William D. Boyce and the Boy Scouts of America
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Boy Scouts of America trace their founding to a lost Chicago businessman and an unnamed English Boy Scout. In nineteen oh nine, newspaper publisher William D. Boyce was wandering London when a young scout helped him find his destination and then refused a tip, explaining it was his duty as a scout.
Boyce was so moved that he brought the movement home to the United States. On February eighth, nineteen ten, Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America in Washington, and Congress chartered the organization on June fifteenth, nineteen sixteen. Boyce was born in Allegheny County, not far from here.
The campus on which this marker stands was later named in his honor, a tribute to the man whose chance encounter in London helped shape youth culture across the entire country.
