(1928. The story of an American woman 1860-1927. Found in ...)
1928. The story of an American woman 1860-1927. Found in this volume are various stories and anecdotes of Juliette Low by those who knew her best. It was Juliette Low's love, humor, courage, keenness, common sense and achievement which led to the formation of the Girl Guides, later renamed the Girl Scouts. It is largely thanks to these qualities that one great-hearted woman helped scouting take root and gain the widespread power for good it holds today among the girlhood of America. Handsomely illustrated.
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Anne Hyde Clarke Choate was born on October 27, 1886 in Hyde Hall, Cooperstown, New York, United States. Her ancestral family home in Cooperstown, New York. She was the daughter of George Hyde Clarke, a lawyer and director of the State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, New York, and Mary Gale Carter. Her mother's friend Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of America, was both godmother and mentor to young Anne.
After her education at private schools in Albany, and Catonsville, Anne Clarke entered New York City society in 1905.
A grand tour of the East ended the next year at the home of Mrs. Stanford White in Cambridge, Massachussets, on the eve of the architect's sensational murder. Anne Clarke later recalled her stay in Cambridge as a "very interesting experience. " Juliette Low then invited Anne to travel with her to London, a journey on which they were accompanied by Arthur Osgood Choate, an investment banker and nephew of Judge William G. Choate, founder of the Choate School, and Joseph H. Choate, United States ambassador to the Court of St. James's. In 1915 Juliette Low called upon Choate for help with the new Girl Scout troop in Pleasantville. By 1916 Low had persuaded her to accept election as national vice-president of the Girl Scouts, although Choate protested that her responsibilities as a mother and charity worker did not permit her to take on more. Choate met James E. Russell, dean of Teachers College, Columbia University, in the fall of 1916. A supporter of American preparedness for war, Russell was a champion of Boy Scouting as a way to increase patriotism and instill discipline. Choate introduced him to Girl Scouting, which he adopted enthusiastically as a cause. Although Low diligently avoided commitments on most social issues (she was particularly opposed to affiliating Girl Scouting with woman suffrage), she, too, had seized upon patriotism and preparedness as themes that could rally support for her movement. With Russell's help, Choate raised money that opened the way for what she called a "tremendous mushroom growth" of Girl Scouting in 1916 and 1917. Meanwhile, she became engrossed in scouting, relishing the training and the camping, and gleefully practicing the skills that were taught to the girls. A friend later recalled that Choate and her associates did not work for the Girl Scouts, "they were Girl Scouts. " Her duties as hostess to Lord and Lady Baden-Powell on their first visit to the American Girl Scouts in 1919 exposed Choate to international scouting, which became her passion thereafter. Nevertheless, she succeeded Low as president of the national organization in 1920 and served until 1922. She held the national vice-presidency again from 1922 to 1937, and was honorary vice-president for twenty more years. In addition, she served on the Girl Scouts' board of directors and its executive committee, as well as on the Pleasantville and Westchester County scouting councils. But she concentrated on the international committee, of which she was a member from 1920 to 1955, and on the Juliette Low World Friendship Committee, which she chaired from 1927 to 1955. When in 1939 World War II interrupted plans for an encampment at the Girl Scouts' international chalet in Switzerland, Choate sought to convert that facility into a refuge for displaced children. She was also involved in American efforts to aid civilian victims of the Sino-Japanese War in China. Another of Choate's interests was historic preservation. She was active in county and state historical societies, and she worked to protect the historic value of her own homes in Cooperstown and Pleasantville. She crusaded to make Juliette Low's birthplace in Savannah, a historic site, and to maintain it once that goal had been achieved. Although her husband continued his family's tradition of membership in the Republican party, Choate was an active Democrat. In 1924 she convened a luncheon at the Colony Club in New York City for socially prominent women who endorsed the presidential candidacy of David F. Houston, a former secretary of agriculture and secretary of the treasury under Woodrow Wilson. An opponent of the Ku Klux Klan, Houston briefly attracted attention as a possible compromise candidate who might break the disastrous deadlock at the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City. While she never again took as prominent a political role as she did in Houston's brief campaign, Choate was personally close to other women with noteworthy political careers. It was Choate to whom Eleanor Roosevelt confided her concern about Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Choate's close friend, when Perkins faced threats of impeachment from conservative opponents. When resting from her work, Choate returned to Pleasantville and her hobbies of horseback riding and English country dancing, the latter a pastime she learned at a Girl Scout training camp and which she valued because it demanded good posture. She took up fox hunting at the age of forty-six, continuing well into her sixties. Widowed in 1962, she sold some of her estate to nearby Pace College but retained the right to ride over the jumps on the land. Choate deeply regretted the property's acquisition by the local public-school district a year later. She continued to ride almost daily until a fall from her horse in January 1967 left her with a broken clavicle and ended her jumping days in her eighty-first year. That accident came soon after her return from a Girl Scout conference in Tokyo that she had insisted on attending, as she had attended earlier meetings around the world. She was described then, and surely she thought of herself, as "the oldest Girl Scout in the United States. "
(1928. The story of an American woman 1860-1927. Found in ...)
Tall and athletic, she loved to ride sidesaddle, which she found "much the best way; safer when you take the jumps and more elegant, too. "
Anne Clarke and Arthur Choate became engaged in London. They were married at Cooperstown on October 16, 1907, and moved to his estate in Pleasantville, New York. They had five children; three lived to maturity.
