Eagle Award, Boy Scouts of America, ca. 1967 Experimental Camp According to Boy Scouts of America administrator Edgar M. Robinson, planning for the first “official” camp had started nearly a year prior to the 1910 creation of the Scouts. The foresighted YMCA official...
Life Badge, Boy Scouts of America, 1965 Present at the Creation I have written about the creation of American Scouting from Seton’s point of view in my book about him. Here I want to examine a different perspective, that of Edgar M. Robinson, the actual organizer. I...
Star badge, Boy Scouts of America, 1964 Short Misleading History of the Boy Scouts Here is the well known if incorrect short history of the Boy Scouts of America: The British general Robert Baden-Powell invented paramilitary Scouting out of whole cloth in 1908 with...
“In days like these one can accept or assume no higher or better mission than that of peace messenger, a personal messenger of peace and understanding among the nations.” Ernest Thompson Seton, 1936, A Peace Mission to Europe Almost eighty-six years ago,...
The novelist Anya Seton has received well deserved attention in a new biography by Lucinda H. MacKethan. My first encounter with a Seton came at a very young age. My mother’s extensive collection of novels included several by Anya. The daughter of two writers – Ernest...
Wild Animals I Have Known, published by Gibbs Smith, 2020, copyrighted cover art by Seth Lucas How many copies of Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton are in print? Hundreds of thousands at least if not more in many editions. Seton’s best seller was...
