Start of Scouting in Seattle

In 1910, Boy Scouts came to America and to Seattle. This article is an effort to fill in missing information about the first year of Scouting in Seattle. It comes from newspaper articles and archival records.

Scouting in Seattle: Year one, day one

Scouting came to Seattle in 1910, six months after it began in America.

Boy Scouts and the Scouting Movement started in England in 1907. Prior to that, Lord Robert Baden-Powell sketched out his ideas in books and conducted an experiment at Brownsea Island, culminating in him forming Boy Scouts. Then, Boy Scouts of America was the first organization in the US, kicking off in February 1910.

At 7:30pm on August 15, 1910, a meeting was held at Trinity Parish Church at 8th and James in Seattle to found the first Boy Scout unit in Seattle. Attending the meeting were “prominent social workers” including the head of the juvenile court, Judge A. W. Frater.

The meeting was a success. Indeed, by the end of the meeting Seattle was the third city in Washington State to start a Scout troop, after Walla Walla and Kingston. Moreover, the Seattle Star reported that twenty boys joined. Plans for them included khaki uniforms and “marches into the country on Saturdays and Sundays”.

August 15, 1910 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Scouting in Seattle: Year one, week two

A week later, the PI reported that another meeting was planned at Trinity to recruit boys 11 to 18. From the gathered youth, troops would be formed by neighborhood, and they would then find a meeting place. A list of possible badges were included, which does not match those offered by BSA in 1910. With names like “farrier” and “dairyman”, they did match the British proficiency badge names, though, and this is a sign that Seattle was initially pulled in by marketing from BSA’s rival American Boy Scouts.

The Seattle PI reported on August 23 that the Trinity Parish recruitment meeting resulted in 10 patrols formed, which indicates that about 50 to 80 boys were in the program. The article listed some of the patrol leaders, and they have all been profiled in the article Seattle’s first patrol leaders. Leadership for the group was Cyril Arthur Player, secretary for Trinity Parish Church, and W. H. Lindsay.

Trinity Parish Church, c1905 (University of Washington UW4406)

Week three: choosing the wrong team

When Boy Scouts came to America in 1910, there were a number of rival organizations hoping to represent Robert Baden-Powell’s movement on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. First to start was the one we know today, Boy Scouts of America. But there was also American Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts of the United States, and others. Most of them merged by the time Seattle leaders looked to create the first troop. But American Boy Scouts still remained, and unlike BSA’s emphasis on peace, ABS expressly meant to prepare boys for war.

At first, Seattle was attached to no national organization. But that didn’t last long. Just two weeks after the first meeting at Trinity Church, an article quoted Player saying that Seattle would join American Boy Scouts.

At the start of September, a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce formalized the organization. In the meeting, J. Howard Stine, superintendent of playgrounds, took leadership of the group from Lindsay, and Player continued as secretary. Another decision at the meeting was to formally send application to American Boy Scouts.

Two days after the the meeting, a letter arrived from Robert Baden-Powell himself, who was visiting Canada. He apologized that he couldn’t be present for the start of Scouting in Seattle but wished success to all of the youth and leaders.

Then a meeting was scheduled in West Seattle for Tuesday September 6 for more recruitment. The next day, a meeting was held at the Summit School (now Northwest School). Later that week, the call went out for adult leader volunteers to become scoutmasters. Meetings were planned to be held at additional schools, and the superintendent of schools Frank Cooper obtained permission from the school board for recruitment and sponsorship.

Boy Scout Felix Stastny, Seattle, c1912 (UW PH Coll 748.86)

First camp fire in week five

The next step was activities for the new patrols. Hikes and campfires — essential Scouting activities from the start — were the first events planned for Seattle Boy Scouts.

Boys from the three park-based troops (Rogers, Collins, and Ballard) hiked from Ballard to the Washington Park arboretum on September 10th. The Scoutmasters of the park troops were respectively Flagg, Anderson, and Clark. Respectively, those parks had 50 boys, and 35 boys, and 35 boys. 180 boys were in other troops.

One week later, 12 patrols of the park Scouts headed from Collins Playfield ten miles to Fauntleroy Park. They headed south over Beacon Hill, past the reservoir and stockade, southwest to South Park, “thence through the thicket and brush to the Sound and Fauntleroy beach”.

Incredibly, by September 18 there were 500 boys estimated in troops, up 200 in just 8 days.

On September 20 the first large camp fire was held for Seattle Boy Scouts, at Collins playground on 16th and Washington. More than 100 boys, maybe a fifth of Seattle’s Scouts, attended. Actually, girls attended too, and the Collins playground girls’ baseball team used the event to celebrate their victory over other playgrounds’ teams.

Newspaper articles kept describing new troops. By the end of September membership reached 600 boys. 60 joined at Cascade School. Troops met in the University District, West Seattle, and Fremont.

Collins Field sandbox, 1909 (Seattle Municipal Archives via Paul Dorpat)

Scouting in Seattle: Playing it safe in week six

On September 26, a meeting elected a full set of 17 adult leaders. The leaders included: R. H. Thomson, Seattle’s city engineer; A. W. Frater, juvenile court judge; Lawrence Colman, the son of James Colman; Frank Cooper, Seattle school superintendent; A. G. Douthitt, head of YMCA sports; J. H. Stine, park board member; and C. A. Player, formerly of Trinity Church. The committee decided not to join American Boy Scouts after all, waiting to see if it or BSA would become the official group for America.

(For reference of where we were as a nation and community, women were given the right to vote in Washington State in November 1910. Washington was the fifth state in America to expand the definition of citizenship to women.)

Activities continued through the fall and winter. They threw a Halloween party at Leschi Park with a prize for best jack-o-lantern. Throughout November and December, Reverend Strong of Queen Anne Congregational Church included a point of the Scout Law in his youth sermons. A troop was formed at First Baptist in December.

Although it must have been difficult to not draw on the resources of a national organization, waiting to choose between ABS and BSA was a good move. By December, William Randolph Hearst, founder of American Boy Scouts, resigned over financial concerns. A grand jury investigation followed. Regional American Boy Scouts organizations switched to Boy Scouts of America: New England in 1910, then Chicago and southern states in the first months of 1911. Tens of thousands of youth moved to BSA.

By April 1, 1911, leaders in Seattle had seen enough. The group threw their weight behind Boy Scouts of America, starting the process to create a local council. The new head of the organization was Josiah Collins, a newly elected state senator.

Josiah Collins, History of Washington via Wikipedia

Bonus: Spotlight on C. A. Player

Cyril Arthur Player helped start Scouting in Seattle. In fact, he hosted the first meetings at Trinity Parish Church. Player was a lay assistant and secretary to Rev. Gowen of Trinity, a job referred to as assistant rector or curate. He used the opportunity of Scouting to expand on his success in organizing youth programming at the church. Cyril Player was only 22 years old when he took the lead in forming Scouting in Seattle.

Player came to Seattle thinking he might become a minister. Over the prior two years he worked with the first Bishop of Harrisburg of the Episcopal Diocese of Harrisburg, and then was lay reader at the Church of the Epiphany in Denver. He came to America after graduating at 19 from Brasenose College at Oxford University. From a wealthy family, he even attended Oxford’s prep school. Born in 1888, he was a bit too old to be in Boy Scouts when it formed in 1907 in London, but perhaps he was a member of London Boy’s Brigade or another of its predecessors.

Within a few weeks of kicking off Boy Scouts in Seattle, Player resigned his position at Trinity Parish Church and took up a writing and editorial position with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. This began a lifelong career in journalism.

Cyril Player did continue as a leader of Scouting, despite being still unmarried and no longer working with youth at the church. During a successful campfire at Collins Field on November 1, 1910, Player wowed the boys and girls with ghost stories that had them demanding more. He was a leader on the committee that moved to join Boy Scouts of America in April 1911.

Cyril Arthur Player (November 13, 1909 Seattle PI)

C. A. Player’s news career

At the PI, Player started a page on the growing automobile movement in Seattle called “Gossip and Gas”. He also took up a role as music critic, an aspect of his writing that received compliment at the end of his life. By 1913 he was also vice president of Seattle’s press club. Player also briefly reported on the war in Europe in 1915 for the P-I.

While in Seattle, Cyril Player took part in a number of theatrical productions. He wrote a Christmas play called “The Star of Bethlehem”, a mortuary comedy called “A Serious Undertaking” and a musical, fictional origin story of Seattle called “Blue Wing”. (The score and manuscript of Blue Wing are in UW’s archives.)

Cyril A. Player moved to Detroit in 1918, and worked as an editor for the Detroit News for 26 years. He later worked for Barron’s and then the Booth news empire. While with the Detroit News, a number of his article series became short books, including “Arms — and the Men”, a review of the international effort to limit military armaments in 1921. He also wrote biographies of Thomas Edison, J. L. Hudson, Hazen Pingree, George G. Booth, and James E. Scripps.

Should Player’s descendants (for example, former Department of Homeland Security CTO Michael Hermus) read this, I would enjoy hearing more about his time in Seattle.

Title for Player’s Seattle PI column int he early 1910s (March 30, 1913 PI)

Title for Player’s column in the Detroit News in early 1930s (reprinted in Star Tribune, Jan 31, 1933)

Bonus: Peek at W. Hamilton Lindsay

William Hamilton Lindsay was C. A. Player’s collaborator at the very start of Scouting in Seattle. He took initial leadership of the organization. Lindsay’s interests in Scouting are unclear, and his connections to Seattle poorly understood.

Lindsay was a business leader, builder, and developer in Vancouver, Canada. He had at least financial interests in Seattle, buying and selling many properties in the handful of years before 1910. For example, he purchased the Buckingham Apartments (now Shannon Apartments) at University and Boylston in 1906, a year after its construction.

As part of the British Empire, Vancouver had Boy Scout troops earlier than Seattle. While Scouts in Seattle were still taking their first walks and having their first camp fire, four Vancouver, B.C. Boy Scouts traveled by bicycle to Seattle. They took less than three days, leaving in late evening Wednesday September 21, 1910 and arriving on September 24 in early morning.

It could be that Lindsay was familiar with Scouting in Vancouver and wanted to bring it to Seattle. However, research into W. H. Lindsay has so far only encountered dead ends.

He was not the William Lindsay who formed Lake Washington Turning and Scroll Works, son of John and Christiana Lindsay. Also he was not the William Lindsay who ran for governor. Neither was he the William Lindsay born in Scotland who died in 1920 in Idaho Falls. And he was not Wilmot Alister Lindsay, born in Canada. He was not the William Henry Lindsay who died in Vancouver, B..C in 1934, nor his son William H. Lindsay.

He was a leader in the formation of the Builders Exchange in Vancouver in 1913. That’s the last activity of his that I can report with confidence.