by Richard Copeland
Local Columnist
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One of the greatest scouting events in Indiana occurred when the founder of Scouting, General Baden-Powell, visited Culver Military Academy in 1926. Parents and scouts of Logansport were invited, as well as scouts from northern Indiana, to this exciting event.
Baden-Powell was born, Feb. 22, 1857, to the Rev. Baden Powell, a professor of geometry at Oxford University. Young Baden Powell received his first introduction to skills for scouting by stalking game in a nearby woods and cooking it. He spent his summers learning canoeing and yachting. His hobbies were playing the piano, violin and acting.
As an adult Baden Powell, Lt. Gen. Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, joined the 13th Hussars in 1876 and became a national hero in the war against the Boers to gain control of South Africa.
Baden-Powell had written a military training manual, “Aide to Scouting,” (army scouts) that had become a best seller. He rewrote the book for young men in 1907. Later that year, he took 22 young
men to an island to test his ideas on influencing them in the right path to adulthood. He published his book, “Scouting for Boys,” in 1908. Scout troops for both boys and girls began forming almost immediately. By 1920, Baden-Powell was proclaimed Chief Scout of the World. In 1929, the King of England honored him as a Baron of the British Empire.
When Gen. Baden-Powell arrived in Culver, the Black Horse Troop met the train and escorted him to the academy where he was presented to a tremendous crowd for a luncheon. The governor, Mr. Marshall, Brig. Gen. McKee who was commander of the National Guard, Bishop Joseph M. Frances of Indianapolis, the president of Notre Dame, the secretary of Studebaker Corporation and Scouts and parents of northern Indiana were present.
After the luncheon, Ge. Baden-Powell gave an address and then the Black Horse Troop presented special riding skills: Mounting and dismounting at a gallop, intricate movements to music, picking up articles from the ground at a gallop, vaulting two or three horses at a gallop and creating pyramids at a gallop. After the presentation, Baden-Powell addressed the group on “Scouting in War and Peace.”
Culver was his only stop in Indiana and his only presentation to a private school other than West Point. After visiting in Culver, Baden-Powell visited in Chicago where several young men from Cass County received their Eagle Scout badges.
Scouting was incorporated in the United States on Feb. 8, 1910. The first scout troop in Indiana was in Danville in 1909. The first troop organized in Logansport was in December 1911. Al and Dan Drompp were two of the early adults associated with Scouting in Logansport.
For further reading, the Cass County Public Library has several books about Baden-Powell and Scouting.
• Richard B. Copeland is a Cass County historian and may be reached at ptnews@pharostribune.com. The material for this article came from the Pharos-Tribune, Mike Richardson and the Internet.
