Kentucky town seen as the birthplace of Boy Scouts in the US tries to bring back troop
For decades, the small city of Burnside, which overlooks Lake Cumberland in Southern Kentucky, has claimed to be the site of the first Boy Scout troop in the U.S.
As the story goes, a local woman, Myra Greeno Bass, learned of scouting during a trip to England, where cavalry officer Robert (later Lord) Baden-Powell had founded the organization, and was so taken with the concept that she started a troop when she got home.
That was in the spring of 1908, almost two years before the Boy Scouts of America was incorporated in February 1910.
At some point, however, scouting died out in the town of about 700 despite the historic connection. There hasn’t been a troop based in Burnside for years.
Now local leaders are working to change that.
“If you’re going to claim to be the first Boy Scout troop in America, you better have a Scout troop,” said Mayor Robert Lawson, who was himself a Scout.
City leaders have discussed starting a troop with representatives of the Blue Grass Council of the Boy Scouts, which is headquartered in Lexington and covers 55 counties in Central, Southern and Eastern Kentucky.
The idea is to start a Cub Scout pack first and then a Boy Scout troop later, said Ron Perkins, a unit commissioner with the Blue Grass Council who lives in Pulaski County.
Cub Scouts is for kids in kindergarten through 5th grade and Boy Scout troops, now called Scouts BSA, is for young people ages 11 to 17, according to the national organization.
The Boy Scouts of America announced earlier this year that it will switch to a new name, Scouting America, effective in February, the 115th anniversary of the organization, though the new name is already in use.
The organization began allowing girls to join Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA troops a few years ago.
Perkins said the fire department in Burnside has agreed to let the pack meet there, and Lawson and others have been looking for a non-profit organization in town to sponsor a Cub Scout pack.
Lawson said the local Masonic lodge, Burnside Lodge 634, where he is a member, is considering sponsoring the pack.
Perkins said once a sponsor comes on board, scouting representatives will hold a meeting for parents and help set up the pack and provide training.
There is a requirement to have at least five youth members and five adult leaders to start a unit, said Sofia Guadagni, senior district executive with the Blue Grass Council.
The council has more than 2,500 young people and 2,000 adults involved in 115 units, Guadagni said.
Lawson said he is confident scouting will return to Burnside in 2025, providing more opportunity for activities for young people.
“I think the quicker we move it along, the better,” he said.
The first troop?
The Boy Scouts date back to 1907, when Baden-Powell founded the organization in England to train boys in areas such as good citizenship and outdoor skills.
He took a group of boys on a camping trip to see how his ideas would work, and published a book called Scouting for Boys in 1908. Histories mark 1908 as the start of the Boy Scouts.
Bass, the young woman from Burnside, was a “world traveler,” as one history of the town called her, and brought home one of Baden-Powell’s official handbooks from a trip to England.
The rules at the time barred Bass from being scout master, so her husband, Billy, took the title, but “left most of the actual planning to his capable wife,” according to an account in a book on the 100th anniversary of the city being incorporated in 1890.
That first troop, called Eagle Troop, included 15 boys who met in the Bass home and went on hikes and camping trips in the hills around town, according to the history.
A large sign on busy U.S. 27 in the city proclaims it as the “birthplace” of scouting in the country, and a historical marker placed on Main Street in the 1960s says the city is “reputed” to be the city of the first American Boy Scout troop.
A Wikipedia entry on “Scouting in Kentucky” says Burnside “is believed to be home to the first Boy Scout troop” in the country.
There were other troops springing up around the country at about the same time, however, creating some uncertainty in pinpointing the first troop.
By 1909, before the official start of the Boy Scouts of America, there were troops modeled on the English organization in Kentucky, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Jersey and New York, according to 2019 article by Bryan Wendell in the publication Aaron on Scouting.
Scott Armstrong, spokesman for Scouting America, referred the Herald-Leader to that article when asked about the history of the first troop in the country.
The article includes a reference to a 1940 letter in which a Boy Scout official said he had looked into the issue and “came to the conclusion that it was not possible from any accepted record to determine which was the first Troop.”
When the Boy Scouts of America was incorporated in 1910, those earlier troops generally became part of the new organization.
Scouting America does not officially recognize a first troop, according to a spokesman.
Local officials believe Burnside has as good a claim as anywhere to being the home of the first Boy Scout troop.
The house where Bass founded the troop still stands in town.
It’s in poor shape, but Brandon Becker, head of the local historical society, said members salvaged two cast iron fireplaces from the house and he had them restored.
The pieces could be displayed in a museum the city hopes to develop.
There would be plenty of history to fill a museum.
The town, initially called Point Isabel, grew up on the Cumberland River, a location that made it a shipping point for lumber and other goods downriver to Nashville and beyond, as well as back up the river, according to local history.
The town ultimately became known as Burnside, named for Union General Ambrose E. Burnside, who commanded troops in the area during the Civil War.
Acclaimed Appalachian author Harriette Simpson Arnow grew up in Burnside, taught in Pulaski County and lived on a farm near town before moving to Detroit at the end of World War II.
Old Burnside was flooded when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished building Wolf Creek Dam to impound Lake Cumberland in the early 1950s, forcing the town to move to higher ground.
Several towns in Southern Kentucky are near the lake, but Burnside is the only one “on” the 101-mile-long lake, as local leaders say.
And the tie to scouting is an important part of the city’s heritage, said tourism director Jerrica Flynn.
“The history is still here,” Flynn said. “I think it’s important for us to keep that legacy.”
