Deep Roots Family Tree Blog

I lived my first 11 years of life in Jamestown, North Dakota until I became an Alaska transplant. I always like to say that I’m North Dakota born, Alaska grown.

I had a lot of friends growing up before moving to Alaska, but I never really felt like I fit in despite getting along with everyone. My mom likes to tell a story about me coming home from school one day, crying, because I was invited to a tea party but I didn’t have any dolls to bring with. I was very much a “tom boy”, and I still kind of am. G.I. Joes? Sure! Barbies/dolls, no thank you…I think I ended up taking a Raggedy Ann doll.

Anyway, the girl that invited me to the tea party convinced me to join the Girl Scouts a couple years later. I don’t have any memories of it, really. I don’t think we have my old uniform or the badges that I managed to earn (there weren’t many). I don’t think we have any pictures of me in the uniform. Once again, I didn’t really fit in. But I tried it!

This postcard reminds me of my short time in the Girl Scouts. It’s addressed to Miss Grace McClain at the Girl Scout office in Meadville (if I’m not misreading it), Pennsylvania, from someone named Gertrude. It looks like it was sent from Washington D.C on 3/10/1950.

Saw a group of girl scouts in front of Blair House yesterday. Am having a grand time. Love, Gertrude

I participated in several extracurricular activities as a kid that required me to wear a uniform such as the Girl Scouts, soccer, and choir, which had the worst and most uncomfortable unform ever. I hated it with a passion. I think that ugly, heavy, blue skirt ruined skirts for me for the rest of my life. I have not worn one since 3rd grade.

But that made me wonder what the Girl Scout uniforms in the 1950s looked like, and this is what I found. Unfortunately it’s in black and white.

Clearly the Girl Scouts were important to the sender and the recipient of this postcard. I went to newspapers.com to see if I could find mention of either of them and this is what I came up with.

This article was from October 8, 1953, so I imagine Grace McClain was a young adult at this time, being the executive director of the Girl Scouts from Meadville. I then took to Ancestry and plugged in Grace McClain in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and found that during the 1950 census, she was unmarried, a lodger in a home not of her family, and she was the executive secretary of the Girl Scouts. By 1955 she is listed as the director in Meadville city directories.

The census states that Grace’s birth year was 1910 so that would make her 40 years old when the 1950 census was taken. I looked through the census’ to see if there were any neighbors by the name of Gertrude, but came up with nothing. Without a last name or birth year for Gertrude, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to find her, but I’m almost certain that she was also affiliated with the Girl Scouts.

This is pretty much where my paper trail ended. The Girl Scouts to Grace was like genealogy is for me. There is a passion there that sticks with you throughout the years. I was asked recently when I started researching my family history. “I’m 35 now, so 20 years and counting”.

The front of the postcard isn’t super exciting but the color held up pretty well. I particularly like the fountain.

Unrelated… when I was looking for a picture of Blair House in Washington D.C., I went down a rabbit hole and started looking at the history of it and found that a man, Leslie Coffelt, was killed defending the building in 1950, the same year that the group of Girl Scouts were seen standing outside. The postcard was sent in March of 1950, and the assassination took place in November of the same year.

According to Wikipedia (I know, not the greatest source…), “Coffelt was killed successfully defending an attempted assassination on U.S. President, Harry S. Truman.”