Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace Audio Tour
Welcome to the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace Museum! Use these audio guides to explore our exhibits at your own pace. Just look for the signs indicating each stop along the way, start playback for the related audio presentation in the sections below, and if you like, follow along with the written transcript.
Enjoy your visit!
Stop 1
Welcome to the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace. Maybe you’ve heard the story of how Girl Scouts of the USA began. In 1911, Juliette Gordon Low met Robert Baden Powell, the English founder of Boy Scouts, at a party in London. He told her about a new sister organization for Boy Scouts in England, started by his sister Agnes, called Girl Guides.
Juliette Low started working with the Girl Guides and liked it so much she decided to bring the idea back to her hometown of Savannah, Georgia in 1912. She called up her cousin and said, “Come right over, I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, all of America, and all the world and we’re going to start it tonight!” The group was originally called Girl Guides, but American girls preferred to call themselves “Scouts.” The name was changed to Girl Scouts in 1913.
But the Girl Scout story really starts in this house, with a little girl who was born here in 1860. Like most people, her story is complicated. She had strengths, skills, and advantages that made her just the right person to start Girl Scouts. But she also had limitations and obstacles that stood in her way.
On this tour of her birthplace and family home, you’ll hear stories and see artifacts from the fascinating life of Juliette Low. We hope you will also gain a deeper understanding of the reach and impact of her legacy.
As you travel through the house, please remember to remain with your group and wait until the next tour stop is vacant before moving forward. The designated path is marked with arrows and signs. Listen closely to audio directions to guide your way.
Tour guides are stationed on each level of the house to assist you with directions and to answer any questions you may have. They will also keep you safe by reminding you to always wear a mask over your mouth and nose, to avoid touching furnishings and artifacts, and to maintain a 6-foot distance between your group and other people.
Take a few minutes to explore this orientation gallery before taking the elevator to the next tour stop. When you step out of the elevator on the second floor, you will have reached Stop 2. There you will learn more about Juliette Low’s family background.
Stop 2
You are standing in one of the four original bedrooms of the house. Sarah and William Gordon bought this house in 1831. You can see pictures of them from the early 1800s on the table, both with dark hair and dark eyes. These were Juliette Gordon Low’s grandparents. The Gordons were an influential family with money from land, railroads, cotton, and enslaved labor.
Juliette was born into a close and loving family. Also living in the household were people they enslaved. It’s hard for us to understand this today: how people who were kind to their children and neighbors, who were religious and intellectually curious, could enslave other people. But these were the complicated realities of Juliette’s childhood. It’s part of her story. Though the Civil War ended slavery here when Juliette was four, African Americans continued to struggle for the rights granted to white citizens.
Above the fireplace is a silhouette, a picture made with cut black paper on a light background. It shows Juliette’s grandfather with other board members of the Central of Georgia Railroad, which was built to carry cotton to the port of Savannah. He served as its first President and oversaw its construction by immigrants and enslaved people.
When Juliette was born here on October 31, 1860, this house belonged to her widowed grandmother Sarah. Sarah made the quilt on the foot of the bed. The pattern is called “Seven Sisters” after the seven-star Pleiades constellation. Sarah was deeply religious and attended the Presbyterian Church across the street. On Sundays she ordered the enslaved children of the household into her room for a bible lesson. Juliette remembered one of these children, a little girl close to her own age named Hetty.
Four generations of the Gordon family lived in this house before the Girl Scouts bought it in 1953. On the lower wall to the right of the bed, you can see layers of paint and wallpaper from different eras of the house, including the deep blue-green paint from 1886 that you see reproduced in the room today.
Follow the arrows out the door by the left side of the bed straight across the hall to Stop 3, the Juliette Low Gallery Room.
Stop 3
In this gallery space is one of three oil portraits of Juliette Low you will see as you explore the rooms on this level. They are all so different, you might wonder if they really show the same person. What can these paintings tell us about the woman who founded Girl Scouts?
The painting above the fireplace is a copy of an 1887 portrait by Edward Hughes. The original is in the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington DC. Juliette is pictured as the new wife of wealthy William Low, 25 years before she started Girl Scouts. She has moved with him to England, into his world of fashionable parties, royal court visits, and high society.
She tilts her head, her creamy skin reflects the pale pink of her silk dress, her corseted waist tiny against the billowing folds of her skirt. She holds a white feather fan in her lap. Visitors have called her expression “dreamy”, “far away”, maybe “a little sad”. How do you think this young woman imagines her future?
At the time this portrait was painted, Juliette Low had been living with profound hearing loss for less than a year. On the table below the portrait is a photo of Juliette’s wedding party in the garden of this house. As the bride and groom were leaving, a grain of wedding rice thrown by guests entered Juliette’s ear. When a doctor removed it, he punctured her ear drum, leaving her deaf in that ear. This accident, combined with damage from ear infections she’d suffered since childhood, left Juliette hard of hearing for the rest of her life.
When this portrait was painted, young Juliette did not know yet that her marriage would become increasingly unhappy, nearly ending in divorce before her husband died in 1905. She was left a widow without children, feeling adrift and wondering if she’d wasted her life.
At the next stop, you will see Juliette Low after she has found her life’s purpose.
To reach Stop 4, follow the arrows leading out the door of this room and to the right. Walk to the end of the hall and turn right into the northwest bedroom.
Stop 4
Juliette Low’s parents, Willie and Nellie Gordon, believed in community service and living a purposeful life. In this room, you see portraits of them in their seventies painted by Juliette’s niece, Alice Parker Shurtleff. Above the fireplace is Nellie, dressed in lace, looking alert and amused. To the right of the bed is Willie in his U.S. Brigadier General uniform. He served at Camp Miami during the Spanish-American War in 1898.
Many soldiers at Camp Miami became ill. The hospital was not equipped to care for them. Juliette's parents used their own money to help, and Juliette joined them at the camp to nurse the soldiers. She watched her mother lobby army officials and influential friends to get medicine, beds, and brandy. Nellie Gordon’s work at Camp Miami mirrored the way Juliette Low started Girl Scouts: using her own money, social connections, and privilege, along with her charisma, inventiveness, and refusal to take no for an answer.
On the dresser under a glass dome is a clay figurine of two hiking Girl Scouts, sculpted by Juliette Low. Like all the first Girl Scouts, these girls wear military hats and carry camp bedrolls across their shoulders just like soldiers. From the start of the First World War in 1914, Girl Scouts supported the war effort, including raising money and saving food for soldiers. Many girls joined the organization when they saw what Girl Scouts did during the war. In Girl Scouts, girls could find fun AND purpose.
On the easel in the corner is a portrait of Juliette Low. Juliette hired Alfred Jonniaux to paint this portrait seven years after she founded Girl Scouts at age 51. She wears her sturdy, brown uniform and wide-brimmed Girl Scout hat. On her tie is the Girl Scout trefoil pin, a design she patented. Everything about her is tidy…except her tie. She had final say on every detail in this painting. What is that loose, messy tie telling us? Visitors have described her expression—looking straight ahead, smiling as she leans toward us—as “strong” and “like she wants to take us on an adventure.” At her death in 1927, she left this painting to Girl Scouts in her will. What does this portrait tell you about Juliette Low?
As you walk out the door of this bedroom into the hall, you’ll see a small room to your right. This is Stop 5, a multipurpose room often used for storing traveling trunks.
Stop 5
In the center of the room, propped up on travel trunks, is Juliette Low’s white silk parasol and an assegai: a long-handled throwing spear with an iron point. Trade routes all over the African continent meant that Juliette was able to buy this spear, made in southern Africa, while she was traveling in Egypt.
Just outside the room, in a cabinet to the left of the door, is a Buddha figurine Juliette brought back from a 1908 trip to India and Sri Lanka. He is red coral with a gilt bronze halo, decorated with semi-precious jewels. He is seated in the lotus position on a lotus flower. He holds a jeweled cup. This Buddha represents infinite life.
What can travelling teach us about ourselves and others? Juliette was a world traveler, and her travel stories inspired some of the first Girl Scouts to explore the world themselves. She wrote that “Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting can be the magic thread that links the youth of the world together.”
Since Juliette Low’s time, the Girl Scout program has included opportunities for girls to travel and make new friends at home and abroad, including stays at the five World Centers in five different countries operated by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Girl Scout travel scholarships are available through the Juliette Low World Friendship Fund.
If you are facing the trunk room, turn left to go through the doorway to Stop 6, Juliette Low’s own bedroom.
Stop 6
Throughout her life, Juliette Low returned to this house for love and support. This was her bedroom when she visited home as an adult, and when she came home from England to start Girl Scouts. Furnished with her belongings, this room shows Juliette as her private self.
As a girl Juliette painted, sketched, and doodled. Later she studied painting and sculpting in New York, London, and Paris. Inside her dressing table drawer are her sculpting tools: wooden carving sticks, wire loops for trimming clay, brushes for scoring, and big calipers to take measurements.
On the dressing table is a small, glazed figurine of a girl threading a needle, sitting with her head bent over her work. Brown hair shining, she wears a yellow dress, and her sturdy feet are bare. Before starting Girl Scouts, Juliette Low worked with Girl Guides in London and Scotland. She made this piece during an art lesson for her Scottish Girl Guides. One of the girls was the model.
Juliette’s spinning wheel is by the window next to the bed. Juliette’s Scottish Girl Guides lived in the remote Highlands of Scotland. One girl hiked six miles to Guide meetings. Many young girls left the region to work in city factories to support their families. Juliette wanted to help them stay home. She and her Girl Guides learned the art of spinning thread from sheep’s wool and sold the thread to an arts-and-crafts shop in London to give the girls income.
Above the fireplace are two portraits of Juliette: a pencil sketch and the portrait painted from that sketch. Both were made by Juliette’s niece, Alice Parker Shurtleff. Alice sketched as Juliette worked on a sculpture of Alice’s daughter. You see Juliette intensely concentrating as she shapes the young girl’s head out of clay. The sleeves of her plain, white shirt are rolled up, her hands are smudged with clay and her hair is slightly messy. This is Juliette in a private moment, with family, doing something she loves. What does this portrait tell you about Juliette Low?
When you’re ready to move on, return to the hall and a tour guide will show you to the stairs or elevator to go down to the first floor of the house. On the first floor, follow the arrows or ask a tour guide to show you Stop 7, the back parlor, a sitting room for family and guests. There you’ll hear more about the founding of Girl Scouts, and how Juliette Low’s own girlhood put her on the Girl Scout path.
Stop 7
Above the mahogany sideboard is an oil painting of Juliette Low’s cousin, Nina Pape. Her dark hair is pulled up in a bun. She is dressed plainly, with a simple black ribbon around her neck. Nina was the head of a girls’ school in Savannah, with progressive ideas about educating girls.
Nina encouraged creativity and play at her school. She sent students on woodland hikes to learn about nature, teaching them "how to think, not what to think." When Juliette decided to start Girl Scouts, Nina was the first person she called. The first official Girl Scouts were students from Pape School.
Just below Nina’s portrait is a plaster sculpture of a young girl, looking thoughtful, her hair done up in an enormous bow. Juliette sculpted this bust of her niece Margaret. Margaret and Juliette shared a family nickname: “Daisy”. According to tradition, Margaret was the first official Girl Scout.
Next to Margaret are Juliette Low’s silver-plated hot water urn and tortoiseshell tea caddy. Nina Pape wrote that Girl Scouts “started over teacups.” In this parlor, mothers and daughters sat down over teacups to hear about Juliette’s plan for girls to tramp through the woods and learn all kinds of useful and interesting skills.
Juliette Low did not have children of her own, but she enjoyed their company and always listened to what they had to say. What was Juliette’s own childhood like?
Look for the big sliding doors between the two parlors. On a small table by the doors is a photo of Juliette with her brothers and sisters in about 1874. They are dressed in their best and have serious expressions. From left to right are Mabel (age 4), Nell (16), Juliette (14), baby Arthur (2), Alice (11), and Bill (age 8). Cousins lived next door, so there were always playmates available for games and fun. Juliette was often the ringleader.
Juliette loved to make up plays with her siblings and cousins, using the back parlor as her stage. The sliding doors were her stage curtains. Before you move into the front parlor, try doing a dramatic pose on Juliette’s parlor stage, or take a bow! If you share your stage pose on social media, please tag @juliettegordonlowbirthplace.
Walk through the sliding doors to reach Stop 8, the front parlor.
Stop 8
To the right of the fireplace on a marble stand is a bust of Juliette Low’s father, Willie. Juliette sculpted this bust and painted it to look like bronze. Here he is an older man, upright in military uniform, with a neat mustache. Juliette’s father was a supporter of the Savannah Theater. Juliette arranged for her Girl Scouts to be ushers there so they could see plays for free. Along with his love of theater, Juliette inherited her father’s strong nose and his appreciation for animals and nature. As a girl, she loved to go out riding with him on horseback before breakfast.
Above the fireplace is an oil portrait of Juliette Low’s mother Nellie at age 19. This copy was painted by Juliette from the original. Nellie wears a white, narrow-waisted evening dress, her hair fashionably arranged in wings over her ears. She smiles slightly with a look that some visitors have called “modest” and others “fearless”. Which is it? One family story tells how she liked to slide down bannisters, a skill she passed down to her children. Later, Juliette Low let Girl Scouts slide down the railing on her front steps when they visited her at home.
On the opposite wall, on either side of the door, are portraits of Nellie’s parents, Juliette Low’s grandparents. John and Juliette Kinzie lived in the upper Midwest, where John was an Indian Agent for the U.S. government, working with Native nations such as the Potowatomi and Ho-Chunk. Mrs. Kinzie was adventurous and curious about other people. She published a book about her life on the frontier called Wau-Bun, which means “new day” in the Ojibwe language. Juliette Low grew up hearing her grandmother's thrilling tales of canoeing and camping, living among Indigenous people, and creating a new life for herself. She shared these stories with Girl Scouts around the campfire.
Juliette Low’s childhood gave her curiosity, creativity, joy in the outdoors, a taste for adventure and a strong sense of duty—qualities that equipped her to start Girl Scouts. But was her upbringing in a wealthy family in 1800s Savannah ever an obstacle to founding a movement for all girls?
You will hear an answer to this question at the next stop. Follow the arrows through the hall door to Stop 9, the front hall.
Stop 9
On the wall across from the parlor door is Juliette Low's Presidential Medal of Freedom, framed with the official proclamation. The medal is in the shape of a star, white enamel on red, with a blue disc containing 13 gold stars in its center. Gold eagles stand between the star’s points. The proclamation reads:
“An artist, athlete, and trailblazer for America’s daughters, Juliette Gordon Low founded an organization to teach young women self-reliance and resourcefulness... Americans of all backgrounds continue to draw inspiration from Juliette Gordon Low’s remarkable vision, and we celebrate her dedication to empowering girls everywhere.”
In Juliette’s time, her family’s visitors were welcomed in this front hall. Today, Girl Scouts of the USA welcomes every girl to join our Movement. But that was not always true. When Juliette Low called up her cousin to start “something for the girls of Savannah, all of America, and all the world,” what did she mean?
Juliette Low was able to see past the restrictions of her time and place to advocate for an organization that included girls with disabilities and girls from different social classes and religions. But when she started Girl Scouts in 1912, she was not able to overcome her learned prejudices to imagine a movement that welcomed girls of all races.
But Girl Scouts grew beyond Juliette Low’s limitations during her own lifetime. Juliette had a valuable skill as a leader: an ability to collaborate with other women and listen to the girls themselves. Her willingness to share authority meant that new voices and new ideas shaped the Girl Scout Movement as it grew into something truly for all girls.
It is this legacy that President Barack Obama celebrated when he honored Juliette Low with this medal in 2012, the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouts of the USA.
We celebrate the reach of Juliette Low’s legacy at our final tour stop, the library. Walk through the door to the left of the Medal of Freedom to reach Stop 10.
Stop 10
This room has always been a library. Juliette Low herself came here to read and imagine, and she borrowed books from these very bookcases to share with the first Girl Scouts. Today the library is dedicated to books and stories written by, for, and about women and girls all over the world. Like this library, the story of Girl Scouts has grown beyond the story of one girl, Juliette Low, to include the stories of millions of girls making their own paths.
The Girl Scout story belongs to everyone, because everyone’s life has been changed by a Girl Scout: your mother, troop leader, or teacher; or a senator, inventor, or an astronaut. Or you! What is your Girl Scout story?
The Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace Museum has been a house for all Girl Scouts since it opened its doors to the public in 1956. You can help us keep our doors open, serve girls, and preserve this house and history by becoming a Circle of Friends member. Please consider joining today in our store as an individual or as a troop. Thank you for visiting us and hearing our story!
When you are ready to exit, go back out the hall door and turn right. Follow the signs or ask a tour guide to show you the back hall door or the elevator. Feel free to take a moment to view the dining room on your way out. Once you are back on the ground level, a tour guide can show you the way to the shop and site exit.
