Robert Baden-Powell

His mother's earliest known Smyth ancestor was a Royalist American colonist; her mother's father Thomas Warington was the British Consul in Naples around 1800.

Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, (22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941) was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the world-wide Scout Movement, and founder, with his sister Agnes, of the world-wide Girl Guide/Girl Scout Movement.

Baden-Powell authored the first editions of the seminal work Scouting for Boys, which was an inspiration for the Scout Movement.

Baden-Powell was born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell at 6 Stanhope Street (now 11 Stanhope Terrace), Paddington, London, on 22 February 1857.

He was called Stephe (pronounced "Stevie") by his family.

He was named after his godfather, Robert Stephenson, the railway and civil engineer, and his third name was his mother's surname.

Baden-Powell had four older half-siblings from the second of his father's two previous marriages, and was the fifth surviving child of his father's third marriage:

The three children immediately preceding B–P had all died very young before he was born, so there was a seven year gap between him and his next older brother Frank; so he and his two younger siblings were almost like a separate family, of which he was the eldest.

Baden-Powell's father died when he was three.

Subsequently, Baden-Powell was raised by his mother, a strong woman who was determined that her children would succeed.

After Baden Powell died in 1860, his widow, to identify her children with her late husband's fame, and to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, styled the family name Baden-Powell.

Educated at Charterhouse School, Baden-Powell served in the British Army from 1876 until 1910 in India and Africa.

In 1876 Baden-Powell joined the 13th Hussars in India with the rank of lieutenant.

In 1880 he was charged with the task of drawing maps of the Battle of Maiwand.

He enhanced and honed his military scouting skills amidst the Zulu in the early 1880s in the Natal Province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was mentioned in dispatches.

In 1884 he published Reconnaissance and Scouting.

Baden-Powell's skills impressed his superiors and in 1890 he was brevetted Major as military secretary and senior aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Malta, his uncle General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth.

He was posted to Malta for three years, also working as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence.

He frequently travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings.

In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking.

Several of his books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by boys.

The name was eventually legally changed by Royal Licence on 30 April 1902.

The family of Baden-Powell's father originated in Suffolk.

In August 1907, he held a demonstration camp, the Brownsea Island Scout camp, which is now seen as the beginning of Scouting.

Based on his earlier books, particularly Aids to Scouting, he wrote Scouting for Boys, published in 1908 by Sir Arthur Pearson, for boy readership.

The first Scout Rally was held at The Crystal Palace in 1909.

Girls in Scout uniform attended, telling Baden-Powell that they were the "Girl Scouts".

In 1910 Baden-Powell retired from the army and formed The Scout Association.

In 1910, Baden-Powell and his sister Agnes Baden-Powell started the Girl Guide and Girl Scout organisation.

In 1912 he married Olave St Clair Soames.

In 1933 he said of her "The whole secret of my getting on, lay with my mother."

He attended Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells and was given a scholarship to Charterhouse, a prestigious public school named after the ancient Carthusian monastery buildings it occupied in the City of London.

However while he was a pupil there, the school moved out to new purpose-built premises in the countryside near Godalming in Surrey.

He played with dolls and learnt the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist, and enjoyed acting.

Holidays were spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers.

Baden-Powell's first introduction to Scouting skills was through stalking and cooking game while avoiding teachers in the nearby woods, which were strictly out-of-bounds.

He gave guidance to the Scout and Girl Guide movements until retiring in 1937.

Baden-Powell lived his last years in Nyeri, Kenya, where he died and was buried in 1941.

His grave is a national monument.

Baden-Powell was a son of Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of Geometry at University of Oxford and Church of England priest, and his third wife, Henrietta Grace Smyth, eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth.