07/17/2026
Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts of the USA in 1912. Born in Savannah, Georgia, she went by “Daisy” with her family. Highly educated and widely traveled, she was a model nineteenth-century debutante.
She moved to England after her marriage to William Mackay Low. There, she met General Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the British Boy Scouts. Inspired by the General’s organization, she formed her first group of Girl Scouts in Scotland in 1911, then two in London and one in her hometown in the U.S.
Troops rapidly sprang up across the United States. Low’s Girl Scouts of the USA, an organization in the vanguard of the early moments of the woman suffrage movement, continues to inspire girls with “the highest ideals of character, conduct, patriotism, and service that they may become happy and resourceful citizens.”
🖼️: “Juliette Gordon Low” by Edward Hughes, 1887. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America; frame conserved with funds from the Smithsonian Women's Committee.