Daniel Carter Beard
1850-1941
American
(New York, New York)
Daniel Carter Beard, known to millions of Boy Scouts as "Uncle Dan," was a prominent Progressive-era reformer, outdoorsman, illustrator, and author. Born in Cincinnati, Ohioin 1850, Beard was a gifted artist and a bookworm as a child. He loved the great outdoors and formed a club called the "Boone Scouts" with his friends. Beard graduated from Worrall’s Academy in Covington, Kentucky in 1869 with a degree in engineering and worked as a surveyor and engineer.
In the early 1870s Beard and his family moved to Flushing, Queens. After working for a few years at the Sanborn Map and Publishing Company, he made his living as an illustrator. Beard’s drawings graced the pages of dozens of newspapers and popular magazines, from the New York Herald to Harper’s Weekly, and from St. Nicholas to Godey’s Magazine. His work attracted the attention of Mark Twain, who hired Beard to illustrate The Prince and the Pauper (1881) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).
Beard became interested in the plight of urban youth while touring tenements in the Lower East Side in 1878. Upon reading a sign with the words "No dogs or children wanted," he wrote: "I thought to myself that the fools have built an immense city without any place for the young at all." He actively campaigned to create new urban parks and playgrounds for healthy outdoor recreation. As editor of Recreation and later of the Home Companion magazine, Beard founded a nationwide scouting program for boys, known as "The Boy Pioneers" or the "Sons of Daniel Boone," in 1905. Beard’s group merged with the Boy Scouts of America in 1910.
