Discovering Girl Scouts Founder's Mackinac Connection
To the Editor:

In anciticipation of our upcoming trip to Savannah, Georgia, to visit Juliette Low's birthplace, I am reading "Lady from Savannah - The Life Story of Juliette Low," about the woman who founded the Girl Scouts in 1912.

According to authors Gladys Denny Shultz and Daisy Gordon, in 1818, Juliette's maternal grandfather, John Harris Kinzie, was "taken to Mackinac by his father (John Kinzie) and indentured to John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company. John's day began at 5 a.m. and ended at supper time. After five years he was transferred to Prairie du Chien."

A few pages later we learn that, although he did not spend one day in formal school, "John was by no means an ignoramus. When he went to Mackinac Island at the age of 15, he lived with the Robert Stuarts. Mrs. Stuart, like Juliette's mother, was a highly cultivated woman and made it her responsibility to round out John's sketchy education. In the evening, after the boy's long day at the trading post, she had him read aloud to her; then they would talk over what he had read."

About Juliette's mother, Nellie Kinzie Gordon: "One of the most treasured recollections Nellie retained of her childhood, however, was the time her father took her with him on a trip to the Northern Great Lakes. He had been one of the discoverers of the copper lodes on Lake Superior, having located the famous Ontonagon mine in Michigan... Nellie had the experience of traveling by Indian canoe, as her forebears had done so often...On the way back they stopped over at Mackinac Island and she visited her father's boyhood stamping ground."

I have found this fascinating and I would recommend this book to both Girl Scouts and history buffs.

Susan Horn

St. Ignace

Editor's note: Susan Horn works for Mackinac Island Carriage Tours and is a troop leader for St. Ignace Girl Scout Troop 340 and St.Ignace area service unit manager for the Girl Scouts of Peninsula Waters Council, which serves the Upper Peninsula. She is one of 20 people from St. Ignace and 40 from the Council that is making a trip to Savannah to visit Juliette Low's birthplace June 22 through July 2.