In late October, at a gathering of friends, my old Troop 50 mate Ralph Eaton mentioned that he might have something of interest to the archives. “I have an old scout shirt that belonged to my grandfather, it’s been in the basement for years. It has a Camp Powhatan patch from the 1930’s.”
My mind went numb. Camp Powhatan didn’t have yearly numbers that early, but it was a Roanoke shirt with early provenance. “How soon can I come to your house?”
The next week, we arranged to meet up. When I visited Ralph, he confessed there had been a box of patches with the shirt, but those were given away five years ago to a friend (long before there was any sort of local scout archive). As I looked at the vintage artifact he held out to me, there was an instant where I probably stopped breathing. I looked more closely at the “1930 Region Three Standard Camper” patch on the shirt pocket. There was also a pre-war “red-on-tan” community strip, and a well-worn “Troop 1” felt patch sewn below. And there was also an early Senior Patrol Leader patch on the same sleeve.
It was a truly rare find, all stemming from a serendipitous conversation at a local pub where Ralph happened to recall an old shirt that had been hanging around the house.
A quick search of the local newspapers turned up seven articles that mentioned his grandfather, William Eaton. I learned that he became a Tenderfoot in 1929 (article below). Ralph also shared with me several photos of William, including an early childhood image that is shown here.
I’m incredibly grateful for this generous donation to the BRSHP archive by my longtime friend and fellow scout, Ralph Eaton. This is the kind of thing that just never turns up, having been discarded long ago by a family member who is decluttering an old closet. This shirt from William Eaton in 1930 becomes the earliest documented scout shirt in our textile collection.
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