The First and The Best

After William Tecumseh Sherman finished his March to the Sea with the capture of Savannah in 1864, he paid a visit to Nellie Gordon, an old friend he knew in Chicago before she got married and moved south. It must have been awkward since Nellie’s husband was off serving as an officer in the Confederate Army fighting Sherman’s troops. 

As the adults reminisced, Nellie’s four-year-old daughter — Daisy, they called her — climbed onto the general’s lap, staring intently. He asked the little girl what was wrong. She told him she couldn’t see his horns or tail. Now he was the one who looked perplexed. “Well, aren’t you that old devil Sherman?” she asked.

Sherman must have laughed heartily. He had already sent his telegram to President Lincoln presenting Savannah as a Christmas gift. What he couldn’t have realized yet was that the child in his lap was an even greater gift.

Daisy, whose given name was Juliette, would grow up to be Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts. Her organization, founded in 1912 with 18 girls in Savannah, would have a huge impact on the lives of America’s women. Today, Girl Scouts alums number more than 50 million worldwide.

That spirited toddler in General Sherman’s lap went on to have a childhood full of hijinks and adventures. Daisy soon became “crazy Daisy” to family and neighborhood playmates; and though her later education as a teen in fine girls’ academies and finishing schools in the North and South made a lady of her, she never lost her sense of fun and daring. Years later to show off new Girl Scouts shoes, she tucked her skirt between her knees and stood on her head, wagging her shoes proudly.

Born to privilege in 1860, Juliette experienced her family’s share of hardship during four years of the Civil War, and in the new social order that followed it. Her parents rooted her in core values: duty, obedience, loyalty, respect and service to others. She loved writing poetry and plays, painting, and creating new things — a neighborhood newspaper and a club to help the needy.

“Juliette’s parents always emphasized the work ethic and what they could do for their community and society to make it better,” says Shannon Browning-Mullis, executive director of the Juliette Gordon Low birthplace. “That was not part of her life in the U.K., which was much more frivolous …. She grew up very much feeling like when you see something wrong or see something that needs to be done, you roll up your sleeves, you get your hands dirty and do it.”

Yet years later with a frayed marriage — Juliette couldn’t bear children, and her husband Willy gambled, drank and womanized resulting in the couple’s separation in 1902 — and a widow at 45, Juliette was rich but lost. So, she threw herself into things she loved: painting, sculpture, metalworking. She traveled the world.

Then, in 1911, she found scouting. She met Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Boy Scouts in England, and his sister, Agnes, who founded a sister organization, Girl Guides. These were organizations for young people instilling values, teaching physical skills and introducing them to the outdoors — all things Juliette loved.

When she returned to Savannah in 1912, she was on fire with a new sense of purpose. She phoned her cousin, Nina Pape, who ran a local girls’ school, and said, “I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight.”

Juliette thought big — and the astonishing thing was starting with that phone call, that’s exactly what she did. With the help of friends and connections in Savannah, she enrolled 18 girls in the new organization. By 1920, there were almost 70,000. Ten years later there were 200,000 Girl Scouts. Today, with 3.7 million girls and adults, it is the largest organization for girls worldwide.

“The incredible thing is Girl Scouts grows so quickly, and it grows that quickly without social media, without email, without television, without mobile phones,” says Browning-Mullis. “To make this organization grow and spread, she needed to get lots and lots of sponsors, lots and lots of well-known people into the organization to serve as sponsors.”

Juliette traveled the country using her many social connections, talking to business leaders, governors and presidents, showing them that today’s girls were the country’s future — that they should be encouraged to grow their talents and develop their leadership. “She didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Browning-Mullis explains, “because she needed everybody she knew to donate to Girl Scouts, or to lead a troop, or to be part of the organization.”

Female leadership was not an easy sell in the early 20th century, especially in conservative, Southern Savannah. And outdoor activity was considered unladylike. Why would women want that for their daughters? Browning-Mullis thinks Low’s genius was to use societal norms to disrupt societal norms.

“And so, she does the most brilliant thing — she invites them to beautiful, elaborate tea parties, and she uses those social norms to convince them to be part of an organization that allows them to break out of those social norms. And I just think it’s that ingenuity and creativeness and using what she had, using resources wisely, that really made the organization so successful.”

Juliette would have only 15 years to plant and grow the Girls Scouts movement. She died of breast cancer in 1927. By her request she was buried in her Girl Scouts uniform. Into its pocket was placed a telegram from the Girl Scouts national board: “You are not only the first Girl Scout, but the best Girl Scout of them all.”

Seen in our April 2025 issue of Augusta magazine.