First Boy Scout Troop
Burnside, Pulaski County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Before Boy Scouts of America was organized, 1910, a troop of 15 had been formed here, spring of 1908, by Mrs. Myra Greeno Bass. Using the official handbook of English scouting, she guided them hiking and camping, like scouting today. Known as Eagle Troop,… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
Two years before the Boy Scouts of America was chartered, a schoolteacher named Myra Greeno Bass gathered fifteen boys in the Cumberland River town of Burnside, Kentucky, in the spring of 1908 and began leading them on hikes and camping trips. Working from the official handbook of the British scouting movement that Robert Baden-Powell had launched only a year earlier, she taught woodcraft and outdoor skills that would look entirely familiar to a scout today. Her group called itself the Eagle Troop, and it predated the national American organization that would soon sweep up boys across the country.
Why it matters
It marks a grassroots, woman-led beginning for one of America's most enduring youth movements, showing how the scouting idea took root in small-town America even before it had a national name.
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Related people
- · Myra Greeno Bass
Related events
- · Founding of the Eagle Troop (1908)
- · Organization of the Boy Scouts of America (1910)
Themes & tags
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