Founders of Scouting Bios
Founders of Scouting Bios
Lord Robert Baden-Powell
As a youth, Robert Baden-Powell greatly enjoyed the outdoors, learning about nature and how to live in the wilderness. After returning as a military hero from service in Africa, Lord Baden-Powell discovered taht English boys were reading the manual on stalking and survival in the wilderness that he had written fro his regiment. Gathering ideas from his friends, Ernest Thompson Seton, Daniel Carter Beard, and others, he wrote a manual as a non-military manual, calling it Scouting for Boys. To test his ideas, Baden-Powell brought together 22 boys to camp at Brownsea Island. This campout was a historic sucess and resulted to what we call Scouting. In turn the imagination and inspeiration of Baden-Powell, later proclaeimed Chief Scout of the World, brought scouting to all of the world.
Ernest Thomas Seton
Seton, Born in Scotland, immigrated to America as a young boy in the 1880's. He had such a fascination with the wilderness, which led him to become a naturalist, artist, and an author. Through this he influenced both young and old. Seton established a youth organization called the Woodcraft Indians, and his background of outdoor skills and interest in youth made him a logical choice for the position of first Chief Scout of the BSA in 1910. His many volumes of Scoutcraft and Naturalism became an integral part of Scoutign, and his intelligence and enthusiasm helped turn an idea into reality.
Daniel Carter Beard
Daniel Carter Beard was the pioneering spirit of the Boy Scouts of America. He was a woodsman, illustrator, and naturalist. Already being 60 years old when the Boy Scouts of America was formed, he vecame a founder and merged it with his own boys' organization, the Sons of Daniel Boone. As the first national Scout commissioner, Beard helped design the original Scout uniform and introduced the elements of the First Class Scout. "Uncle Dan" as he was also called, will be remembered as a coloful figure dresse in buckskin who helped form Scouting in the U.S.
William D. Boyce
In 1909, Chicago publisher William D. Boyce lost his way in a dense London fog. A boy came to his aid, guided him, and refused tip, explaining that as a Scout he would not take a tip for doing a Good Turn. This gesture by an unknown Scout inspired a meeting with Robert Baden-Powell, the British founder of the Boy Scouts. As a result, William Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America on February 8, 1910. He also created the Lone scouts, which merged with the Boy Scouts of America in 1924.
James E. West
James E. West was appointed the first Chief Scout Executive of the B.S.A in 1911. Although orphaned and physically handicapped, he had the perseverance to graduate from law school and become a successful attorney. This same determination provided the impetus to help build Scouting into the largest and most effective youth organization in the world. When he retired in 1943, Dr. West was recognized throughout the country as the true architect of the B.S.A.
Special Thanks to the staff at Camp Falling Rock for the use of this information that they use in their campfire program.
