The Family Behind the Girl Scouts of America: Lives of the Kinzie-Gordon Clan, 1750s-1950s by Melissa Langley Biegert

My new book is about more than just the two-hundred-year saga of Girl Scout founder Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low’s family. The book also reflects my own thirty-five-year love affair with this subject matter. 

In some ways this love affair goes back even further, to my days as a Girl Scout, but the writing process began as a graduate research paper during the spring of 1991. Inspired by the influential role that Girl Scouting had played in my young life, as well as the lives of my mother and my closest friends, I started researching the movement’s origins and philosophies. That journey took me deep into the life of the Girl Scout founder.

Eventually that graduate paper expanded into a doctoral dissertation, then numerous academic papers and presentations.. 

Over the years, the subject matter kept expanding. Prior to her greatest achievement, Daisy experienced a lifetime of torturous ordeals, including wartime deprivations, tragic deaths, dramatic hearing loss, infertility, depression, and a scandalous divorce battle that dragged on for years.

Understanding all the events that shaped her life required understanding British and American society in the 19th and 20th centuries. My dissertation focused on how Daisy’s own personal challenges helped shape her approach to Scouting for girls.

Over time, I became obsessed with the question of how on earth she was able to overcome all the personal obstacles she faced to create what became the twentieth century’s most successful organization for young women. I eventually concluded that the emotional support provided by her parents and siblings played a major role in her success. 

Even during the most challenging days of her life, perhaps especially during the most challenging days of her life, Juliette Low’s parents and siblings stood beside her with unconditional love. Compared to other wealthy and influential families of the same era such as the Astors and the Vanderbilts, the Gordons exhibited unusually stable and healthy relationships with one another.

Yet looking a little more closely at their family history, I was puzzled as to how they managed to get to that point. Daisy’s parents—Chicago native Nellie Kinzie Gordon and the Savannah native William Washington Gordon II—experienced much discord during their early relationship over their differing views on slavery. The U.S. Civil War, in which the Kinzies fought for the North and the Gordons for the South, almost completely ruptured this marriage. 

How, I wondered, did this family manage to go from destruction to strength in one generation? That led me down the rabbit role of trying to understand Daisy’s parents, then their parents and grandparents as well. With each layer of uncovered generational trauma came a new appreciation for the miracle of the family unit that enabled Daisy to create something transformative for other young women who needed to be prepared for whatever life threw at them.

Luckily for my research, the Kinzie-Gordon family left behind literally thousands of documents that helped me piece together their stories. They wrote letters constantly and apparently never threw away a shred of paper. The sheer volume of documents preserved in archives enabled me to get inside their heads, telling their stories in the form of narrative nonfiction. Even better, I was able to capture their voices by using their own words as dialogue. 

Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with this complicated Scottish-descended clan of amazing women, scandalous rogues, and flawed politicians with daddy issues who shaped the course of American history. Theirs is a story filled with more plot twists, romances, murders, kidnappings, wars, tragedies and triumphs than any fictional television or book series.

For fans of those genres, I like to describe my book as “The Forsytes meets The Gilded Age, spanning from Outlander through Bridgerton and Downton Abbey, but all true!” I hope that all who read it fall in love with the story as much as I have.

Finally, a word of inspiration for all of my fellow female writers . . . 

Many people don’t realize that Daisy was in her fifties when she founded the Girl Scouts of America in 1912. Less than fifteen years later she would be dead from breast cancer, but everyone who knew her agreed that those last years were the happiest and most fulfilling of her existence.

Now I, also in my fifties, am seeing the fruition of my life-long love affair with the Kinzie-Gordon clan. The final step of this journey from obsessive personal interest to published book came about largely due to support from another female author, who heard me give a talk about the subject at a women’s history month event.

Insisting that I really needed to get this story published, she connected me to an editor at McFarland, which had produced her first book. The result was a contract that led to publication. So for all of you who may have been struggling in the trenches for years or think that you are past the point of being able to publish your best work, take it from me and the founder of the Girl Scouts that it is never too late to hit your creative stride. Keep on writing and supporting other women! 

—

https://thefamilybehindthegirlscouts.com/

https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Family-Behind-the-Girl-Scouts-of-America/61589351949641/

—

Dr. Melissa Langley Biegert is an award-winning writer, historian, and public speaker who lives in Austin, Texas. She completed her undergraduate degree and post-doc studies at Harvard University, Master’s at Vanderbilt University, and doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a Girl Scout Gold Award recipient, lifetime member of the organization, and proud mom of two Eagle Scouts. Her favorite writing partner is her rescue chihuahua, Bowzer.

The Family Behind the Girl Scouts of America: Lives of the Kinzie-Gordon Clan, 1750s-1950s

In 1912, Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low launched what became one of the 20th century’s most successful organizations for girls, eclipsing the generations of male politicians, business leaders, and scoundrels who had brought prosperity and notoriety to her family. Her parents’ marriage united two leading American families–the Northern Kinzies and the Southern Gordons–and nearly ruptured because of the U.S. Civil War, yet their unwavering love and support, as well as that of her siblings, helped her to overcome physical challenges and a scandalous divorce battle that shocked Victorian society.

Spanning 200 years across multiple continents and told for the first time in its entirety, this account of the Kinzie-Gordon family encompasses Scottish immigrants, numerous famous figures, Indigenous cultures, and enslaved workers. Their story reflects the history of the United States itself through tragedy, triumph, and love.

BUY HERE

 

 

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing