Helen Storrow

Helen Osborne Storrow (September 22, 1864 – November 12, 1944) was an American philanthropist, early Girl Scout leader, and chair of the World Committee of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) for eight years. She founded the First National Girl Scout Leaders' Training in Long Pond, Massachusetts; headed the leaders' training camp at Foxlease, UK; and donated the first of the WAGGGS World centres, Our Chalet.

She was married to James J. Storrow, a banker, who was the second national president of the Boy Scouts of America.

Storrow provided a million dollars toward improvements of the Boston Embankment along the Charles River. The waterfront park was officially renamed the Storrow Memorial Embankment, but continues to be known as the Esplanade.

Family and progressive roots Born Helen Osborne on September 22, 1864, in Auburn, New York, she was the youngest of David Munson ("Munson") Osborne and Eliza Wright's four children. Her parents were raised in modest circumstances, but by the time of Storrow's birth, Munson Osborne had become one of the most prominent men in Cayuga County. Storrow and her siblings enjoyed a happy and privileged upbringing, attending private schools, traveling through Europe, and spending summers at their home on Owasco Lake at Willow Point, New York.

Storrow's eldest sister, Emily (1854–1944), married Springfield banker Frederick Harris; her next eldest sister, Florence (1856–1877), was described as a gentle girl, extremely fond of animals, who died of typhoid fever, leaving behind a fiancée, Samuel Bowles; her only brother, Thomas Mott Osborne (1859–1926), inherited his father's business, and became a stalwart advocate of prison reform.

Their father, Munson Osborne, was a farmer's son from Rye, New York.

Having been raised in a family of social reformers, Eliza (Wright) Osborne was stubborn, self-reliant, witty and outspoken, a far less conventional figure than her spouse. She was the eldest child of David and Martha (Coffin) Wright. Both parents were descended from Quakers who traveled to the new world with William Penn. The Wrights and their daughter, Eliza Osborne, were loyal friends of the Underground Railroad's famed “conductor," Harriet Tubman. They helped Tubman settle in Auburn in 1860, and provided Tubman with odd jobs, enabling her to support her family. Martha Wright helped to organize the first suffrage convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, prepared the final draft of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Declaration of Sentiments, and briefly served as president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association before her death in 1874. Martha's role in the suffrage movement has been largely overshadowed due to the fame of her older sister, the feminist, abolitionist, and Quaker minister, Lucretia (Coffin) Mott.

The Wrights lived at just a walking distance from the Osborne mansion, and played a significant role in the upbringing of the Osborne children, including Storrow. David Wright came to live with the Osbornes a few years after Martha's death, and spent the remainder of his life with Eliza's family, dying at a ripe old age in 1897.

Storrow's aunt, Ellen (Wright) Garrison, was also involved in the fight for suffrage. She was an active member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, campaigning with her sister-in-law, Fanny Garrison Villard. The younger Garrison was an abolitionist, pacifist, an opponent of Jim Crow laws and the Chinese Exclusion Act, an advocate of women's suffrage, Henry George's single tax, free trade, equality for Freedmen and immigrants, and a founding member of the American Anti-Imperialist League. His younger brother, Francis Jackson Garrison, served as the first president of the Boston chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. Storrow's cousin, Eleanor Garrison, graduated from Smith College, and worked for Carrie Chapman Catt as an organizer at the New York office of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Continuing the family tradition of social reform, Eleanor later worked for several years as secretary of Armitage House Settlement in New York City.

Death of Munson Osborne In the mid-1880s, Munson Osborne sued Cyrus McCormick for patent infringement. A tireless worker, at age eighty, Eliza led a delegation of women to Albany where they spoke before the State Legislature, lobbying for suffrage. At the time of her father's death, she was spending most of each year at a boarding school in Springfield, Massachusetts run by a Miss Katherine Howard. Though James was just one year behind her brother Thomas at Harvard, the Storrows met not in Massachusetts, but in Switzerland, while attempting to scale the Matterhorn.

The shy and studious James, was described as "unassuming," but "magnetic", "a born leader and a keen judge of man; unassuming, yet in his quiet way exerting a strong influence over his fellows...a dominating personality." However, behind his stiff mien lay an idealistic nature and a keen sense of humor. His father, also named James Jackson Storrow, was a prominent attorney, whose clients included Alexander Graham Bell and the government of Venezuela; his mother, Ann Maria Perry, was the grandchild of naval hero Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, and a distant cousin of President Thomas Jefferson.

James graduated in 1888 from Harvard Law School, and for twelve years was employed as a corporate lawyer.

The Storrows longed for a large family, but had only one child, James Jackson Storrow Jr., who was born on November 20, 1892, in Boston, Massachusetts.

When the hoped-for larger family did not materialize, they extended the mantles of "Aunt" and "Uncle" to include not only their own nieces and nephews, but also their son's companions and the children of friends. Helen wrote warmly of those precious years and the activities they sponsored for a stream of youthful guests at the country home she and Jim eventually built on a hillside in Lincoln.

From the earliest days of their marriage, the Storrows were interested in the settlement movement and charity work, helping to build playgrounds in poor immigrant neighborhoods, sponsoring night schools, vocational schools, and evening centers. James also took a keen interest in civil service reform, educational reform and legal reform, spearheading an effort to diversify the makeup of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, and helping to establish a juvenile court. Storrow's initial focus was on children's charities, beginning with the playground movement. Distressed by the number of children being killed and injured in accidents while playing in the streets, Boston philanthropists began constructing playgrounds. The ward suffered from the highest infant mortality rates, child mortality rates, and homicide rates, in Boston. The daughter of scientist and Harvard professor, Louis Agassiz, Shaw pioneered the kindergarten movement in the United States. The school provided classes in printing, pottery, stone carving, woodwork, woodcarving, woodturning, cement work, sewing and dressmaking; there was also an athletic club, a debating club, a drama club, music lessons, reading rooms, a kindergarten, and a nursery for infants belonging to working mothers.

Saturday evening girls

It was at North Bennet Street Industrial School that Storrow met Edith Guerrier. Meyer Bloomfield, social reformers Vida Scudder and Robert Woods, and many doctors, lawyers, judges, librarians, artists, rabbis, clergy, performance artists, suffragists, business leaders, and writers spoke to the S.E.G. on a variety of classical and contemporary issues. A naturally exuberant, enthusiastic woman, during the club's early years Storrow became a familiar figure, forming lasting friendships with several of the girls, and providing the club with invaluable financial support.

During a tour of Europe in 1906, funded by Storrow, Guerrier and her partner, Edith Brown, had an epiphany – they would return to America and develop a pottery. The enterprise would be operated by Brown, Guerrier, and the Saturday Girls, providing the young women with employment and a skill set.

Scouting Storrow was introduced in 1915 to the founder of scouting in America, Juliette Gordon Low. It may have been this encounter that sparked her interest in the scouting movement. Whatever the reason, not long afterward, Storrow began holding Girl Scout training courses at her summer home in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Decades later, Scouts were still flocking to the camp for training.

In July 1932, Storrow provided the Girl Scouts with a retreat in Switzerland. She purchased a chalet just outside Adelboden, in the Bernese Oberland. Serving as Second Vice President of the national organization was none other that Lou Henry Hoover, wife of future president, Herbert Hoover.

After the initial founding of the American Girl Scouts organization, there were numerous squabbles with the older organization of British Girl Guides, including arguments over uniforms, territorial disputes, and an unsuccessful attempt by the Girl Guides to convince the Girl Scouts to change their name; the British organization considered the term "Scout" too masculine for a girls' movement. Storrow responded to the latter argument by suggesting that, instead, the Girl Guides should refer to themselves as Scouts:

poem quote|Our name, Girl Scouts, is very dear to us, and seems to us the logical name. The terms scout and scouting apply to girls and their activities as appropriately as to boys, and represent the same laws and ideals. The idea that we are trying to make boys out of the girls is soon dissipated when the girls show their increased usefulness at home...

The suggestion to change the name met with the determined opposition from both our girls and their officers, and we shall in all probability remain scouts. I wish most heartily that we might share the same name. Would the Guides consider changing? I wish they would.

Storrow is one of only three American women ever granted the Silver Fish Award by Lady Baden-Powell. Storrow later said:

For several years we considered it only funny that we should be pirouetting and hopping about it in arabesque positions, and were ashamed to try to dance really well; but gradually we lost the feeling of self-consciousness and enjoyed it too much not to try to do our best. Storrow devoted increasingly lengthy amounts of time to providing lessons in English folk dance. A year later, she volunteered to instruct the Fathers' and Mothers' Folk Dancing Club at the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston. In 1915, Storrow helped found, and served as director, of the American branch of the English Folk Dance Society, now known as the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre.

She believed that everyone's life, be they young or old, male or female, could be enriched by dance. She wrote:

As a means of exercise for girls and boys, and to break up snobbery and self-consciousness among them, folk dancing has been tried out and found to work wonders...it will do the same for grown-ups; it is doing the same where it is given a trial, but dynamite and a derrick are needed in most families...Our friends allow their daughters to make exhibitions of themselves in a way no North End mother would allow for a moment. At present anything goes. There seems to be total ignorance on the subject of what constitutes good dancing, and yet the principles can be clearly defined as those of any art. It seems to me they can be boiled down to three:

I. There should be pleasure in dancing...

II. Dancing should be for pleasure and not primarily for show. The moment it is self-conscious, there is something wrong. If in fancy dancing a position is taken because it is believed to be graceful, it isn't. There is no meaning in it. There is one thing wrong in ballet dancing; it is all meant to be looked at, and while stunts are humorous, it is better to leave them to acrobats, as they are not beautiful.

III. Dancing must develop the body naturally, strengthening the muscles in natural positions, not distorting them...

If we succeed in transplanting these beautiful old dances of other countries and they take root, they will grown and spread and blossom into other dances, showing the genius of our people, and reflecting our life and times.

Storrowton Village

Storrow oversaw the "home department" of the Eastern States Exposition, an annual fair occurring in New England. In 1927, Storrow purchased Gilbert House, a structure built in the 18th century, transporting the home from West Brookfield, to serve as a permanent headquarters for the department. The village was renamed Storrowton by the Trustees, in her honor, in 1944.

Further club and settlement work In 1903, they helped found the West End House, a club for boys, mainly immigrants, providing classes and lectures on numerous subjects, including history, literature and physical education. Begun as a settlement house, it now serves as a Boys and Girls Club. In 1908, the Storrows provided the boys at West End House with a summer camp in East Parsonfield, Maine. The club's stated mission: "To befriend in every possible way the newsboys and other boys of the city of Boston, without distinction as to race, color, or creed."

Frustrated by the monotony of the activities sponsored by most women's clubs in Boston, in 1913, Storrow founded the Women's City Club, "to promote a broad acquaintance among women through their common interest in the welfare of the city…" She served as the club's first president. At the war's end, the Storrows converted their summer home into a sanatorium for wounded soldiers:

J. J. Storrow has given his country residence, Storrow Farm, Lincoln, with the adjacent buildings and sixteen acres of land, for a Lincoln convalescent hospital for enfeebled and crippled soldiers. The services of several employees, such furniture as can be utilized, care of the grounds, heating, lighting, and the like are included in the gift. A staff of women doctors and nurses have volunteered for service, and a war service committee of the Women's City Club, of which Mrs. Storrow was first president, is aiding to raise fund and equipment. To promote this cause, in 1930, she founded and served as president of the Women's Auxiliary of the Tom Brown House. Storrow and her sister Emily offered to donate a new city hall to Auburn in their father's memory.

America suffered an acute housing shortage in the years following the First World War. In response the Better Homes in America Movement was initiated. It was a nationwide campaign to promote home ownership, beautification, and the modernization of housing. Storrow joined this movement, and detailed efforts to expand the movement to include African American families in an article she authored in 1931 for the Urban League.

One cause Storrow never actively championed was women's suffrage, most likely because her husband was opposed to it.

Notes and references

Scouting Round the World, John S. Wilson, first edition, Blandford Press, 1959, p. 86