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DISPLAY ROOM
The Display Room contains our most diversified collection of memorabilia. We have a rare and quite complete collection of books by Ernest Thompson Seton, dating back to 1899. Excerpts taken from these books were incorporated into the first Boy Scout Handbook. Books by Dan Beard date back to 1882. The development of the Scout Handbook and Merit Badge Program is quite interesting. Scouting for Boys by Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell, 1908, had no standard advancement tests. Then came Boy Scouts of America by Ernest Thompson Seton and Lieutenant-General Sir Robert S. S. Baden-Powell, K.C.B., 1910. Ernest Thompson Seton was authorized to put together a temporary Scout Handbook. This he did by taking part of the 1908 Scouting for Boys by Baden-Powell and part from his Manual of Woodcraft Indians, adding the outline for the American Boy Scout program. This included Tenderfoot, Second Class, First Class and the 14 English merit badges. Boy Scouts by John L. Alexander, illustrated by Gordon Grant, August 1911, called The Tapioca Book, is on display. It contained Tenderfoot, Second Class, and First Class requirements and six merit badges. Then came the Boy Scouts of America, Handbook for Boys, 1911. This was the first complete official edition of the American program, in August 1911. It was followed by Boy Scouts of America, Handbook for Boys, and Handbook for Boys, BSA, 1929.
There are Boy Scout Handbooks from 1910 through 1998. There are donated scouting items from personal collections; English and American Sea Scout display; a bugle used the first summer Camp Lawton was opened in 1921; uniforms belonging to Otis and others dating back to the teens and forward are all on display. The walls have rotating displays of Pimarees (American and Mexican Scouting), Order of the Arrow, World Scouting, and so on.
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