoes. It was a Gordon family tradition to stand on one’s head on birthdays 
to show how young and virile you still were. I have one of my grandfather on his 55th birthday standing 
on his head on the beach outside Savannah.

Daisy Low's brother, age 55, standing on his head!

My mother was a Girl Scout for a few years–her mother did not push her to stay with it very long but she does remember being trotted out in her uniform for Girl Scout events in Savannah. I was a Brownie when we lived in Manila, the Philippines, in the 1960s, where my father was working. I have a picture of Mom with Imelda Marcos, the well-known wife of the dictator, at a national Girl Scout conference! I was also a Girl Scout for a couple of years after we moved back to the States and lived in New Jersey. My mother led the troop one year and I remember meeting a couple of times with a sister troop, all African American, from neighboring Newark. I also remember Mom speaking to local troops about her Aunt Daisy.

I now live in Brooklyn, New York, and have two daughters. Both my girls joined troops here in New York City and enjoyed being Scouts for a few years. My older daughter got a real thrill when she and I flew down to Savannah to witness my mother christen the Juliette Gordon Low ferry boat. Mom fell down some stairs while staying with my cousins and did not want to walk down the plank so she asked Livia, then 9, to christen the boat for her!

I am so looking forward to reading all the new books coming out about my Great-Aunt Daisy. We are 
all so proud of her. I like to think my daughters have some of her grit and character, as well as her 
eccentricity. On March 12, I hope to be in Savannah with some of my family to celebrate the 100th 
anniversary of the Girl Scouts where it all began.

_____

Photo of the ferryboat from Wikimedia. The other photos belong to Margaret Seiler and are used with her kind permission.

Daisy was who she was thanks in large part to her extraordinary mother. Nellie Gordon was a force to be reckoned with. She was intelligent, persuasive, commonsensical, driven, and civic-minded. In 1883, when the Central of Georgia Railroad Company and the Savannah city fathers sought to honor her husband’s father, they decided to erect the monument on Wright Square, despite the fact that Wright Square already featured a memorial—to Tomochichi, the famous Yamacraw leader whose help made the English settlement of Georgia possible.

Chief Tomochichi and nephew

Tomochichi provided wise mediation between the Native Americans and the English colonists, led by James Oglethorpe. In 1734, Tomochichi traveled with Oglethorpe back to England where he requested official acknowledgement of the Yamacraw and their rights, and the establishment of schools for Yamacraw and Creek children. When he returned, his testimony convinced other tribes to work with Oglethorpe rather than to resist English encroachment. Oglethorpe counted on Tomochichi’s diplomatic powers with other Native peoples as well as with the Spanish settlers in the vicinity. Tomochichi’s commitment to peaceful relations all around helped to further the success of the young Georgia colony. When he died in 1739, English Georgians mourned the passing of a friend. He was laid to rest in Savannah’s Percival Square, under a burial mound of stones.

Percival Square was later renamed Wright Square, and it was directly over the grave of Tomochichi that the Central of Georgia planned to place its memorial to William Washington Gordon I.

Nellie Gordon had a problem with that.

She was, after all, the granddaughter of John Kinzie, a Chicagoan well-known in his time for his friendship with Native Americans. Kinzie and his son, John Harris Kinzie (Nellie’s father) spoke Native American languages, traded with many tribes in the Northwest Territory, worked together in diplomatic and military endeavors. Nellie’s mother, Juliette Magill Kinzie, was the author of Wau-Bun: The “Early Day” in the North-West, which told the story of how she and John Harris Kinzie had settled at Fort Winnebago in Detroit because he was the government’s Indian agent. Nellie had thus grown up with an uncommon but deeply held respect for Native Americans. It was a complicated set of emotions and compulsions behind her desire to maintain a suitable memorial to Tomochichi, but Nellie set out to make it so.

Nellie Kinzie Gordon

Using her network of friends at the Georgia chapter of the Colonial Dames–which she had just established–Nellie Gordon determined to place a large piece of Georgia granite in Wright Square with a plaque noting Tomochichi’s significance. It would be the organization’s first public service. According to the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia:

“Nellie wrote to the Stone Mountain Co. in Atlanta asking them the price of a large boulder of Georgia granite that could serve as a monument. The company replied that they had the perfect thing—a huge granite boulder– and they would be delighted to send it as a gift to such a worthy cause, and, furthermore, since General Gordon had been a president of the railroad, there would be no shipping charges.

Nellie replied politely and thanked the Stone Mountain Co. for their generous offer but explained that the ladies of the Colonial Dames wanted this to be their own contribution to the community so would the company please send a bill. The bill arrived shortly afterwards and was for the sum of one dollar, “payable on the Day of Judgment.” Nellie wrote back and explained that she and “the other ladies would be entirely too busy attending to their own affairs on that momentous day,” so she enclosed a dollar bill to settle the matter.”

Nellie Gordon’s goal became a reality. One hundred and sixty years after Tomochichi’s death, the Colonial Dames memorialized his remarkable life and spirit with the boulder and the plaque that reads:

In memory
of Tomo-chi-chi
the Mico of the Yamacraws
the companion of Oglethrope
and the friend and ally of the
colony of Georgia
this stone has been here placed
by the Georgia Society of the
Colonial Dames of America
1739-1899

Tomochichci Memorial in Wright Square

Tomochichi Rock Plaque

_______________________

To read more, see:

• The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia website. http://nscdaga.org
• Russell, Preson, and Barbara Hines. Savannah: A History of Her People Since 1733. Savannah:  Frederic C. Beil, 1992.
• Sweet, Julie Ann. “Tomochichi (ca. 1644-1739). The New Georgia Encyclopedia Online. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-689
• Todd, Helen. Tomochichi: Indian Friend of the Georgia Colony. Atlanta: Cherokee Publishing, 1977.
• “Tomochichi United States Courthouse,” Congressional Record, 11 May 2004, 8990-8991.
• Photo of Nellie Gordon from georgiahistory.com; photo of Tomochichi from wikimedia; photo of memorial from http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu, Mary Stakes, photographer; photo of plaque also from http://georgiainfo.galileo.usg.edu, Ed Jackson, photographer.