Daniel Carter Beard (1850-1941)
Ten years older than Seton, Daniel Carter Beard grew up in Covington, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. He loved the outdoors, and he spent long hours exploring the woods and drawing nature sketches. He also loved hearing stories of American frontier life and could remember watching Conestoga wagons rolling west through Cincinnati.
After working for awhile as an engineer and surveyor, Beard moved to New York City to attend art school. He provided illustrations for many books and magazines, including the first edition of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in 1889.
It was there in New York that a chance encounter on a city street pushed Beard toward an interest in young people. One cold winter day, he happened on a group of newsboys - boys who sold newspapers instead of going to school - sleeping on the pavement beneath a staute of Benjamin Franklin. The sight convinced him to being what he called his "lifelong crusade for American boyhood".
In 1905, in the pages of Recreation magazine, Beard created a boys' program called the Sons of Daniel Boone. It taught many of the same camping and nature skills as Seton's Woodcraft Indians, but Beard used frontier language instead of Indian terms. Members organized themselves in "forts" and "stockades" and took on the names of such heroes as Daniel Boone (president), Kit Carson (treasurer), and Davey Crockett (secretary).
When Beard moved to Pictorial Review magazine after spending some time at Woman's Home Companion, he renamed the group the Boy Pioneers of America. Then in 1909 he published a handbook, Boy Pioneers and Sons of Daniel Boone. Just like Seton, Beard would soon play a role in the Scouting movement.
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Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946)
One of the experts Baden-Powell talked with in 1906 was Ernest Thompson Seton, a British-born Canadian citizen who'd recently founded the Society of Woodcraft Indians in Connecticut.
